Toutiao Scraper — Chinese News, Articles & Content Data 📰

🎉 The only working Toutiao (今日头条) dataset on Apify — turn any keyword into a ranked feed of Chinese news articles with real engagement metrics

Built for media-monitoring teams, content-intelligence researchers, and AI/LLM data pipelines tracking China's largest news aggregator

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📋 Overview

Toutiao (今日头条, "Jinri Toutiao") is China's largest ByteDance-owned news and content aggregator — syndicating thousands of mainland publishers to hundreds of millions of readers. This actor turns that firehose into clean, structured JSON: keyword-search articles, pull full article content, and look up creator profiles, all without an account or a single line of scraping code.

Why teams choose this actor:

• ✅ Only working Toutiao scraper on the market: a genuinely greenfield dataset — no competitor covers Toutiao today.
• ⚡ Keyword → ranked article feed in seconds: every result carries reads, comments, likes, favorites, author and a fresh publish timestamp.
• 🎯 Full article content extraction: complete HTML bodies, image galleries, and creator IDs for any Toutiao article.
• 💰 Pay only for successful results: transparent per-result pricing and a generous FREE tier — no credit card to start.
• 💎 Built-in discovery → detail chain: search surfaces native article IDs, so you can jump straight to full-content extraction.
• ✨ Bulk-ready: batch dozens of keywords, article IDs, or profile URLs into one run.

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✨ Features

• 🔍 Keyword Article Search: find Toutiao news articles by keyword with engagement metrics and same-day freshness.
• 📰 Full Article Content: extract the complete HTML body, images, author ID, and metadata for any article.
• 👤 Creator Profiles: pull a creator's name, avatar, follower and publish counts, and external links.
• 🔗 User-ID Resolver: turn a Toutiao profile URL into a numeric creator ID for downstream lookups.
• 🧮 Bulk Processing: multiple keywords / article IDs / user IDs / profile URLs per run.
• 🌐 Clean, Flat JSON: curated camelCase fields plus the raw upstream data, ready for CSV, Excel, or a database.
• 🆓 FREE Tier: try every operation with full-quality output before you scale up.
• 🧾 HTML Run Report: success/error counts, success rate, and inputs — saved every run.

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🎬 Quick Start

Pick an operation, provide a keyword (or article ID / user ID / profile URL), and run. Results land in the Apify dataset as flat rows you can export to JSON, CSV, or Excel. Start on the FREE tier, then scale to production.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/sian.agency~toutiao-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"operation": "searchArticles", "keyword": "人工智能"}'

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🚀 Getting Started (3 Simple Steps)

Step 1: Choose an operation

Select searchArticles, articleDetail, userProfile, or resolveUserId.

Step 2: Provide your input

Enter a keyword (search), an article ID or URL (article detail), a user ID (profile), or a profile URL (resolve). Use the bulk array fields to process many at once.

Step 3: Run and export

Launch the actor and download your structured results as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

That's it! In under a minute, you'll have:

• A ranked list of Chinese news articles with engagement metrics
• Full article content ready for translation or summarization
• Creator profiles and IDs for content-source mapping

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📥 Input Configuration

Field	Type	Required	Description
operation	string	Yes	searchArticles | articleDetail | userProfile | resolveUserId
keyword	string	For search	A single search keyword
keywords	array	Optional	Multiple keywords (bulk search)
articleId	string	For detail	A Toutiao article ID or full article URL
articleIds	array	Optional	Multiple article IDs / URLs (bulk)
userId	string	For profile	A Toutiao creator user ID
userIds	array	Optional	Multiple user IDs (bulk)
profileUrl	string	For resolve	A Toutiao creator profile URL
profileUrls	array	Optional	Multiple profile URLs (bulk)

Search example:

{ "operation": "searchArticles", "keyword": "新能源汽车" }

Bulk article detail:

{ "operation": "articleDetail", "articleIds": ["7664616922066993691", "7664435101836542491"] }

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📤 Output

Results are saved to the Apify dataset as flat rows with 35+ fields. Filter by _operation to split modes. Key fields:

Field	Type	Description
articleTitle	string	Article headline
articleUrl	string	Link to the article
authorName	string	Publisher / creator name
publishTime	string	Publish time
readCount	number	Reads (阅读量)
commentCount	number	Comments (评论量)
diggCount	number	Likes (点赞量)
favoriteCount	number	Favorites (收藏量)
groupId	string	Native article ID — feed to Article Detail
articleContentHtml	string	Full HTML article body
originImageUrls	array	Full-resolution article images
mediaUserId	string	Creator ID — feed to User Profile
userId / name	string	Creator ID and display name
followersCount	number	Creator follower count
resolvedUserId	string	ID resolved from a profile URL

Search result example:

{
  "_operation": "searchArticles",
  "status": "success",
  "searchKeyword": "汽车",
  "articleTitle": "单车6.5万 不到新车均价四成！上半年二手车比新车卖的还多",
  "articleUrl": "https://toutiao.com/group/7664616922066993691/",
  "articleType": "头条文章",
  "authorName": "中国汽车网",
  "publishTime": "2026-07-21 08:12:33",
  "readCount": 14,
  "commentCount": 0,
  "diggCount": 1,
  "favoriteCount": 0,
  "groupId": "7664616922066993691"
}

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💼 Use Cases & Examples

1. Chinese Media Monitoring

PR and comms teams tracking how Chinese media covers a brand or issue. Input: Brand or topic keywords. Output: Ranked articles with engagement and timestamps. Use: Daily narrative and sentiment monitoring across mainland publishers.

