# Douban Scraper - Movies, TV, Books, Music & Reviews (`scrapesage/douban-scraper`) Actor

Scrape Douban movies, TV, books and music albums: ratings with full star distribution, cast and crew, awards, IMDb IDs, short comments, long reviews and people profiles. No login, no browser. Export CSV/JSON.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/scrapesage/douban-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Scrape Sage](https://apify.com/scrapesage) (community)
- **Categories:** Videos, Social media, AI
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $6.00 / 1,000 movie or tv full record scrapeds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Douban Scraper - Movies, TV, Books, Music & Reviews

Scrape **[Douban](https://www.douban.com)** - China's largest film, TV, book and music rating community - into clean CSV/JSON. Ratings with the **full 5-star distribution**, complete cast and crew, awards, **IMDb IDs**, short comments, long reviews and people profiles.

No login. No cookies to supply. No browser.

***

### Why this actor exists (demand receipt)

Measured against the **live Apify Store API on 2026-07-22**, not a stale report:

| Signal | Value |
|---|---|
| Douban actors on the Apify Store | **10** |
| Combined lifetime users | **116** |
| Combined 30-day users | **61** |
| Largest incumbent | `zhorex/douban-scraper` - 57 users, 39 monthly |

**61 of 116 lifetime users were active in the last 30 days - a 53% active ratio, the healthiest of any China/APAC target still unbuilt.** For comparison on the same day: Temu 285/2,680 = 10.6%, Shein 145/949 = 15%, Lazada 137/1,088 = 12.6%. Douban demand is *current*, not a decayed lifetime total.

Every incumbent covers a single slice - movies only, or reviews only. **None covers movies + TV + books + music + comments + reviews + people in one actor**, and none returns the rating distribution, the full cast, awards or the IMDb ID.

***

### What you get

| Mode | One record per | Highlights |
|---|---|---|
| **Movies & TV** | film / series | rating + full star distribution, genres, countries, languages, every regional release date, runtime, **IMDb ID**, synopsis, alternate titles, directors/writers/cast with person IDs, **full cast & crew (60+ people)**, **awards with win/nomination status**, similar-title recommendations, want-to-watch & watched counts |
| **Books** | book | authors, translators, publisher, imprint, publication date, pages, binding, **ISBN**, series, price, rating + distribution, content summary, author biography, table of contents |
| **Music albums** | album | performers, release date, genre, album type, medium, label, barcode, **ISRC**, full track listing, rating + distribution |
| **Short comments** | comment | text, star rating, author + profile URL + avatar, timestamp, useful votes, IP region, permalink |
| **Long reviews** | review | headline, full body, star rating, author, timestamp, useful / not-useful votes, reply count, permalink |
| **People** | person | Chinese + original name, gender, date of birth, birthplace, occupations, alternate names, family members, **IMDb person ID**, biography, follower count, best-known titles |

**One mode returns exactly one record type**, so your CSV never columnises on a union of unrelated keys.

#### Sample (Movies & TV, trimmed)

```json
{
  "type": "movie",
  "subjectId": "1292052",
  "url": "https://movie.douban.com/subject/1292052/",
  "titleChinese": "肖申克的救赎",
  "titleOriginal": "The Shawshank Redemption",
  "akaTitles": ["月黑高飞(港)", "刺激1995(台)", "地狱诺言", "铁窗岁月"],
  "year": 1994,
  "isTvSeries": false,
  "rating": 9.7,
  "ratingVotes": 3306439,
  "ratingDistribution": { "star5": 88.3, "star4": 11.0, "star3": 0.6, "star2": 0.1, "star1": 0.1 },
  "ratingBetterThan": ["99% 的犯罪片", "99% 的剧情片"],
  "genres": ["剧情", "犯罪"],
  "countries": ["美国"],
  "languages": ["英语"],
  "releaseDates": ["1994-09-10(多伦多电影节)", "1994-10-14(美国)"],
  "runtimeMinutes": 142,
  "imdbId": "tt0111161",
  "imdbUrl": "https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/",
  "directors": [{ "name": "弗兰克·德拉邦特", "personId": "1047973" }],
  "cast": [{ "name": "蒂姆·罗宾斯 Tim Robbins", "personId": "27260288", "role": "演员 Actor", "knownFor": ["肖申克的救赎", "神秘河"] }],
  "awards": [{ "award": "第67届奥斯卡金像奖", "year": 1995,
               "categories": [{ "category": "最佳影片(提名)", "won": false, "people": ["妮基·马文"] }] }],
  "rank": 1
}
```

