Weibo Hot Search Scraper: 微博热搜 Trending Topics & Posts

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What does Weibo Hot Search Scraper do?

It gets the live Weibo hot search list (微博热搜) as clean rows: rank, keyword, heat and label for every trending topic on Sina Weibo (新浪微博). No login, no cookies.

Three things make it more than a list:

• What changed since your last run: each topic is marked new or not, with its previous rank, rank change (+5 = moved up 5 places) and heat change. Schedule it every hour and you have a trend tracker.
• Why it is trending: optionally get the top posts behind each hot topic: text, author, followers, likes, reposts, comments, images and video.
• Clean data: paid placements in the list are skipped and never charged.

Built for China market researchers, brand and PR teams, journalists, traders watching Chinese sentiment, and AI agents that need to know what China is talking about right now.

What data do I get?

Hot search list (one row per topic, about 50 per run):

Field	Meaning
rank	Position in the list. 0 = pinned by Weibo above the list
keyword	The trending topic, as shown on Weibo
heat	Weibo's heat number for the topic
label	hot (热), new (新), boiling (沸), exploding (爆), or pinned
isNew	true if the topic was not in the list at your previous run
previousRank, rankChange	Rank at your previous run, and how many places it moved up (negative = down)
heatChange	Heat now minus heat at your previous run
searchUrl	Link to the topic on Weibo

Top posts per topic (optional): post link, text, author, author followers, verified status, posted time, likes, reposts, comments, topics, images, video link and plays, sponsored flag.

Example

Real run, 21 October 2026 (second run, about 30 seconds after the first):

{
  "type": "hotSearch",
  "rank": 3,
  "keyword": "APEC在湾区",
  "heat": 1012641,
  "label": "new",
  "isNew": false,
  "previousRank": 3,
  "rankChange": 0,
  "heatChange": -54444,
  "searchUrl": "https://s.weibo.com/weibo?q=%23APEC%E5%9C%A8%E6%B9%BE%E5%8C%BA%23"
}

How to use it

1. Click Start. The default run saves the whole hot search list (about 50 topics) in a few seconds.
2. To track changes, keep Show what changed since my last run on and schedule the scraper (Schedules in Apify Console, for example every hour). The first run has nothing to compare with; every next run fills isNew, rankChange and heatChange.
3. To see why topics trend, turn on Also get the top posts of each topic and choose how many topics and posts.

Input example (list + top 5 posts for the top 10 topics):

{ "includeTopPosts": true, "topicsWithPosts": 10, "postsPerTopic": 5 }

How much does it cost?

You pay only for rows saved: one row per topic, one row per post. A full hot search list is about 50 rows. Paid placements, blocked requests and empty results are never charged.

Use it from AI agents and code

Run it from the Apify API, Python or JavaScript, Make, Zapier, n8n, or any MCP client (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor) through Apify's MCP server: https://mcp.apify.com?tools=serenido/weibo-hot-search.

FAQ

Do I need a Weibo account? No. The scraper only reads what Weibo shows to logged-out visitors.

Where is the history of changes stored? In a key-value store named weibo-hot-search-history in your own Apify account. Delete it to start fresh.

How many posts per topic? Up to 20. Weibo shows logged-out visitors a limited number of top posts, and some topics have fewer (in a test run, 5 topics with 10 asked each gave 35 posts).

Is the list in Chinese? Yes, topics are shown exactly as on Weibo (Chinese).

Need more than the hot search? Our Weibo Scraper does keyword search, comments, creator profiles and the popular feed.