TikTok Search Scraper — videos, users, hashtags

TikTok Search Scraper — videos, users, hashtags

Search TikTok by keyword and read any of its tabs: videos with full stats and a no-watermark link, accounts with follower counts, sounds with usage counts, hashtags with post and view totals, photo posts with every image URL, places with addresses and coordinates, or Top — TikTok's own mixed ranking, which returns posts and accounts together. One resultType per run; every row says which shape it is.

No login, no cookies, no browser.

What TikTok search actually gives you, measured

Search is a bounded, re-ranked pool, not an endless list. has_more stays 1 while the same items come back, so a scraper that trusts it pages forever and charges you for repeats.

Two things came out of measuring it, and both are built in:

Page size changes how much you get. The same number of rows fetched yields more than twice as many distinct videos at the larger page size, so the page size is fixed at the maximum internally regardless of what you ask for:

	rows fetched	distinct videos
20 per page, 6 requests	119	35
30 per page, 4 requests	117	84

The run stops itself when the pool is dry. A broad term like funny cats topped out at 122 distinct videos, and asking for 200 simply ended there rather than looping. So over-asking is safe — but a search term will not give you thousands of videos, whatever a listing claims. For volume on a topic, use the TikTok Hashtag Scraper: that walks deep and clean.

Accounts and sounds are shallower pools still — comedy gave 40 accounts in 3 requests, funny gave 29 sounds in 2.

How to use

1. Click Try for free at the top of this page. Apify creates a free account if you do not have one — no card is needed to run this.
2. Put what you want scraped into Search terms — one per line.
3. Set Max results per term to bound the run, then press Start. You are billed per row, so this field is also your budget.
4. Rows show up in the Dataset tab while the run is still going. Export to JSON, CSV, Excel or XML from there, or read them over the API.

Pick the tab with What to search for — videos, accounts, sounds, hashtags, photo posts, places, or Top. Every row carries resultType, so several tabs can share one dataset.

Input

field
queries	required	One term per line; each is searched separately and tagged in the output
resultType	videos	videos, users or music
maxResultsPerQuery	50	The run stops early when the pool is dry, so over-asking costs nothing
sortBy	relevance	Videos only: relevance or most liked
includeDownloadUrls	on	Videos only. Free — the links are in the same response

Every field, with its default — paste the whole block and delete what you do not need:

{
  "queries": [
    "funny cats"
  ],
  "resultType": "videos",
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 50,
  "sortBy": "relevance",
  "includeDownloadUrls": true
}

Output

Every row carries query and resultType, so results from several terms can share one dataset.

Videos — videoId, url, description, createdAt, playCount, likeCount, commentCount, shareCount, saveCount, durationMs, coverUrl, hashtags[], musicId/musicTitle/musicAuthor, authorUsername/authorNickname/authorId/authorSecUid, isPhotoPost, region, and noWatermarkUrl/noWatermarkSize when enabled.

Accounts — username, nickname, userId, secUid, profileUrl, followerCount, followingCount, videoCount, totalLikes, isPrivate, avatarUrl, customVerify, enterpriseVerifyReason. Read both verification labels: individuals carry customVerify ("Verified account", "Popular creator") while organisations carry enterpriseVerifyReason instead ("institution account"), so checking only one makes every verified institution look unverified.

Sounds — musicId, musicTitle, musicAuthor, durationSec, userCount, playUrl, coverUrl, isCommercialTrack (catalogue music rather than a creator's own sound). The sound's owner account is not on this tab — TikTok does not send it with search results at all.

Hashtags — hashtagId, hashtagName, hashtagUrl, description, postCount, viewCount, isCommerce.

Photo posts — postId, url, title, description, createdAt, imageCount, images[], coverUrl, playCount, likeCount, commentCount, shareCount, saveCount, hashtags[], musicId/musicTitle, authorUsername/authorNickname/authorId. Photo results carry no download URL and no authorSecUid — TikTok trims the author on this tab, and the handle shown is read back from the post's own link.

Places — placeId, placeName, placeType, address, city, rating, reviewCount, videoCount, lat, lng, priceLevel, openingTime, imageUrl. Field names match the TikTok Places Scraper so the two can be joined without renaming anything. rating, openingTime and priceLevel are sparse — TikTok holds them for a minority of places.

Top — the mixed tab, so rows are Videos and Accounts together in whatever proportion TikTok returns; read resultType per row rather than assuming one shape. Photo posts on this tab come back as photo rows.

