WeChat Article Scraper: Full Text, Markdown & Images (No Login)

What does WeChat Article Scraper do?

The WeChat Article Scraper reads public WeChat Official Account (公众号) articles from the links you give it and returns one row per article: title and summary, the account (name, biz id, gh_ id, WeChat ID, description, avatar), author, publish time, the Original (原创) mark, the IP region and hashtags, the broadcast the article was sent in and its position there, the full text and a simple Markdown version, the image URLs, the cover image and a canonical link, with no login and no WeChat app.

• Articles made of images come back as articles. A post whose body is only images carries its title, account, publish time and images, with text as an empty string and charCount 0. It is charged like any other article.
• The account behind the article. Each row carries the account's WeChat ID, its one-line description and its avatar beside the name and biz id, plus the Original (原创) mark, the IP region the publisher shows and the article's hashtags.
• Markdown you can index. markdown keeps paragraphs, bold, links and images, so a row can go straight into a document store or a prompt.
• HTML for re-publishing. With Also return the body as HTML on, contentHtml is the same body as cleaned HTML with direct image URLs, ready to show again or save; it is off by default.
• Reason rows are free. A deleted, taken-down, expired, private or unreadable page returns one row with a fixed reason, and that row is not charged.
• Batch speed. In our test runs on 2026-11-13, ten articles usually took 20 to 60 seconds (one run took 94), and one article on the default input took 8 to 22 seconds. Rows are written as each article finishes.

Try it with an empty input: it reads one sample article.

WeChat Article Scraper is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Tencent or WeChat.

What data can you get?

Group	Fields
Identity	id, source, inputUrl, url, canonicalUrl
Article	title, digest, articleType, itemShowType
Account	accountName, accountId, accountUsername, accountWechatId, accountDescription, accountAvatar
Marks and time	author, isOriginal, ipRegion, hashtags, messageId, positionInMessage, publishedAt, publishedAtRaw, publishedAtText
Body	text, markdown, contentHtml, charCount
Images	images, coverImage, imageCount
Status	error, scrapedAt

• id is the short article id (from /s/<id>, or from the page itself when a long link was read), or a hash of biz, mid, idx and sn when a long link could not be read. source names the platform. inputUrl is the link as you sent it (trimmed), url the normalised link, and canonicalUrl the page's own short link when it carries one, otherwise url.
• title is the article title, null on a reason row except no-content, where the page's title, account and publish time are kept. digest is the summary the publisher wrote for the article's share card, null when it is empty. articleType is article, video, image-post, text-post or other; itemShowType is the page's raw item type number behind it (0 = article).
• accountName is the account's display name, accountId its biz id (Base64, as WeChat reports it), accountUsername its original gh_… id, accountWechatId its WeChat ID, accountDescription its one-line description and accountAvatar its avatar URL. Each is null when the page does not carry it.
• author is the byline the page states, or null. isOriginal is true when the article carries the Original (原创) mark, false when it does not, and null when the page does not say. ipRegion is the province or country WeChat shows as the publisher's IP location. hashtags lists the tags without #, up to 50, and is empty when there are none. messageId is the broadcast the article was sent in, shared by the articles sent together, and positionInMessage is its place there (1 = the headline article).
• publishedAt is ISO 8601 in China Standard Time (+08:00), with the page's own Unix time in publishedAtRaw and its display text in publishedAtText.
• text is the body as plain text, up to 200,000 characters, and an empty string when a post has no text (its pictures are in images). markdown is the same body with paragraphs, bold, links and images, up to 200,000 characters; it is null when includeMarkdown is off or on a reason row. charCount counts the Unicode characters (code points) of text, so an emoji counts once, and is 0 when there are none. contentHtml is the same body as cleaned HTML (paragraphs, headings, lists, tables, links, images), up to 500,000 characters, with images as direct https URLs and no scripts, styles, event handlers or tracking attributes; it is null when includeHtml is off or on a reason row, and a body over the limit is cut between blocks and ends with <p>…</p>.
• images lists image URLs in page order, up to 300: the body's images, or the picture list of an image post. coverImage is the article's cover image, and imageCount the number of entries in images. Images are returned as URLs, not downloaded.
• error is null on a returned article, or {type, message} on a page that could not be read. scrapedAt is when the run read the page (ISO 8601, UTC).

Every row has every field: a value the page does not provide is null, an empty list is [], and a count with nothing to count is 0. The Actor does not return read counts, likes, comments, follower numbers, an account's article list, keyword search results, video or audio files, or a translation of the body.

How to use WeChat Article Scraper

1. Put the article links into WeChat article links (urls), up to 100 per run. Both the short and the long form work, and an article that appears twice is read once.
2. Set Maximum rows (maxItems, 3 by default, up to 100). Read articles and reason rows share this budget.
3. Keep Also return Markdown (includeMarkdown) on for LLM or archival use, or turn it off for plain text only.
4. Run the Actor and open the dataset, or export it to CSV, Excel or JSON.
5. Match each row to your input by inputUrl (the link you sent), or by id for a short link: rows are written as articles finish, so their order can be different.