***

### Quick start

**Douban Movie Top 250, fully enriched** - no URLs needed:

```json
{ "mode": "movies", "collection": "top250", "maxItems": 250 }
```

**Search for science-fiction titles:**

```json
{ "mode": "movies", "searchQueries": ["科幻"], "maxItems": 100 }
```

**Everything about one title:**

```json
{ "mode": "movies", "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://movie.douban.com/subject/1292052/" }] }
```

**Its 500 most useful comments:**

```json
{ "mode": "comments",
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://movie.douban.com/subject/1292052/" }],
  "maxItems": 500 }
```

**Its entire cast as person profiles** - pass a *movie* URL in People mode:

```json
{ "mode": "people", "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://movie.douban.com/subject/1292052/" }], "maxItems": 60 }
```

**Douban Book Top 250 with ISBNs:**

```json
{ "mode": "books", "collection": "top250", "maxItems": 250 }
```

***

### Input reference

| Field | Type | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| `mode` | enum | `movies` | `movies` · `books` · `music` · `comments` · `reviews` · `people` |
| `collection` | enum | `none` | `top250` (movies/books/music) · `chart` · `nowPlaying` · `tag` |
| `searchQueries` | string\[] | `[]` | Chinese or English keywords. Movies & Books only - see note below |
| `startUrls` | url\[] | `[]` | Subject or person URLs |
| `tag` | string | - | Used with `collection: "tag"` |
| `city` | string | `beijing` | Used with `collection: "nowPlaying"` |
| `maxItems` | integer | `100` | `0` = no cap (the wall-clock budget stops the run) |
| `includeDetails` | boolean | `true` | Opens each subject page for the rich fields |
| `includeCast` | boolean | `true` | Full cast & crew (movies) |
| `includeAwards` | boolean | `true` | Awards with win/nomination status (movies) |
| `maxPerSubject` | integer | `100` | Comments/reviews per subject |
| `minRating` | integer | - | Keep only records rated ≥ this (0-10) |
| `detailConcurrency` | integer | `4` | Parallel detail fetches, each on its own IP |
| `proxyConfiguration` | proxy | Residential | Strongly recommended - Douban throttles per IP |

***

### Field coverage - measured, not claimed

From a real platform run (Movie Top 250, details + cast + awards): **38 of 41 movie fields populated on ≥70% of rows.**

Fields that are legitimately sparse, and why:

| Field | Why |
|---|---|
| `episodeCount`, `episodeRuntimeMinutes` | **Television only.** Douban does not print an episode count on a feature film - these populate on series and stay null on films, which is the correct answer, not a gap. |
| `sourceQuery` | Provenance. Set only when a record came from a search term; null for chart/collection/URL runs. |
| `rank` | Only Top 250 pages number their entries. Chart, now-playing, tag and search results have no rank. |
| `tagline` | The one-line quote is a Top 250 feature; subject pages do not carry it. |
| `location` (comments) | Douban only shows a poster's IP region on **recent** comments; historic ones predate the feature. |
| `watchStatus` (book/music comments) | Only film and TV comments carry a 看过/在看 badge; book and album comments do not render one. |
| `awards`, `cast` | Present when `includeAwards` / `includeCast` are on (default) **and** the title actually has them - documentaries and shorts often have no awards page. |

**Music has no keyword search.** Douban's music suggest endpoint answers 200 with an empty array for every query tried, and the old HTML search page is retired site-wide (it returns an 11,502-byte shell with an empty result list on 10/10 fresh residential sessions across five countries, 2026-07-22). Movie and book search therefore run against Douban's live JSON discovery endpoints instead; in Music mode use Top 250, a tag, or album URLs, and the run says so in its status message rather than silently returning nothing.