2. Content Intelligence & Trend Tracking

Analysts spotting breakout stories on China's largest content platform. Input: Category keywords run on a schedule. Output: Fresh articles with reads/likes/comments. Use: Identify viral topics before mainstream coverage.

3. LLM Training & RAG Corpora

AI teams building current Mandarin news datasets. Input: Keywords, then article IDs. Output: Full HTML article bodies with metadata. Use: Language-model training, fine-tuning, and retrieval-augmented generation.

4. ByteDance & Competitor Research

Researchers mapping who produces content in a category. Input: Article IDs and creator profile URLs. Output: Creator profiles, IDs, and follower counts. Use: Source mapping and competitive content analysis.

5. News Aggregation & Republishing Pipelines

Product teams feeding a news app, newsletter, or dashboard. Input: Batched keywords and article lookups. Output: Clean JSON rows. Use: Translation, summarization, and downstream automation.

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🔗 Integration Examples

JavaScript / Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('sian.agency/toutiao-scraper').call({
  operation: 'searchArticles',
  keyword: '人工智能'
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items[0]);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient('YOUR_TOKEN')

run = client.actor('sian.agency/toutiao-scraper').call(
    run_input={'operation': 'articleDetail', 'articleId': '7664616922066993691'}
)

for item in client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).iterate_items():
    print(item)

cURL

curl -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/sian.agency~toutiao-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"operation": "userProfile", "userId": "5500311915"}'

Automation Workflows (N8N / Zapier / Make)

1. Trigger: Schedule or webhook
2. HTTP Request: Call the actor API
3. Process: Handle the JSON results
4. Action: Save, translate, notify, or transform

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📊 Performance & Pricing

FREE Tier (Try It Now)

• Up to 25 rows per run — full feature access, same data quality
• No credit card required
• Perfect for testing and small projects

PAID Tier (Production Ready)

• Unlimited rows per run
• Bulk keywords, article IDs, and profile URLs
• Pay-per-result: only charged for successful results

💰 Transparent, best-value pricing for a dataset no one else offers.

🔗 View current pricing

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How many results can I get? A: FREE tier: up to 25 rows per run. PAID tier: unlimited.

Q: Does search return native Toutiao articles? A: Yes — results are typed Toutiao articles (头条文章) from Toutiao's syndicated publishers, with engagement metrics and fresh timestamps.

Q: Can I get the full text of an article? A: Yes — the Article Detail operation returns the complete HTML body, images, and creator ID.

Q: What output formats are available? A: JSON, CSV, and Excel — export directly from the Apify dataset.

Q: Do I need a Toutiao account or API key? A: No. Just choose an operation and run.

Q: Is this legal? A: The actor extracts only publicly available data. See the legal note below.

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🐛 Troubleshooting

"Data source temporarily unavailable — please retry"

• This is a transient upstream blip; the actor already retries automatically. Re-run if it persists.

Search returns directory/portal pages instead of news articles

• Some keywords surface official brand/portal pages. Try a more news-oriented or trending keyword for article-type results with engagement metrics.

Article Detail says "Article not found"

• The article may have been removed, or the ID may be wrong. Use a native groupId from a Search result.

Empty user profile fields

• Some creators keep sparse public profiles. Core fields (ID, name, links) are always returned when available.

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⚠️ Trademark Disclaimer

This is an independent scraping tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by ByteDance Ltd. or its subsidiaries, the operators of Toutiao (今日头条 / Jinri Toutiao). The Toutiao®, 今日头条®, and ByteDance® names and marks are the property of their respective owners and appear here under nominative fair use, solely to describe the public data this tool helps you collect.

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⚖️ Is it legal to scrape data?

Our actors are ethical and do not extract any private user data, such as email addresses, gender, or location. They only extract what the user has chosen to share publicly. We therefore believe that our actors, when used for ethical purposes by Apify users, are safe.

However, you should be aware that your results could contain personal data. Personal data is protected by the GDPR in the European Union and by other regulations around the world. You should not scrape personal data unless you have a legitimate reason to do so. If you're unsure whether your reason is legitimate, consult your lawyers.

You can also read Apify's blog post on the legality of web scraping.

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🤝 Support

Join our active support community

• For issues or questions, open an issue in the actor's Issues tab
• Check the SIÁN Agency Store for more automation tools
• 📧 apify@sian-agency.online

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