Input example

{
    "urls": [
        "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1mEx5PY_as18PYbEVmGQlQ"
    ],
    "maxItems": 3,
    "includeMarkdown": true
}

Output example (one row, shortened)

{
    "id": "1mEx5PY_as18PYbEVmGQlQ",
    "source": "WeChat Official Accounts (mp.weixin.qq.com article page)",
    "inputUrl": "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1mEx5PY_as18PYbEVmGQlQ",
    "url": "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1mEx5PY_as18PYbEVmGQlQ",
    "canonicalUrl": "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1mEx5PY_as18PYbEVmGQlQ",
    "title": "启新程‼️安徽师范大学2026级新生开学典礼隆重举行",
    "digest": null,
    "articleType": "article",
    "itemShowType": 0,
    "accountName": "安徽师范大学",
    "accountId": "MjM5Mzk3ODQ4Nw==",
    "accountUsername": "gh_460df90479de",
    "accountWechatId": "ahsd1928",
    "accountDescription": "该平台旨在为校内师生、学生家长及校外考生、校友、媒体及社会各界人士传递校园文化资讯和鲜活的校园生活等方面的图文信息，敬请关注！",
    "accountAvatar": "http://mmbiz.qpic.cn/mmbiz_png/TOSTRb0vicevj8zIEa3JOq5rh0yMNsWDY4kcVZibkgfDnAunwz2nicCL30vXnklibNuBsT5EaBZZHDicyQ2EJxvjjSA/0?wx_fmt=png",
    "author": null,
    "isOriginal": false,
    "ipRegion": "安徽",
    "hashtags": [],
    "messageId": "2652161627",
    "positionInMessage": 1,
    "publishedAt": "2026-09-13T17:13:34+08:00",
    "publishedAtRaw": "1789290814",
    "publishedAtText": "2026-09-13 17:13",
    "text": "9月12日，安徽师范大学2026级新生开学典礼在花津校区北侧田径场隆重举行。…",
    "markdown": "9月12日，安徽师范大学2026级新生开学典礼在花津校区北侧田径场隆重举行。…\n\n![11111.gif](https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/mmbiz_gif/8LPqPPrGZiaxc31dk2Wrbw8hf1KiaOmIic6ql1YTvbQzpicPlf5fNdSwT5EPQOO78yQwKxMibh7vRgnZXkGoqtT9VZaicB4cJ2888EwjW3ibqwibtRI/640?wx_fmt=gif&from=appmsg)",
    "contentHtml": null,
    "images": [
        "https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/mmbiz_gif/8LPqPPrGZiaxc31dk2Wrbw8hf1KiaOmIic6ql1YTvbQzpicPlf5fNdSwT5EPQOO78yQwKxMibh7vRgnZXkGoqtT9VZaicB4cJ2888EwjW3ibqwibtRI/640?wx_fmt=gif&from=appmsg",
        "https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/sz_mmbiz_gif/8LPqPPrGZiawkHtREWGCxdmEibR4EreS2NEvJEqHgPk7ONDibLa8Z2KeYGSMrPpQb6XtTpiaTSyPYyffAW3zibaiciatUibkEeKyznKtuicNlJ5LyfCU/640?wx_fmt=gif&from=appmsg"
    ],
    "coverImage": "https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/mmbiz_jpg/8LPqPPrGZiawkcic2b3eaM8cXMpEaACMDyzmsMCQjLl7wxjnTdfYicJz7xficWpWEjWhdH7ZaOqksmd0R6DJgNcgic6YpTCSMNnKILUnCjO7jfog/0?wx_fmt=jpeg",
    "charCount": 184,
    "imageCount": 2,
    "error": null,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-11-06T06:20:00.000Z"
}

The body fields text and markdown are cut with …, and contentHtml is null because includeHtml is off; charCount and imageCount are the row's own counts, and every URL in images is shown.

When a page cannot be read

A page that cannot be read still comes back as one row: text, markdown and contentHtml are null, hashtags and images are empty, charCount and imageCount are 0, and error carries a fixed reason and sentence. On every reason row except no-content, title, the account fields and the publish time are null too; no-content keeps them, because the post page itself was read.

error.type	Meaning
deleted	The publisher deleted the article.
violation	WeChat removed the article for a rule violation.
expired-link	The link no longer points to a readable article.
verification-required	WeChat answered with a verification page instead of the article.
empty-body	A normal article, an image or text post, or a page whose type is not stated, where nothing of the body could be read; its fields are null or empty.
no-content	A post of another type, such as a video, with no text or images this Actor returns; its title, account and publish time are kept.
wrong-page	WeChat answered with a different article's page than the link names.
unavailable	The page could not be read for another reason, for example a page that is not public.

• A reason row is part of the dataset, so you can see which link failed and why. It is not charged.
• A link that got no answer, a request that was refused, or a page too large to read is not a dataset row: it is listed with its reason in the run's OUTPUT record, under failedInputs, and it is not charged.
• maxItems counts reason rows too: the dataset never holds more than maxItems rows.
• A link that is not an mp.weixin.qq.com article, a duplicate entry, and an entry beyond maxItems are not read. They are listed in the run's OUTPUT record.
• An article whose body is only images is an article row, not a reason row, and it is charged.