There is also deliberately **no comment-sort option**. Douban's newest-first ordering (`sort=time`) is login-gated - measured on 5 fresh residential sessions on 2026-07-22 it returned 403 five times out of five, while the most-useful ordering returned 20 comments on 3 of the same 5. A switch that always fails is worse than no switch, so comments always come back in Douban's usefulness order.

Two fields are deliberately **not shipped** rather than shipped empty: Douban stops rendering the 常用标签 tag cloud and a person's filmography to anonymous callers (verified against full 117 KB / 101 KB / 25 KB page dumps on 2026-07-22), so no always-blank column is created. Use a movie record's `cast` array, or People mode with a movie URL, to get filmography-style links.

***

### How it works

Douban's subject pages do **not** serve a CAPTCHA. They redirect to `sec.douban.com` which returns a small **SHA-512 proof-of-work** challenge: find a nonce whose `sha512(challenge + nonce)` begins with four zeros. That is roughly **90 ms of CPU in Node** - no browser, no solver service, no cost.

The actor solves it, posts the answer back, and the resulting cookie unlocks **every** subsequent request on that session. Because Douban rate-limits per IP, sessions are pooled: each one carries its own cookie jar on its own residential exit, requests round-robin across the pool, and only the individual session that gets throttled is replaced.

Practical consequences for you:

- **No browser** - so runs are fast and cheap, and no browser binary can break the build.
- **Transient blocks never fail a run.** A throttled run ends **Succeeded** with a status message telling you to re-run, and pay-per-event means you are charged $0 for records you did not receive.
- **It cannot time out.** The actor reads its own run deadline, stops starting new work before it, emits everything already collected, and exits Succeeded - so no input size or slow response can produce a TIMED-OUT run.

***

### Use with AI assistants (MCP)

This actor is available through the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp), so assistants like Claude can call it directly:

> "Get the Douban Top 250 movies with their ratings and IMDb IDs."

### Agent-ready: autonomous payments (x402 & Skyfire)

This actor is **agent-ready** — AI agents can discover it, run it, and **pay for it autonomously**, with no Apify account and no human in the loop. It uses [pay-per-event](https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/publishing/monetize/pay-per-event) pricing and [limited permissions](https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/development/permissions), so it qualifies for Apify's agentic-payment standards:

- **[x402](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/x402)** — an open, HTTP-native payment protocol. Agents pay per run in USDC on the Base network directly through the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp) — no account, no API key.
- **[Skyfire](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/skyfire)** — agent-to-service payments for fully autonomous AI-agent workflows.

Building an AI agent, MCP tool, or autonomous data pipeline? This scraper is ready to plug in and pay as it goes.

***

### Pricing

Pay-per-event - you pay for records delivered, never for start-up, pagination or a blocked attempt.

| Event | Price |
|---|---|
| Movie/TV full record | $0.006 |
| Movie/TV listing (details off) | $0.003 |
| Book full record | $0.006 |
| Book listing (details off) | $0.003 |
| Music album full record | $0.005 |
| Music album listing (details off) | $0.003 |
| Person profile | $0.005 |
| Long review | $0.002 |
| Short comment | $0.001 |

***

### Legal

Scrapes publicly available pages only - no login, no paywall, no personal data behind authentication. You are responsible for how you use the output, including Douban's terms and any applicable copyright or data-protection law. Review text and user names are user-generated content owned by their authors.

# Actor input Schema

## `mode` (type: `string`):

Each mode emits exactly ONE record type. Movies covers films and TV series. Comments and Reviews take a movie/book/music subject and return its short comments or long reviews. People returns person profiles - pass a person URL, or a movie URL to get that title's whole cast.

