Xiaohongshu (RedNote) Trending Discovery Scraper

Discover what is trending on Xiaohongshu (小红书 / RedNote) right now — the notes, creators and topics rising across the app's home-feed channels — with no login, no account, no cookies and no Chinese phone number.

🔥 What is it — and when should you use it?

RedNote's home feed is where Chinese consumer trends surface first: beauty, fashion, food, travel, gadgets. This Actor reads that live trending feed and returns a clean, de-duplicated list of trending notes with their creators and like counts — so you can monitor what is taking off on RedNote without a login, an account pool, or fragile anti-bot games. Use it for trend research, content ideation, creator discovery and competitive monitoring.

It is a discovery tool. It does not scrape note full text, comments, user profiles or keyword search — those sit behind RedNote's login wall, and this Actor deliberately stays on the keyless surface instead of pretending to reach them.

🤖 Use with AI agents

The Actor is pay-per-event and built to be agent-friendly: one simple input, one clean output row per note, and a machine-readable result. Point any MCP-enabled assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor) at it once it is on the Apify MCP server, or call it directly via the Apify API. Billing is per delivered note, so an agent pays only for what it collects; runs that deliver nothing are free.

📋 Overview

Source	xiaohongshu.com home-feed (/explore) server-rendered trending state
Auth	None — no login, cookie, account or Chinese phone
Method	Pure HTTP over residential CN/HK proxy (no browser)
Output	One row per unique trending note
Billing	Pay per delivered unique note

✨ Features

• 🔓 Keyless — no login, no account, no cookies, no SMS/QR.
• 🔁 Deep, deduplicated sweep — the feed refreshes each request; the Actor rounds over your channels and dedupes by note id (measured: 1,000 notes, 0 duplicates).
• 📈 Real engagement — like counts parsed from 6.9万 to 69000, original text kept (measured median ≈ 7,600 likes).
• 🎛️ Channel control — pick Fashion, Food, Cosmetics, Travel, Gaming and more, or sweep all.
• 🧱 Reliable — rotates a fresh residential exit per request; a single blocked exit is retried, not fatal.
• 🧭 Honest scope — never returns empty "content" columns it cannot fill.

🎬 Quick Start

{ "channels": ["fashion", "food", "cosmetics"], "maxResults": 1000, "country": "CN" }

🚀 Getting Started (3 steps)

1. Pick one or more Channels (or leave empty for all).
2. Set Max results (unique notes) and keep Residential proxy on.
3. Run — notes stream into the dataset as they are found.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Description
channels	array	recommend, fashion, food, cosmetics, movie_tv, career, emotion, gaming, travel, fitness, video. Empty = all.
maxResults	integer	Hard cap on unique notes. Default 1000.
maxRounds	integer	Max sweeps of the channel list. Default 40.
country	string	Residential exit: CN or HK. Default CN.
maxRunSeconds	integer	Optional soft time budget (0 = none).
proxyConfiguration	object	Residential proxy (required).

📤 Output

{
  "noteId": "6a73f636000000002402ffdf",
  "url": "https://www.xiaohongshu.com/explore/6a73f636000000002402ffdf?xsec_token=ABQY...",
  "title": "刚刚，张雅琪中餐厅海报被删",
  "type": "normal",
  "channel": "recommend",
  "authorName": "刚刚！",
  "authorId": "61d1710a0000000010008b8b",
  "likedCount": 1634,
  "likedCountText": "1634",
  "cover": "http://sns-webpic-qc.xhscdn.com/...!nc_n_webp_mw_1",
  "xsecToken": "ABQY...",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-28T04:01:43.720Z"
}

Download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML.

🧱 Data table

Field	Description
noteId	Note id (unique key).
url	Direct note URL (with access token).
title	Note title.
type	normal or video.
channel	Trending channel it came from.
authorName / authorId / authorAvatar	The creator.
likedCount	Likes as an integer.
likedCountText	Likes exactly as RedNote shows them.
cover	Cover image URL.
scrapedAt	Collection time (ISO).

