Douban Scraper

Scrape Douban (豆瓣), China's reference site for movies, TV, books and music: ratings with the star split, the Top 250, movies now showing, short comments (短评) and long reviews (影评) with stars and helpful votes, subject search, and group discussions (豆瓣小组). No login, no browser, no API key. Also known as 豆瓣电影, 豆瓣读书, Douban movie scraper, Douban API, Douban reviews scraper.

Why this Actor

• Movie short comments (短评), most helpful first, with stars and helpful votes. Up to 150 per movie, TV show, book or album.
• Long reviews (影评) with the full text, stars, helpful and unhelpful votes and reply counts. Up to 40 per subject.
• Charts in one run: Top 250, now showing, coming soon, popular and trending movies and TV, Top 250 books, with country and release-date filters and a newest-first order. Comments and reviews can be added to every chart row.
• Group discussions: a keyword search that keeps only topics whose title really contains the keyword (Douban's search is fuzzy; dropped rows are free), with the topic text and replies when you want them.
• $2 per 1,000 subjects, reviews or topics, $1 per 1,000 short comments. Light runs (256 MB), no start fee, failed and filtered rows free.

Use cases

• Film and TV research in China: how a title is rated, by whom and why, across the Top 250 or this week's releases.
• Audience sentiment: the most helpful comments and reviews of a movie, book or album, with optional sentiment.
• Brand and product monitoring: what Douban group members say about a brand (group_search), on a schedule with delta mode.
• Data for AI and analytics: long-form Chinese reviews with full text and stable JSON fields.

Modes

Mode	Input	What you get
charts	charts (+ countries, releasedAfter, sortBy)	One row per subject on the chart
subject_details	subjectUrls	Full record: rating, star split, countries, release dates, people, intro, tags
subject_comments	subjectUrls	Short comments, most helpful first (up to 150 each)
subject_reviews	subjectUrls	Long reviews with full text (up to 40 each)
subject_search	searchQuery, searchType	Movies, TV, books and music matching the query
group_search	searchQuery	Group topics whose title contains the keyword, newest first
group_topic	topicUrls	Topic text with its replies

Add includeComments, includeReviews or includeDetails to charts, details and search to get everything in one run.

Examples

The 5 newest Chinese movies now showing, with their 10 most helpful reviews each:

{
    "mode": "charts",
    "charts": ["movie_showing"],
    "countries": ["中国大陆"],
    "sortBy": "newest",
    "maxResults": 5,
    "includeDetails": true,
    "includeReviews": true,
    "maxReviews": 10
}

Farewell My Concubine (霸王别姬) with its 100 most helpful short comments:

{
    "mode": "subject_details",
    "subjectUrls": ["https://movie.douban.com/subject/1291546/"],
    "includeComments": true,
    "maxComments": 100
}

The whole Top 250: {"mode": "charts", "charts": ["movie_top250"], "maxResults": 250} (about 6 seconds).

Output examples

Subject

{
    "type": "subject",
    "subjectId": "1291546",
    "subjectType": "movie",
    "title": "霸王别姬",
    "aka": ["再见，我的妾", "Farewell My Concubine"],
    "year": "1993",
    "url": "https://movie.douban.com/subject/1291546/",
    "rating": 9.6,
    "ratingCount": 2459528,
    "starDistribution": {"1": 0.2, "2": 0.2, "3": 2.0, "4": 15.3, "5": 82.3},
    "doneCount": 4304193,
    "genres": ["剧情", "爱情", "同性"],
    "countries": ["中国大陆", "中国香港"],
    "languages": ["汉语普通话"],
    "releaseDates": ["1993-07-26(中国大陆)"],
    "releaseDate": "1993-07-26",
    "directors": ["陈凯歌"],
    "actors": ["张国荣", "张丰毅", "巩俐"]
}

Short comment

{
    "type": "comment",
    "commentId": "24303417",
    "subjectId": "1291546",
    "text": "陈凯歌可以靠它吃两辈子饭了，现在看来江郎才尽也情有可原",
    "stars": 5,
    "usefulVotes": 42004,
    "status": "done",
    "createdAt": "2007-11-21T20:38:33+08:00",
    "userName": "momo"
}

Review

{
    "type": "review",
    "reviewId": "1380398",
    "subjectId": "1291546",
    "title": "最懂蝶衣袁四爷",
    "content": "李碧华名作《霸王别姬》，我没看过原著，只看了电影。…",
    "stars": 5,
    "usefulCount": 25952,
    "uselessCount": 1412,
    "commentsCount": 2023,
    "createdAt": "2008-05-15T11:01:55+08:00",
    "url": "https://movie.douban.com/review/1380398/"
}

Dates are Beijing time (+08:00), as Douban shows them. Values Douban does not send are null.

Pricing

Event	Price
subject	$2 per 1,000 movies, TV shows, books or albums
comment	$1 per 1,000 short comments
review	$2 per 1,000 long reviews (full text included)
topic	$2 per 1,000 group topics (replies included)

Proxy and compute are included. You pay only for rows delivered. Set a maximum total charge on the run to cap your spend; the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

FAQ

How many comments and reviews can I get? Douban shows logged-out visitors the 150 most helpful short comments and the 40 most helpful long reviews of each subject; newest-first lists need a login. The Actor returns those, with full review text.

Do I need a Douban account or a proxy? No. The Actor reads Douban's public pages without login and switches to Apify Proxy by itself if Douban blocks a request.

Which personal data is included? Only what Douban shows publicly next to content: the public name and id of commenters, reviewers and topic authors and the region Douban displays. Gender and home city are left out.

Is it legal? The Actor reads publicly available data without logging in. Check your local laws and Douban's terms before using the data.