Douyin Pro Scraper

Full-featured Douyin / 抖音 (China TikTok) scraper. Five modes, one Actor, clean structured JSON. No login, no cookies, no broken-token surprises.

Built for serious workloads — China short-video trend research, KOL / KOC discovery, AI training pipelines harvesting Chinese-language video metadata, brand-watch dashboards, hashtag campaign tracking.

What does this Actor do?

Pick a mode, give it inputs, get a dataset:

• Keyword search — search Douyin by keyword. Three sort modes (comprehensive, most liked, newest) × four time windows (any / 24h / week / 6 months).
• Video detail by aweme ID / URL — paste a numeric aweme ID, a full douyin.com/video/<id> URL, or a short v.douyin.com/... share link; get caption, author, plays, likes, comments, shares, collects, cover, video URL, music, hashtags, and (optional) top comments.
• User profile + uploads — fetch a creator's profile (followers, gender, location, verification badge, total favorites) and their recent uploaded videos with pagination.
• Hashtag feed — pull every recent video tagged with a Douyin challenge ID, plus the hashtag's metadata (view count, user count).
• Hot search board — Douyin's live "hot search" board — what's trending across the entire app right now.

Each video returns a flat, schema-validated JSON row that's downloadable as JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or XML — and queryable via the Apify REST API for pipeline integration.

Why use Douyin Pro Scraper?

• No cookies, no breakage. Other Douyin actors in the store rely on the user's logged-in Douyin cookie that expires every few days. Customers end up with a stream of -352 / 412 errors and 1.5★ reviews. We use a maintained backend surface that stays stable.
• Five modes in one Actor. Search, detail, user, hashtag, hot — pick a mode per run; no juggling separate Actors.
• Full-field output. Caption, author + sec_uid, plays, likes, comments, shares, collects, forwards, cover URL, play URL, music title, hashtags, publish time — all in one row.
• AI training-ready. Chinese-language video metadata, clean JSON, deduplicable by awemeId. Drop straight into a vector DB, an LLM fine-tune set, or a trend classifier.
• Marketing dashboards. Schedule keyword + hashtag runs hourly and build a real-time pulse of any brand, product, or campaign on China's #1 short-video app.

How to use

1. Open the Actor and click Try for free.
2. In the Input tab, pick a Scrape mode (search is the default).
3. Fill the inputs for your mode:
   • search: keywords, optional sortType + publishTime
   • videos: aweme IDs / douyin.com URLs / v.douyin.com short links in videoIds
   • user: sec_uid strings in secUserIds (find in douyin.com/user/<sec_uid>)
   • hashtag: numeric challenge IDs in hashtagIds
   • hot: nothing required
4. Set Max items per input (default 50).
5. Click Save & Start. Results stream into the dataset live.
6. Download or stream the dataset; schedule the run under the Schedules tab.

Input

Field	Type	Used in mode	Description
mode	string	all	One of search, videos, user, hashtag, hot.
keywords	array	search	Search queries; Chinese or English.
sortType	enum	search	_0 comprehensive / _1 most liked / _2 newest.
publishTime	enum	search	_0 any / _1 24h / _7 last week / _180 last 6mo.
videoIds	array	videos	Aweme IDs, douyin.com URLs, or v.douyin.com short links.
secUserIds	array	user	Opaque MS4wLjABAAAA… sec_uid strings or full user URLs.
hashtagIds	array	hashtag	Numeric Douyin challenge IDs.
maxItemsPerInput	integer (1–1000)	all	Cap per input. Default 50.
fetchComments	boolean	videos	Fetch up to 20 top comments per video. Extra cost.

JSON example — keyword search:

{
    "mode": "search",
    "keywords": ["AI", "Claude"],
    "sortType": "_1",
    "publishTime": "_7",
    "maxItemsPerInput": 100
}

