WeChat Album Scraper (微信公众号合集 Articles)

What does WeChat Album Scraper do?

WeChat Album Scraper downloads every article of a WeChat Official Account album (微信公众号合集). Paste an album link, an album ID or any article link, and get each article with its title, link, publish date, cover image, full text, HTML, author and image URLs.

No login, no cookie and no WeChat account are needed. Albums are public pages, so you can start right away.

Run it on the Apify platform and you get API access, scheduling, integrations, proxy rotation and run monitoring. Export the data as JSON, CSV or Excel, or ask for WeChat articles from an AI assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT.

Official Accounts on WeChat put their articles into albums (合集): a series, a column, a topic or a course. One album can hold hundreds of articles. The Actor reads the full list of an album and gives one row per article, newest first:

• Album data: album title, description, number of articles, account name and account ID
• Article data: title, link, publish date and time, square cover image, paid flag and position in the album
• Full content (optional): article text, HTML, author and all image URLs

When you give an article link, the Actor finds every album that the article belongs to and scrapes all of them.

Why use WeChat Album Scraper?

• China research and policy analysis: collect a full series of reports, columns or speeches from a government body, a university or a think tank.
• Brand, market and competitor intelligence: get a brand's complete topic series in one run, with dates.
• AI, LLM and NLP datasets: collect long-form, dated Chinese text with its source, already grouped by topic.
• Media monitoring: schedule a run and get the new articles of an album every day.
• Archives and journalism: save a full series of articles before the account deletes them.

How to scrape a WeChat Official Account album

1. Open a WeChat article in the WeChat app or in your browser.
2. Under the title, click the album name (#合集) and copy the album link. You can also copy the article link itself.
3. Paste one or more links into Album or article links.
4. Set Max articles per album. The default is 100, and 0 gets the whole album.
5. Optional: turn off Include full article content to get only titles, dates and links.
6. Click Start.
7. Open the Output tab when the run finishes. Export the data as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML.

Input

Set the input on the Input tab, or send it as JSON through the API.

Field	What it does	Default
Album or article links (startUrls)	Album links, album IDs or article links, one per line. Required.	–
Max articles per album (maxArticles)	The maximum number of articles from each album, newest first. 0 gets the whole album.	100
Include full article content (includeContent)	Adds the article text, HTML, author and image URLs. Turn it off to get titles, dates and links only, which is much faster.	true

These link types all work:

• Album link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/mp/appmsgalbum?__biz=MzA3Nzg0ODUzMQ==&action=getalbum&album_id=4249242728875540493
• Album ID: 4249242728875540493
• Article link, short or long: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/... or https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=...

Example: a whole album, titles and dates only

{
  "startUrls": ["https://mp.weixin.qq.com/mp/appmsgalbum?__biz=MzA3Nzg0ODUzMQ==&action=getalbum&album_id=4249242728875540493"],
  "maxArticles": 0,
  "includeContent": false
}

Example: the 50 newest articles of each album of one article, with full text

{
  "startUrls": ["https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA3Nzg0ODUzMQ==&mid=2659577944&idx=1&sn=7b41bf29bd61d44298a00390ffdb0e8e&chksm=843a9ae4b34d13f249d4780341b2386ca7f62537d3801be725f99c7d1a911f73d3c29036e7dc"],
  "maxArticles": 50,
  "includeContent": true
}

Output

You get one row per article. This example comes from a real run, with the text shortened:

{
  "albumId": "4249242728875540493",
  "albumTitle": "刘 非书记报道集",
  "albumUrl": "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/mp/appmsgalbum?__biz=MzA3Nzg0ODUzMQ==&action=getalbum&album_id=4249242728875540493",
  "albumDescription": null,
  "albumArticleCount": 340,
  "accountName": "杭州发布",
  "accountId": "gh_f7279d1fbdc9",
  "biz": "MzA3Nzg0ODUzMQ==",
  "position": 1,
  "articleId": "2659577944_1",
  "title": "省委书记王浩在淳安调研并召开项目推进座谈会时强调：推进重点项目 做强特色产业……",
  "url": "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA3Nzg0ODUzMQ==&mid=2659577944&idx=1&sn=…&chksm=…",
  "publishedAt": "2026-10-09T20:31:02+08:00",
  "coverUrl": "https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/mmbiz_jpg/…/300",
  "isPaid": false,
  "author": null,
  "contentText": "王浩在淳安调研并召开项目推进座谈会时强调……",
  "contentHtml": "<section>……</section>",
  "contentLength": 1297,
  "imageUrls": ["https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/…/640"],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-09T17:00:20+00:00"
}

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel. The Output tab has two views: Articles (a short table with covers) and Articles with full text.

