Douyin & Weibo Hot Search Scraper: China Trending Topics

What China is talking about right now, from the four lists that set the agenda: Douyin hot search (抖音热榜) with its rising topics, Weibo hot search (微博热搜), Baidu hot search (百度热搜) and Toutiao hot list (头条热榜). One run reads each list once, as it stands at that minute, and returns one clean record per topic: rank, heat score, badge, category, link, cover image, and how the topic moved since your last run. English translation is one switch away.

No login, no account, nothing to set up. A run takes a few seconds.

Quick start

1. Keep the default lists (Douyin and Weibo) or add Baidu and Toutiao.
2. Click Start. About 105 topics come back in under 15 seconds.
3. Schedule it (every hour, every 10 minutes) to follow how topics rise and fall: each record says its previous rank and whether it is new.

What it is used for

• Social listening and PR in China: see the moment a brand, a product or an incident reaches a national list.
• Market research and trading signals: Weibo and Douyin lists move before the news cycle does.
• Content planning: what Douyin users search for this hour, with the number of videos attached to each topic.
• Datasets for research and AI: a timestamped, comparable snapshot of four platforms, every time you run it.

What you get

Field	Douyin	Weibo	Baidu	Toutiao
rank (1 = top)	yes	yes	yes	yes
heat (the platform's own score)	hot value	heat	hot score	hot value
label (hot, new, boiling...)		yes	yes	yes
category		yes (Chinese)		yes
description (summary)			yes
imageUrl (cover)	yes		yes	yes
videoCount	yes
onListSince	yes	yes
Rising topics (list: "rising")	yes (about 5)
Pinned topics (isPinned)		yes	yes	yes

Every record also has title, url (the topic page or its search results on the platform), scrapedAt, and, with rank tracking on, previousRank, rankChange and isNew. A field the platform does not show is null, never a made-up 0.

Inputs

Input	Default	What it does
boards	["douyin", "weibo"]	Lists to read: douyin, weibo, baidu, toutiao.
maxItemsPerBoard	50	Ranked topics from the top of each list (the lists hold about 50).
includeRising	true	Douyin's rising topics, on top of the ranked ones.
includePinned	true	Topics pinned above the ranking (they have no rank).
includePromoted	false	Paid placements inside Weibo's list, marked isPromoted.
translateToEnglish	false	Adds titleEnglish (and descriptionEnglish for Baidu). Paid Apify plans only.
trackRankChanges	true	Compares each list with your last run under the same historyKey (runs with this option off are not counted).
historyKey	default	Give each schedule its own key if you run several.
maxItems	none	Total topics delivered by the run, counted exactly.

Example:

{
  "boards": ["douyin", "weibo", "baidu", "toutiao"],
  "maxItemsPerBoard": 20,
  "translateToEnglish": true
}

Output

A Weibo topic, with English translation and rank tracking:

{
  "board": "weibo",
  "platform": "Weibo",
  "list": "hot",
  "rank": 1,
  "title": "日本出现取消吃饭现象",
  "titleEnglish": "A phenomenon of skipping meals emerges in Japan",
  "heat": 1669936,
  "label": "hot",
  "category": "海外新闻",
  "url": "https://s.weibo.com/weibo?q=%23%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E5%87%BA%E7%8E%B0%E5%8F%96%E6%B6%88%E5%90%83%E9%A5%AD%E7%8E%B0%E8%B1%A1%23",
  "onListSince": "2026-10-18T12:23:22Z",
  "isPinned": false,
  "isPromoted": false,
  "previousRank": 1,
  "rankChange": 0,
  "isNew": false,
  "previousSnapshotAt": "2026-10-18T15:49:31Z",
  "translationStatus": "ok",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-18T15:49:56Z"
}

A Douyin topic:

{
  "board": "douyin",
  "platform": "Douyin",
  "list": "hot",
  "rank": 1,
  "title": "LOUD战胜VIT夺冠",
  "heat": 12156640,
  "url": "https://www.douyin.com/hot/2701312",
  "imageUrl": "https://p26-sign.douyinpic.com/tos-cn-p-0015c000-ce/o8DEuSqdBy9Bi5SAieA38EIBTwXo0XjBzWfwa3~noop.jpeg?...",
  "videoCount": 11,
  "onListSince": "2026-10-18T06:35:37Z",
  "topicId": "2701312",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-18T15:49:04Z",
  "listUpdatedAt": "2026-10-18T15:47:54Z"
}

The Overview view of the dataset shows one line per topic (platform, rank, topic, English, heat, badge, change, link). The run summary (topics per list, lists not read and why, why the run stopped) is the OUTPUT record of the key-value store.

Pricing

Pay per topic delivered. Lists that could not be read cost nothing (the run start fee below still applies).

Event	Price
Topic	$0.50 per 1,000 ($0.0005 each)
Translated topic (instead of a topic)	$1.00 per 1,000 ($0.001 each)
Run start	$0.005 per run (one per GB of memory; the default is 256 MB)

A default run (Douyin and Weibo, about 105 topics) costs about $0.06; all four lists, about $0.11. Pinned topics count as topics; promoted ones only if you include them. If a translation fails, or a topic has nothing to translate, it is charged as a plain topic.

Limits

• Each list is read as it stands at that minute: to follow a topic over time, schedule the Actor.
• Douyin's other boards (entertainment, society, challenges) are not covered: we only return lists we can read reliably for every run.
• Douyin and Toutiao cover links (imageUrl) are signed by the platform and expire after a while: download them the same day if you need them.
• Weibo categories are in Chinese, as Weibo writes them.
• The Actor returns the lists, not the posts or videos behind each topic. For those, see the related tools below.

FAQ

Is it legal? The Actor reads public lists that anyone can open without an account, and returns no personal data. Check the rules that apply to your use of the data.

How fresh is the data? As fresh as the platforms: Douyin and Baidu also return when they last updated their list (listUpdatedAt).

How does rank tracking work? At the end of each run, the Actor saves each list's ranks in a key-value store of your account. The next run with the same historyKey compares against it. Nothing leaves your account.

Is anything different on Apify's free plan? The English translation option is available on paid Apify plans only; on the free plan the run collects everything else as usual and charges nothing for translation.

Does the Actor send anything to Quarra? Only when a run fails or runs out of time: the Actor, its build, the error type, the line of our code where it happened, and the memory and time the run was given, so we can fix it fast. Never your input, your results, your account or the run ID.

Related tools from Quarra

• Douyin Transcript Scraper: the words spoken in Douyin videos, with English translation.
• Douyin Comments Scraper: comments and replies under Douyin videos, with likes and optional translation.
• Weibo Scraper: Weibo posts, comments and profiles.
• Bilibili Scraper: Bilibili videos, comments and danmaku.