Xiaohongshu Influencer Finder: RedNote KOL Discovery

Discover public Xiaohongshu (RedNote / XHS / 小红书) creator candidates from category Explore pages. It deduplicates creator IDs, samples note engagement, and attempts profile enrichment for research and shortlists.

Keywords filter the collected candidates locally; this is not Xiaohongshu keyword or user search. No Xiaohongshu login cookies are supplied by the user, but the client generates anonymous cookies and keeps response cookies during retries. Public access can still be blocked or redirected to login. There is no private-profile access or restriction bypass; Apify authentication is separate.

Discovery and connection modes

1. Collect creator note cards from category Explore pages.
2. Deduplicate creator IDs and retain the highest-like observed note.
3. Attempt mobile/desktop profile enrichment; apply follower and local keyword filters.
4. Save accepted creators with the custom creator-result event.

Discovery revisits category pages, not a complete paginated catalog. It stops at the candidate target, discovery-page limit, or three batches without new IDs. Results are a changing sample, not an authoritative influencer ranking.

Routing options are DIRECT (default container egress), APIFY_DATACENTER (automatic proxy pool), and explicit opt-in APIFY_RESIDENTIAL. Residential routing costs extra and guarantees neither access nor reliability. No browser, downstream Actor, or paid external data API is used.

Quick start

Illustrative food-category input with filters disabled; three results are not guaranteed.

{
  "categories": ["food"],
  "maxCreators": 3,
  "minFollowers": 0,
  "minSampleNoteLikes": 0,
  "keywords": [],
  "connectionMode": "DIRECT",
  "maxConcurrency": 8,
  "maxDiscoveryPages": 2,
  "maxRequestRetries": 2
}

Available categories: recommend, cosmetics, fashion, food, travel, fitness, household, career, movie, gaming, and love.

Input fields

Field	Runtime default	Limits and behavior
categories	cosmetics, fashion, food, travel, fitness	Schema-required list, 1–11 unique supported values; the UI prefill is food.
maxCreators	100	Integer, 1–1,000; global creator cap, not per category. UI prefill is 3.
minFollowers	1000	Integer, 0–1,000,000,000. 0 disables the filter; UI prefill is 0.
minSampleNoteLikes	100	Integer, 0–1,000,000,000; compares the strongest observed sampled note. 0 disables it; UI prefill is 0.
keywords	[]	Up to 50 strings. Case-insensitive OR substring filter over names, bio, tags, verification text, and the strongest sampled-note title.
connectionMode	DIRECT	DIRECT, APIFY_DATACENTER, or APIFY_RESIDENTIAL.
maxConcurrency	8	Integer, 1–20; profile requests run concurrently. Discovery batches use at most five workers.
maxDiscoveryPages	50	Integer, 1–200, across all categories; UI prefill is 2. Retries and profile requests are additional.
maxRequestRetries	2	Integer, 0–4 retries after the first attempt; HTTP timeout is 20 seconds per request.

There is no separate tag-filter field: tag matching is part of keywords. The keyword filter only inspects already discovered data and does not search every creator or every observed note title.

Output and field availability

Each dataset row represents one accepted, unique creator ID within the run. Fields can include:

• userId, profileUrl, nickname, avatarUrl, optional redId, bio, and ipLocation.
• Following, followers, and combined likesAndCollects, with ...Text, ...LowerBound, and ...IsExact variants when available.
• tags, optional source verification fields (isVerified, verificationType, verificationContent, verificationFullName). These report platform labels, not independent identity verification.
• categories, discoveryAppearances, sampled note ID/URL/title/type/cover and like-value variants.
• profileEnriched, profileSource, success, and scrapedAt (UTC ISO extraction time).

profileEnriched: false rows can be billed. Failed enrichment still allows Explore-card rows when minFollowers is zero and keywords pass; profile counters/bio/verification are then missing. success: true is not enrichment success. A positive follower threshold rejects missing follower data.

discoveryAppearances counts unique observed note IDs, not page appearances, total posts, or reach. The strongest sample is only strongest among collected cards. Links/tokens can expire or become inaccessible.

Exactness describes source representation. Abbreviations/+ values omit exact fields and retain text plus parser-converted ...LowerBound; filters use these converted values, not independently measured bounds. likesAndCollects combines likes and collections. No inferred demographics, guaranteed contact data, fraud verdicts, or campaign outcomes are provided.

Limits and diagnostics

• Apify Free plan: maxCreators is capped at 50, with an additional developer-enforced 50-row output cap across the run. Free-plan result events still have a price.
• Paid Apify plans: no developer-set 50-row cap, but the 1,000-creator maximum, 200 discovery-page maximum, source availability, runtime limits, and charge budgets still apply.
• Restrictive filters, repeated cards, blocked profiles, and changing feeds can yield fewer than requested. A run selecting zero creator rows is treated as FAILED.
• Profile diagnostics are stored in ERRORS; summary/request statistics are stored in STATS. They are not extra creator dataset rows. On fatal failure, STATS contains a failure summary rather than the full success metrics.
• STATS.savedCreators is based on selected rows before the SDK write; with a restrictive charge budget, inspect actual dataset items and billed-event counts rather than treating it as an authoritative persisted count.

Current pricing

Event	FREE	BRONZE / SILVER / GOLD / PLATINUM / DIAMOND
creator-result — accepted saved creator row	$0.0125	$0.0025
apify-actor-start — startup event	$0.0005	$0.0005

Actor.pushData(selectedRecords, "creator-result") associates custom billing with the result write, including card-only creators. There is no separate configured profile-request, sample-note, or default-dataset-item fee. Filtered candidates and diagnostic records are not creator events.

Startup is charged per GB of allocated memory, minimum one event; the default 256 MB uses one minimum event. Startup can apply even to a failed or empty run. Apify platform usage is billed separately to the running user, including applicable compute, storage, transfer, and optional proxy traffic. Residential bandwidth is an additional Apify cost, not included in the creator price. Event fees are not total run costs.

Check the effective plan-specific fees on the Pricing tab. Budget limits can reduce saved output.

FAQs

Can I search Xiaohongshu for any keyword? No. Categories discover candidate cards; keywords filters their available data locally.

Are all rows enriched influencer profiles? No. Inspect profileEnriched. Setting minFollowers to zero allows card-only rows if other filters pass.

Does residential mode unlock restricted data? No. It changes routing, adds cost, and offers no access or reliability guarantee.

Respect platform terms, privacy obligations, and applicable laws; public creator data can still be personal data.

Complementary Actors

• Xiaohongshu Profile Scraper — enrich known profile references.
• Xiaohongshu Creator Notes Scraper — collect recent cards from known creators.