WeChat article data fields

Field	Description
albumId	The album ID
albumTitle	The album title
albumUrl	The link to the album
albumDescription	The album description, when the account wrote one
albumArticleCount	The number of articles in the album
accountName	The name of the Official Account
accountId	The original ID of the account (gh_…)
biz	The __biz ID of the account
position	The position in the album, newest first (1 = newest)
articleId	The article ID
title	The article title
url	A link that opens the article
publishedAt	The publish time, ISO 8601, China time (UTC+8)
coverUrl	The square cover image
isPaid	true when the article is behind a paywall
author	The article author, when the account shows one
contentText	The full article as plain text
contentHtml	The full article as HTML
contentLength	The length of the text in characters
imageUrls	The images in the article body
scrapedAt	The time when your run collected the row (UTC)

The full-content fields are empty when Include full article content is off.

How to use WeChat Album Scraper

In Apify Console

1. Open the Actor, fill in the Input tab and click Start.
2. Watch the progress of the run in the log, then open the Output tab.
3. Click Save as a new task to run the same setup again with one click. On the task, add a Schedule to get the new articles of an album every day.

With the Apify API (HTTP)

Run the Actor and get its results in one request. Replace YOUR_API_TOKEN with your token from Settings → API & Integrations in Apify Console.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/hgservices~wechat-album-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"startUrls": ["4249242728875540493"], "maxArticles": 20}'

Add &format=csv or &format=xlsx to the URL to get CSV or Excel instead of JSON. For long runs, start the run with POST /v2/acts/hgservices~wechat-album-scraper/runs, and then read the items of the run's default dataset when it finishes.

With the JavaScript client

Install the client with npm install apify-client, then run:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('hgservices/wechat-album-scraper').call({
    startUrls: [
        'https://mp.weixin.qq.com/mp/appmsgalbum?__biz=MzA3Nzg0ODUzMQ==&action=getalbum&album_id=4249242728875540493',
    ],
    maxArticles: 20,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
for (const article of items) {
    console.log(article.position, article.publishedAt, article.title);
}

With the Python client

Install the client with pip install apify-client, then run:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("hgservices/wechat-album-scraper").call(
    run_input={
        "startUrls": ["4249242728875540493"],
        "maxArticles": 20,
    }
)

for article in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(article["position"], article["publishedAt"], article["title"])

With Claude, ChatGPT and other AI assistants (MCP)

Connect your AI assistant to the Apify MCP server. The assistant can then run this Actor for you and answer from the results. To give the assistant this Actor as a tool, use this server URL:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=hgservices/wechat-album-scraper

• Claude (claude.ai or Claude Desktop): open Settings → Connectors, click Add custom connector and paste the URL.
• Claude Code: run claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=hgservices/wechat-album-scraper".
• Apify CLI: run apify mcp install claude-code --tools hgservices/wechat-album-scraper (also works for cursor, vscode and codex).
• ChatGPT: in Settings → Apps & Connectors, turn on developer mode, create a connector and paste the URL.
• Cursor, VS Code and other MCP clients: add the URL as a remote (HTTP) MCP server.

Sign in with your Apify account when asked. Then ask in plain language, for example:

• "Scrape the WeChat album 4249242728875540493 and summarize each article in English."
• "Get all the albums of this WeChat article and list their articles by date: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/..."
• "Get the 30 newest articles of this WeChat album and find the main topics: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/mp/appmsgalbum?..."

With integrations

Send the results to Google Sheets, Slack, email, Zapier, Make, n8n, Airbyte or any webhook from the Actor's Integrations tab. For example, run every day for a list of albums and add the new articles to a Google Sheet or a database.

Tips for scraping WeChat articles

• Find albums fast. Paste an article link. The Actor finds every album that the article belongs to.
• Monitor an album. Schedule a daily run with a small Max articles per album, such as 10. The newest articles come first. Remove duplicates by articleId after the run.
• Large albums. First run with Include full article content off to see the full list quickly. Then get the full text of only the articles that you need.
• Keep runs short. Use Max articles per album to get only the newest articles.

FAQ

Do I need a WeChat account or a cookie?

No. Album lists and article pages are public.

Can I get every article of an Official Account?

This Actor gets only the articles that the account put into albums. An article that is in no album does not appear.

Why is the text of an article empty?

The article was deleted, it is behind a paywall, or WeChat did not serve the page during the run. The row still has the title, link and date, and the log names the article.

Why does one article appear twice?

An article can belong to more than one album. You get one row for each album, with the albumId of that album. Remove duplicates by articleId if you need each article only once.

Does it get read counts, likes or comments?

No. WeChat shows these only inside the WeChat app.

Is it legal to scrape WeChat articles?

The Actor collects only articles that are published to the public, with no login. You are responsible for how you use the data. Follow WeChat's terms of service, copyright law and data-protection rules such as the GDPR and China's PIPL. If you are not sure, ask a lawyer.

I found a problem or I need a new feature

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