One row, exactly as it lands in your dataset (long signed CDN links shortened here for readability):

{
  "query": "coffee",
  "resultType": "video",
  "videoId": "7664850403116338446",
  "url": "https://www.tiktok.com/@gobbleacoffee/video/7664850403116338446",
  "description": "If you add… ☕🤎✨ • Brown sugar • Honey • 2 shots espresso • Shake until light and foamy • Ice • Vanilla bean paste • Sugar-free vanilla syrup • Oat milk • Top with the shaken espresso …you get the yumm …",
  "createdAt": "2026-07-21T12:30:00.000Z",
  "isPhotoPost": false,
  "playCount": 310826,
  "likeCount": 8433,
  "commentCount": 91,
  "shareCount": 1814,
  "saveCount": 5965,
  "durationMs": 27034,
  "coverUrl": "https://p16-common-sign.tiktokcdn-us.com/tos-useast5-p-0068-tx/oYfTcDn…?…",
  "hashtags": [
    "coffeetok",
    "homecafe",
    "coffeerecipe",
    "…"
  ],
  "musicId": "7369293314431387649",
  "musicTitle": "Refreshing and light indie pop(1552207)",
  "musicAuthor": "Cheng Lee",
  "region": "US",
  "authorUsername": "gobbleacoffee",
  "authorNickname": "gobbleacoffee",
  "authorId": "9003822",
  "authorSecUid": "MS4wLjABAAAA1hUMkQBB6Md30TerScZHraJ51M4h9SoalOqxUKTsOgc",
  "noWatermarkUrl": "https://v45.tiktokcdn-us.com/d354e4bbb4d39eb87a80af6230d0d3ff/6a7fc239…?…",
  "noWatermarkSize": 4663762
}

Two honest omissions

No verified flag on account results. This tab reports verification_type: 0 even for accounts that are verified — measured on @nasa, @bbcnews and @khaby.lame, all three verified, all three reported as 0. A field that answers wrongly is worse than a missing one. The TikTok Profile Scraper reads verification from the profile screen, which gets it right, and every account row here carries secUid to feed it.

No hashtag search. TikTok's hashtag tab returns one page and then an empty second page for every continuation we tried, so it cannot be paged. Use the TikTok Hashtag Scraper, which takes hashtag names directly and walks their videos properly.

No date filter. Search does accept an "uploaded within" filter, but a filter value this endpoint does not expect is not rejected — it returns unfiltered results and reports success. Until each bucket is measured to confirm it genuinely narrows the dates, the option is not offered: a filter that quietly does nothing is worse than no filter. To bound by date, use the TikTok User Posts Actor, whose postedAfter / postedBefore are measured and seek directly to the window.

Notes

• url is TikTok's own canonical link. A photo post therefore points at /photo/ and a video at /video/, and a row whose author handle is missing gets null rather than a link that would 404.
• No-watermark links are signed TikTok CDN links and expire within hours. For saved files use the TikTok Video Downloader actor.
• Results are deduplicated within a run, per search term.
• Only public data. There is no login, so nothing hidden from a logged-out visitor is reachable.

Run it from your own code

Every Actor is an API endpoint. This starts a run, waits for it, and returns the rows in one call — swap in your token from Settings → Integrations:

curl -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/mu0i~tiktok-search-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "queries": [
      "funny cats"
    ],
    "resultType": "videos",
    "maxResultsPerQuery": 50,
    "sortBy": "relevance",
    "includeDownloadUrls": true
  }'

Pricing

Pay per result — you are billed for rows you receive, not for time or compute.

Event	Per 1,000	What one unit is
result	$2.50	one search result in the dataset

Paid Apify plans pay less than this. The table above is the free-plan rate. Starter, Scale and Business each get a lower per-unit price — up to 55% off on Business — and the Actor's Pricing tab shows every tier before you run anything.

Starting a run costs $0.00001 — a cent per thousand runs — and there is no run minimum. You are never billed for a run that found nothing. If an input has nothing to collect the run says so in a row of the dataset — never a silently empty result, and never a charge. A run that fails because the data could not be reached fails loudly, because that one is worth retrying.

Related Actors

Fourteen Actors covering the whole public TikTok surface. Same billing rules and the same guarantees throughout: billed once for each row you receive, never billed for a run that found nothing, and told in the dataset why it found nothing.

Actor	What it does
TikTok Hashtag Scraper — videos by hashtag	Every video under a hashtag, walked deep.
TikTok Trending Scraper — the real Explore feed	The app's real Explore feed, not Creative Center.
TikTok Profile Scraper — followers, likes, bio	Followers, likes, bio for any public account.
TikTok User Posts Scraper — every video + stats	Every video an account posted, with stats.
TikTok Comments Scraper — replies, no duplicates	Every comment and reply, no duplicate pages.
TikTok Video Downloader — no watermark MP4/MP3	No-watermark MP4, MP3, covers and subtitles.
TikTok Transcript Scraper — no AI, no waiting	Subtitles from TikTok's own caption track.
TikTok Sound Scraper — videos using a sound	Videos that actually use a sound, filtered.
TikTok Live Scraper — rooms, viewers, streams	Live rooms with playable stream links.
TikTok Places Scraper — locations and reviews	Locations with addresses, coordinates and reviews.
TikTok Shop Scraper — Products, Sellers & Reviews	Shop search, product detail, seller catalogue.
TikTok Shop Category Scraper — every product	Every product in a Shop category and its subcategories.
TikTok Shop Reviews Scraper — full archive	The full review archive for a Shop product.