How much does it cost?

Launch pricing. WeChat Article Scraper uses pay-per-event pricing: you pay for each article returned (a row with error: null), including an article made of images only, not for the time the run takes.

Apify plan (discount tier)	Price per 1,000 articles	Price per article
Free	$1.60	$0.00160
Starter (Bronze)	$1.44	$0.00144
Scale (Silver)	$1.28	$0.00128
Business (Gold)	$1.12	$0.00112

Apify's Free plan includes USD 5 of monthly usage, which covers about 3,125 articles at the Free tier price, run start fees aside.

• Run start fee: USD 0.00005 per GB of memory per run (a run with up to 1 GB is charged once).
• A reason row is not charged, and neither is a duplicate, an invalid link or an article beyond maxItems.
• An article is charged once, after its row was written, so a retried run does not pay for it twice.
• Maximum rows (maxItems) caps the rows written in one run.

Limits

• URL in, article out. The Actor reads the links you send. It does not search WeChat by keyword, follow an account's article list, or read the links inside an article.
• 100 links per run (urls), and at most 100 rows (maxItems, 3 by default). Read articles and reason rows share that budget.
• Rows arrive in the order they finish. Match a row to your input by inputUrl or id, not by position. The same article sent as both a short and a long link comes back as one row; if one of the two fails, its reason row and the article row share the same id.
• The short link is the safer input. Both forms are accepted, but a long /s?__biz=…&mid=…&idx=…&sn=… link without a chksm often comes back as a verification-required row, while the same article's short /s/<id> link is read. Those rows are free.
• The body is cut at 200,000 characters and images at 300 entries, so a very long article is not returned in full.
• The public page only. Read counts, likes, comments and follower numbers are not returned.
• An empty input reads one sample article. A run whose links all failed returns reason rows only, every one of them free.

Integrations and API

Run the Actor from your own code or from an automation tool. Replace <APIFY_TOKEN> with your API token.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/kizukidata~wechat-article-reader/runs?token=<APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"urls":["https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1mEx5PY_as18PYbEVmGQlQ"],"maxItems":1}'

Poll GET https://api.apify.com/v2/actor-runs/<RUN_ID> for the status, read defaultDatasetId, then fetch GET https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/<DATASET_ID>/items?format=json.

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("kizukidata/wechat-article-reader").call(run_input={
    "urls": ["https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1mEx5PY_as18PYbEVmGQlQ"],
    "maxItems": 1,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["accountName"], item["publishedAt"], item["charCount"])

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<APIFY_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('kizukidata/wechat-article-reader').call({
    urls: ['https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1mEx5PY_as18PYbEVmGQlQ'],
    includeMarkdown: true,
    maxItems: 1,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
for (const item of items) {
    console.log(item.error ? `${item.inputUrl}: ${item.error.type}` : `${item.title}: ${(item.markdown ?? '').slice(0, 200)}`);
}

Zapier, Make and n8n

Use the Apify integration, choose Run Actor, and pass the article links with maxItems. Add Get dataset items and map title, accountName, publishedAt, text or markdown, and error to your document store, CMS or LLM step. A scheduled workflow can take new links from your link list and send the rows to Notion, Slack or a vector store. Check error before you store a row: a reason row has no body.

LangChain

Load the rows as documents: use text or markdown as page_content and title, accountName, author, publishedAt, isOriginal, ipRegion and canonicalUrl as metadata. ApifyDatasetLoader from the Apify LangChain integration works with the run's dataset ID. Filter on error being null so only articles with a body reach the index.

Use it from an MCP client

The Actor is a tool on the hosted Apify MCP server. MCP URL:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=kizukidata/wechat-article-reader

• Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=kizukidata/wechat-article-reader"
• Claude Desktop / claude.ai: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, and paste the URL.
• Cursor (~/.cursor/mcp.json) and other clients that read an mcpServers file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=kizukidata/wechat-article-reader"
        }
    }
}

• n8n: add an MCP Client Tool node to an AI Agent, set the endpoint to the URL above (HTTP Streamable), and use Bearer authentication with your Apify API token stored as an n8n credential.

The server signs you in to Apify with OAuth. A client that cannot use OAuth, such as the n8n node above, can send your Apify API token in an Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN> header instead.

Two requests an agent can send as they are:

• "Give me the text of this WeChat article" with {"urls":["https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1mEx5PY_as18PYbEVmGQlQ"],"maxItems":1}
• "Turn these two WeChat articles into Markdown for my index" with {"urls":["https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1mEx5PY_as18PYbEVmGQlQ","https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0U9ZJSIsL1zEIbSF1Yu5vw"],"includeMarkdown":true,"maxItems":2}

Related Kizuki Actors

Other Actors from Kizuki that work well with this one:

• note.com Scraper — articles from note.com, a Japanese creator platform, by creator, with likes, comments and the paid price of each article.
• URL to Markdown — the pages an article links to, as clean Markdown for the same pipeline.
• Google News Scraper — the coverage around the topics you collect, with the publisher URL.
• Telegram Channel Scraper — posts from public Telegram channels, with views, reactions and media.