🧠 How it works

RedNote server-renders the live home feed into the page's own state blob. The Actor fetches /explore (and /explore?channel_type=…) over a residential CN/HK proxy, brace-matches that state, and reads the feed array. No browser, no cookie, no login request. The login-gated API (search / note detail / comments) is never contacted.

🧪 Data quality — measured

Measured on a 1,000-note run (11 channels, 2026-10-28, run 0xYzmuqWEDwWpytNA):

• Uniqueness: 1,000 / 1,000 notes unique (0 duplicates).
• Field fill: author 100%, likes 100%, cover 100%, title 99.7%.
• Meaningful engagement: like count median ≈ 7,572; 946 of 1,000 notes have ≥ 1,000 likes; none have 0 — these are genuinely trending notes.
• Diversity: 948 distinct creators; 54% image notes, 46% video.

⏱️ Performance — measured

Same run: 1,000 unique notes in 194 seconds, 4 sweeps, 0 blocked exits, 0 read failures. The feed refreshes each request, so repeated sweeps keep surfacing new notes until your cap or the feed stops producing new ones.

💼 Use cases

• Trend monitoring — track what is rising on RedNote daily per category.
• Content ideation — mine high-engagement titles and formats.
• Creator discovery — find creators behind trending notes.
• Competitive / market research — watch a category's momentum over time.

🔗 Integration

Schedule it, connect it to Make / Zapier / n8n, or call the Apify API and push notes into a sheet, warehouse or dashboard. Each run's summary is written to the SOURCE_REPORT key-value record.

📊 Pricing

Pay per delivered unique note. A run that delivers nothing is not charged. See the Actor's pricing panel for the current per-note rate. Collecting 1,000 trending notes is a single, inexpensive run.

❓ FAQ

Does it need my RedNote (Xiaohongshu) login or cookies?

No. It never logs in and never asks you for an account, cookie or proxy of your own. You pick which trending channels to pull and run.

What does each trending note row contain?

title, type, cover, the channel it trended in, the author (authorName, authorId), the like count (likedCount and likedCountText), the noteId, the url and scrapedAt.

Which channels can I pull, and how many notes?

The trending channels RedNote publishes. maxResults and maxRounds bound the run; because the feed reshuffles, extra rounds surface more unique notes.

Can it get a note's full text, comments, or do keyword search?

No. Those are login-gated and out of scope by design. The Actor focuses on the public trending feeds and never fakes data it cannot read.

Should I use a CN or HK proxy?

Both work. Switch between them with the country option if one exit is slow or blocked.

How current is the data?

Every run reads RedNote live, so the trending notes and like counts reflect what the platform shows at run time. Schedule it to track trending movement over time.

Why is a field null?

RedNote did not carry it for that note. A missing value is always null, never a placeholder or a guess.

How is billing calculated?

Pay per result: you are charged only for trending notes actually returned, never for an empty run or an error.

Can I export to CSV, Excel or JSON?

Yes. Download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel from the Apify console, or pull it from the Apify API or the dataset's .json endpoint for a dashboard or an AI agent.

Is it legal to collect this data?

It reads publicly visible RedNote trending feeds, with no login. Use the output in line with applicable laws and the platform's terms; see the legal note below.

🐛 Troubleshooting

• A run returned nothing: the residential exit may have hit a login page — just run again (the exit rotates), or switch country.
• Fewer notes than expected: raise maxResults / maxRounds or add channels.

🚧 What it does not do

Note full text, comments, user-profile details and keyword search are not provided — they require RedNote's login-gated API. This Actor is for trending discovery and will not return empty columns it cannot fill.

⚖️ Is it legal to scrape RedNote trending data?

The Actor reads only publicly served, non-personal trending data that RedNote renders to any visitor. Use the data in line with RedNote's terms and applicable law; do not use it to store personal data without a lawful basis.

🤝 Support & contact

Questions or a custom need (another channel, a different field)? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.