WeChat Article Search: WeChat official account articles by keyword

Search WeChat (微信) official account articles (公众号文章) by keyword and get the title, summary, account name, publish time, cover image and article link, newest first. Turn on Include full text to also get the whole article, its author and the account's WeChat id.

No WeChat account, no login, no browser. $4 per 1,000 articles, full text $2 per 1,000 more.

What you can use it for

• China market and brand monitoring: schedule a daily run for your brand, product or competitors and see every new WeChat article about them.
• Media and PR tracking: which official accounts write about a topic, and when.
• Research and AI pipelines: full article text, ready for translation, summarising or sentiment analysis with an LLM.
• KOL discovery: find the official accounts that publish most on your topic, with their WeChat ids.

Is there an API to search WeChat articles?

Not an official one. The WeChat Official Account platform API (公众号 API) gives an account access to its own articles only, after you log in as that account's admin. There is no official API to search articles across accounts. The public way to search them is Sogou's WeChat search (搜狗微信搜索, weixin.sogou.com), which WeChat feeds; it shows captchas to busy visitors and hands out temporary links.

This Actor reads that search, gets past the captchas by switching to a fresh IP and asking again, follows each link to the real mp.weixin.qq.com article, and can fetch the full text before the link expires. You get JSON from Python, JavaScript, cURL or an AI agent.

How to use it

1. Put one keyword per line in Search keywords (Chinese or any language).
2. Optional: Articles per keyword (up to 100) and Include full text.
3. Run it and download the results as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read them through the API.

Input example

{
  "searchQueries": ["新能源汽车", "人工智能", "apple"],
  "maxArticlesPerQuery": 50,
  "includeContent": true
}

Output

One item per article:

{
  "title": "国庆高速新能源车排队充电挤爆服务区,充至80%强制离场,增程车排队充电引争议...",
  "url": "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?src=11&timestamp=1791049099&ver=7004&signature=...",
  "summary": "国庆出行高峰时段,多条高速服务区出现新能源汽车充电排长队的现象...",
  "accountName": "大河报",
  "accountId": "gh_6a3942162fdd",
  "accountAvatarUrl": "https://wx.qlogo.cn/mmhead/.../0",
  "author": "祁驿",
  "isOriginal": true,
  "publishedAt": "2026-10-03T01:40:07.000Z",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/sz_mmbiz_jpg/.../0?wx_fmt=jpeg",
  "text": "国庆出行高峰时段，多条高速服务区出现新能源汽车充电排长队的现象，湖北枣阳北服务区率先实行充电至80%强制离场的新规...",
  "searchQuery": "新能源汽车",
  "position": 1,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-03T17:38:23.403Z"
}

• accountId, accountAvatarUrl, author, isOriginal (原创) and text are filled with Include full text.
• url is the link WeChat search hands out. It is a temporary link: it opens the article for a while, then stops working. Turn on Include full text if you need to keep the article.
• Image posts (图片消息) return their caption as text.

The run summary (articles and texts delivered, links not resolved, keywords without articles, failures) is saved as OUTPUT in the run's key-value store.

Pricing

Pay per result, no subscription:

Event	Price
Article	$0.004 ($4 per 1,000 articles)
Article full text	$0.002 per article, only with Include full text
Actor start	$0.00005

50 articles cost $0.20, or $0.30 with full text. Keywords that find nothing cost nothing. Bronze, Silver and Gold Apify plans get 5%, 10% and 15% off. Proxy and compute are included.

Use it from code

API (cURL)

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/sauliusautomatesit~wechat-article-search/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchQueries": ["人工智能"], "maxArticlesPerQuery": 20}'

Python

$pip install apify-client

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("sauliusautomatesit/wechat-article-search").call(run_input={
    "searchQueries": ["新能源汽车"],
    "maxArticlesPerQuery": 20,
    "includeContent": True,
})
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item["publishedAt"], item["accountName"], item["title"], len(item.get("text") or ""), "chars")

run.default_dataset_id is for apify-client 3.x (the current release); on 2.x write run["defaultDatasetId"]. Pass max_total_charge_usd=1 to .call() to cap a run at $1.

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('sauliusautomatesit/wechat-article-search').call({ searchQueries: ['人工智能'] });
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.map((a) => `${a.accountName}: ${a.title}`));

MCP (Claude, Cursor, any MCP client)

Add https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=sauliusautomatesit/wechat-article-search as a remote MCP server and your agent can search WeChat articles as a tool.

Limits, honestly

• Up to 100 articles per keyword (10 pages of 10), which is as deep as WeChat search goes for visitors. Use narrower keywords for more coverage; schedule daily runs to collect new articles as they appear.
• Article links are temporary (see above). There is no permanent link without logging in to WeChat.
• No read or like counts: WeChat shows those only inside the WeChat app.
• The search service sometimes asks visitors to solve a captcha. The Actor switches to a fresh IP and asks again, so runs stay reliable but can take a little longer.

Related Actors

• Bilibili API: Bilibili videos, stats, tags and danmaku.
• Telegram Channel Scraper: messages, views and reactions from public Telegram channels.
• Google Trends API: search interest over time, by region, related and rising queries.

FAQ

Do I need a WeChat account? No.

Is this the WeChat Official Account API? No. That API only works for your own account. This Actor searches articles from every public official account by keyword, the way Sogou WeChat search does, and needs no WeChat login.

Can I translate or summarise the articles? Yes. Turn on Include full text and pass text to an LLM or translation API; the Python sample above prints the length of each article's text.

Can I get all articles of one official account? Search by the account's name: WeChat search returns its recent articles among the results. A full back catalogue needs a logged-in WeChat account, which this Actor does not use.

How fast is it? About 10 to 20 articles a second per keyword without full text; with full text about 2 a second per keyword, 3 keywords in parallel by default (up to 10).

Is it legal? It collects publicly visible articles. You are responsible for how you use the data and for complying with the laws that apply to you.