## `collection` (type: `string`):

Scrape a whole Douban chart without needing any URLs. Top 250 works for movies, books and music. Chart and Now playing are movies only. Tag browses a category tag (set the Tag field below).

## `searchQueries` (type: `array`):

Douban search keywords - Chinese or English, e.g. 科幻, 三体, Nolan. Works for Movies & TV and for Books. Douban exposes no keyword search for Music, so in Music mode use Top 250, a tag, or album URLs instead.

## `startUrls` (type: `array`):

Direct Douban URLs - movie/book/music subject pages (https://movie.douban.com/subject/1292052/) or person pages (https://www.douban.com/personage/27260288/). In Comments/Reviews mode these are the subjects to pull from; in People mode a subject URL returns that title's full cast.

## `tag` (type: `string`):

Only used when Collection = Browse by tag. e.g. 科幻, 小说, 悬疑.

## `city` (type: `string`):

Only used when Collection = Now playing in cinemas. Douban city slug, e.g. beijing, shanghai, guangzhou, chengdu.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Stop after this many records. Set 0 for no cap - the run then stops only on its own wall-clock budget and always exits Succeeded with whatever it collected.

## `includeDetails` (type: `boolean`):

ON (default) opens each subject page for the rich fields: full rating distribution, genres, countries, languages, release dates, runtime, IMDb ID, synopsis, alternate titles and recommendations. OFF is faster and cheaper but returns listing-level fields only.

## `includeCast` (type: `boolean`):

Adds the complete cast/crew list with each person's role, Douban person ID and best-known titles - typically 60+ people versus the 9 shown on the subject page. Costs one extra request per title.

## `includeAwards` (type: `boolean`):

Adds every awards ceremony the title appeared in, with each category, whether it won or was only nominated, and the people nominated. Costs one extra request per title.

## `maxPerSubject` (type: `integer`):

Only used in Comments and Reviews mode - caps how many are pulled from each subject before moving to the next one.

## `minRating` (type: `integer`):

Only keep records rated at or above this (Douban's scale is 0-10). Leave empty for no filter. Applied inside the crawl, so it never starves the item cap.

## `detailConcurrency` (type: `integer`):

How many detail pages to fetch in parallel. Each parallel request leaves from its own residential IP, so raising this is safe - but Douban rate-limits per IP, so 4 is a good balance.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Residential proxy is strongly recommended - Douban throttles per IP and the actor rotates a pool of sessions to stay ahead of it.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "mode": "movies",
  "collection": "top250",
  "searchQueries": [
    "科幻"
  ],
  "startUrls": [],
  "tag": "",
  "city": "beijing",
  "maxItems": 50,
  "includeDetails": true,
  "includeCast": true,
  "includeAwards": true,
  "maxPerSubject": 100,
  "detailConcurrency": 4,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

All scraped Douban records (ratings with full star distribution, cast, awards, IMDb IDs, comments, reviews and people) as JSON items in the default dataset.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "mode": "movies",
    "collection": "top250",
    "searchQueries": [
        "科幻"
    ],
    "city": "beijing",
    "maxItems": 50,
    "includeDetails": true,
    "includeCast": true,
    "includeAwards": true,
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true
    }
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("scrapesage/douban-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "mode": "movies",
    "collection": "top250",
    "searchQueries": ["科幻"],
    "city": "beijing",
    "maxItems": 50,
    "includeDetails": True,
    "includeCast": True,
    "includeAwards": True,
    "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": True },
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("scrapesage/douban-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print("💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/" + run["defaultDatasetId"])
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "mode": "movies",
  "collection": "top250",
  "searchQueries": [
    "科幻"
  ],
  "city": "beijing",
  "maxItems": 50,
  "includeDetails": true,
  "includeCast": true,
  "includeAwards": true,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}' |
apify call scrapesage/douban-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=scrapesage/douban-scraper",
                "--header",
                "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_TOKEN>"
            ]
        }
    }
}

```

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/n9ML3u6InuWYpje3Q/builds/1yYQAAdDzHQYFBUii/openapi.json