Output

{
    "awemeId": "7642544676239790570",
    "caption": "工作放手交给AI ...",
    "author": "写AI的老韩",
    "authorSecUid": "MS4wLjABAAAAZ-cmp_SmexldJ_NyG4",
    "authorUid": "12345678901234",
    "authorAvatar": "https://p3-pc.douyinpic.com/...avatar.jpg",
    "cover": "https://p3-pc.douyinpic.com/...cover.jpg",
    "videoUrl": "https://www.douyin.com/video/7642544676239790570",
    "playUrl": "https://aweme-cdn.douyinpic.com/...play.mp4",
    "duration": 119955,
    "plays": 482915,
    "likes": 39201,
    "comments": 1832,
    "shares": 2841,
    "collects": 12480,
    "forwards": 220,
    "publishedAt": "2026-05-18T08:15:00.000Z",
    "music": "原创音乐 - 写AI的老韩",
    "hashtags": ["#ai量化", "#搞钱", "#分享"],
    "keyword": "AI",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-05-22T14:34:25.000Z"
}

Output fields

Field	Description
awemeId	Douyin's internal video ID (canonical).
caption	Video caption / description.
author	Creator display name.
authorSecUid	Opaque sec_uid — pair with mode: "user" to drill in.
authorUid	Numeric uid.
authorAvatar	Creator avatar URL.
cover	Cover thumbnail URL.
videoUrl	Public Douyin page URL.
playUrl	Direct video play URL (may expire).
duration	Length in milliseconds.
plays	Play count.
likes	Digg / like count.
comments	Comment count.
shares	Share count.
collects	Save / favorite count.
forwards	Forward / repost count.
publishedAt	ISO 8601 publish time.
music	Music track title.
hashtags	Hashtags referenced in the caption.
userProfile	Creator profile object (user mode only).
hashtag	Hashtag metadata object (hashtag mode only).
topComments	Top 20 comments (videos mode with fetchComments).
scrapedAt	ISO 8601 timestamp of scrape.

Pricing

$4.99 per 1,000 results. Each video returned counts as one result. videos mode with fetchComments=true returns richer rows but is billed at the same rate.

Free vs. paid Apify plans

Apify free-plan users get 2 sample runs capped at 10 results each so you can verify the data shape and quality before committing. Further runs from free accounts are blocked with an upgrade prompt — this Actor relies on a paid backend, so we can't subsidise unlimited free use. Any Apify paid plan ($49/month and up — see Apify pricing) unlocks unlimited runs at the rate above.

Cost estimates

Goal	Items / run	Mode	Est. cost / run
Quick scan of one keyword	50	search	~$0.20
Hashtag campaign round-up	500	hashtag	~$2.00
KOL deep dive	200 uploads	user	~$0.80
Daily brand monitoring	1,000	search	~$4.00 / day

Apify also charges a small compute fee (typically $0.01-0.05 per minute of run time).

Tips

• Schedule, don't poll. Douyin trends turn over fast; scheduling hourly during campaign launches captures the peak.
• Deduplicate by awemeId. Sequential runs overlap; merge and dedupe on awemeId.
• Pair user + videos modes. Use mode: "user" to find prolific creators, then drill into top videos with mode: "videos" + fetchComments.
• publishTime: "_1" + sortType: "_2" for real-time newest-first keyword monitoring (last 24h).
• hot mode is cheap and high-signal. Run it every 30 min to track real-time trending terms before your competitors notice.

FAQ

Q: Why is this Actor different from the other Douyin scrapers on the Store? A: Most existing actors depend on the customer providing a logged-in Douyin cookie that expires within days. We don't. We've engineered around stable backend surfaces so the Actor stays usable across cookie expiries.

Q: Will this break when Douyin changes their API? A: Possibly. Our team maintains the backend; we patch usually within 24-72 hours of a backend change. Bug reports via the Issues tab.

Q: Is scraping Douyin legal? A: We pull only publicly-accessible content — what any visitor can see without an account. Your usage is your responsibility; comply with your jurisdiction's law and Douyin's Terms of Service.

Q: Can I get my data via API? A: Yes. Every Apify run exposes a stable REST API for inputs, datasets, and run status. Plug into n8n, Make, Zapier, or your own pipeline.

Q: How do I find a user's sec_uid? A: Open the creator profile on douyin.com or in the Douyin app share menu; the URL contains /user/<sec_uid>. It looks like MS4wLjABAAAA….

Q: How fast are runs? A: Search: ~3 seconds per page (~10 videos). User: ~2 seconds per page (20 videos). Video detail: ~1 second per video. Hashtag: ~2 seconds per page.

Q: I need a richer integration or higher-volume contract. A: Reach out via Apify chat. Custom endpoints and SLAs available on request.