Douban Scraper - 豆瓣 Movie & Book Reviews, Comments, No Login

Scrape Douban (豆瓣), China's biggest movie, TV, book and music review community, without a login, cookies or an account. Paste subject URLs or search, and get short comments with star ratings, full-text long reviews, subject info and search results as clean JSON, CSV or Excel.

Quick start

Runs as-is with this input (the same input Apify tests daily):

{
  "subjectUrls": [
    "https://movie.douban.com/subject/1292052/"
  ]
}

Main output fields: subjectTitle, stars, text, votes, createdAt, ipLocation, user, type, title, usefulCount, url, query, rank, year, rating, ratingCount, subjectType.

Price: Short comment: $4.49 per 1,000; Long review: $24.99 per 1,000; Search result: $4.49 per 1,000. Pay only for results delivered.

Run it from code and get the results in one call: POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/reportable_broth~douban-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN with the input above as the JSON body.

What does Douban Scraper do?

• Short comments (短评) for movies, TV series, books and music: text, 1-5 stars, likes, date, IP location and user. Movies included.
• Long reviews (影评 / 书评) in full, not just the excerpt: title, complete text (often 1,000-5,000 characters), stars, useful votes, reply count, date and author.
• Subject info: title, original title, year, Douban rating and rating count, genres, countries, directors, actors, authors, publisher, intro, and Douban's total comment and review counts. Free.
• Search movies/TV or books by title, person or keyword, then optionally pull comments and reviews for the top results in the same run.
• Review URLs too: paste a …/review/123/ link and get that review's full text.
• Monitor mode: onlyNew remembers what you already got, so a scheduled run returns only new comments and reviews.

What can I use it for?

• Chinese audience reaction to a film, series or book release
• Star-rated Chinese text for sentiment analysis and LLM fine-tuning
• Brand and IP research in the Chinese market
• Comparing how Chinese and Western audiences rate the same titles

How do I use it?

1. Paste one or more Douban URLs into Douban URLs, for example https://movie.douban.com/subject/1292052/ or https://book.douban.com/subject/2567698/. Or type a title into Search queries.
2. Set how many short comments and long reviews you want per subject.
3. Run it, then export the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Input example

{
  "subjectUrls": ["https://movie.douban.com/subject/1292052/"],
  "searchQueries": ["三体"],
  "searchType": "movie",
  "scrapeTopSearchResults": 2,
  "maxComments": 100,
  "maxReviews": 20,
  "fullReviewText": true
}

Input

Field	Default	What it does
subjectUrls		Movie, TV, book or music URLs, or review URLs
searchQueries		Titles, people or keywords to search
searchType	movie	movie (includes TV) or book
maxSearchResults	20	Results per query
scrapeTopSearchResults	0	Also pull comments/reviews for the top N results
maxComments	100	Short comments per subject (0 = skip)
maxReviews	20	Long reviews per subject (0 = skip)
fullReviewText	true	Full review text instead of the excerpt
includeSubjectInfo	true	One free info row per subject
onlyNew	false	Skip items returned in earlier runs with the same input
proxyConfiguration	residential	Responses are small JSON, so proxy usage is tiny

What data do I get?

Every row has a type: subject, comment, review or search_result.

Short comment:

{
  "type": "comment",
  "subjectTitle": "肖申克的救赎",
  "text": "恐惧让你沦为囚犯，希望让你重获自由。——《肖申克的救赎》",
  "stars": 5,
  "votes": 26484,
  "status": "done",
  "createdAt": "2008-02-27 21:43:23",
  "user": {"name": "如小果", "id": "...", "location": "..."}
}

Long review:

{
  "type": "review",
  "subjectTitle": "肖申克的救赎",
  "title": "十年·肖申克的救赎",
  "text": "距离斯蒂芬·金（Stephen King）和德拉邦特（Frank Darabont）们缔造这部伟大的作品已经有十年了……",
  "isFullText": true,
  "stars": 5,
  "usefulCount": 18953,
  "commentsCount": 1082,
  "createdAt": "2005-05-12 20:44:13",
  "url": "https://movie.douban.com/review/1000369/"
}

status on comments is done (watched/read), doing (watching/reading) or mark (wants to). stars is null when the user didn't rate.

How much does it cost?

Pay per result:

Result	Price
Short comment	$4.49 per 1,000
Long review (full text)	$24.99 per 1,000
Search result	$4.49 per 1,000
Subject info row	free

100 short comments plus 20 full reviews for one film costs about $0.95.

Limits

• Douban shows logged-out visitors about 100-150 short comments and about 40 long reviews per subject, sorted by popularity. That's what you get. Newest-first sorting needs a login on Douban, so it isn't offered.
• Some restricted subjects need a Douban login and are skipped with a note in the log.
• Group (小组) discussions mostly sit behind Douban's login wall and aren't supported.

FAQ

Do I need a Douban account or cookies?

No. Nothing to log in, nothing to get banned.

Why only ~150 comments when the film has 600,000?

Douban only serves the most popular ~150 short comments and ~40 reviews to visitors who aren't logged in. The scraper returns all of those.

Can I run it on a schedule?

Yes. Turn on onlyNew and schedule it in Apify, and each run returns only new comments and reviews.

Can I call it from the API, Make, n8n or an AI agent?

Yes, like any Apify actor: REST API, Python and JavaScript clients, webhooks, Make, n8n, Zapier and MCP.

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