WeChat Official Account Scraper — Articles, Accounts, Comments & Search 🚀

🎉 The complete WeChat Official Account (微信公众号) toolkit — 16 operations, one actor, zero login

Built for China-market researchers, brand monitors, and content & competitive intelligence teams

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📋 Overview

Everything you need to turn WeChat Official Accounts into clean, structured data — articles, account profiles, comments, engagement metrics, and five kinds of search, all in a single actor with no WeChat login, cookies, or API key.

Why thousands of professionals choose us:

• ✅ 16 operations in one: account search, profiles, registration info, today's & historical articles, article detail, metrics, comments, replies, link conversion, article/hot/mini-program/index/suggestion search — no need to stitch together five tools.
• ⚡ wxid-native input: paste the short id you already know (rmrbwx), a ghid (gh_363b924965e9), or an account URL — the actor resolves the rest automatically.
• 🎯 Engagement that others can't reach: real read, like, looking (在看), share, and collect counts plus full comment threads and nested replies.
• 💰 Pay only for results: per-row pricing, generous FREE tier, and empty results are never billed.
• 💎 Trend intelligence built in: WeChat Index keyword-trend timeseries and hot/viral article rankings to spot rising topics before competitors.
• ✨ NEW: rebuilt on WeChat's relaunched data catalog (June 2026) for improved coverage and stability across every operation.

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✨ Features

• 🔍 Article Search: find WeChat Official Account articles by keyword, with category filters (latest, hot, followed).
• 🔥 Hot Article Search: surface viral and trending articles within any date range, filtered by content type.
• 👤 Account Search & Profiles: discover accounts by keyword and pull profile, avatar, type, and verification.
• 🏢 Registration & Principal Info: company name, owner, verification status, registration date, authorized agents.
• 📚 Today's & Historical Articles: full publication history for any account with stable cursor pagination.
• 📄 Article Detail & Content: title, cover, author, publish time, full content, copyright, and source URL.
• 📊 Engagement Metrics: read, like, looking (在看), share, collect, and comment counts per article.
• 💬 Comments & Nested Replies: top-level comments and reply threads with author, location, likes, and timestamps.
• 📈 WeChat Index & Suggestions: keyword-trend timeseries and search autocomplete for topic research.
• 📦 Mini Program Search: discover WeChat mini programs by keyword with app IDs.

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🎬 Quick Start

Pick an operation, fill in the one field it needs, and run. One operation per run, one clean dataset out. No account, cookies, or API key required.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/sian.agency~wechat-official-account-data-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"operation": "articleSearch", "keyword": "人工智能", "maxPages": 3}'

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🚀 Getting Started (3 Simple Steps)

Step 1: Choose your operation

Pick from 16 operations — search articles or accounts, pull article detail/metrics/comments, or get full account history.

Step 2: Provide the input

Add the field that operation needs — a keyword, an account (wxid / ghid / URL), or an articleUrl.

Step 3: Run and export

Run the actor and export your structured dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

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

• Clean, deduplicated rows with curated camelCase fields
• Engagement, content, and account intelligence in one place
• A ready-to-use dataset for analysis, dashboards, or pipelines

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📥 Input Configuration

Field	Type	Required	Description
operation	string	Yes	One of 16 operations (see list below)
keyword	string	For search ops	Term to search (Chinese gives richest results)
account	string	For account ops	wxid (rmrbwx), ghid (gh_...), or account URL
articleUrl	string	For article ops	A full mp.weixin.qq.com article link
contentId	string	For comment replies	The commentId of a top-level comment
link	string	For link conversion	A WeChat short/intermediate article link
subSearchType	string	No	Article Search category (ALL / LATEST / HOT / FOLLOWED)
startDay / endDay	string	For hot search	Date range in yyyy-MM-dd
publishType	string	No	Hot Search content-type filter
businessType	string	No	Search Suggestions scope
maxPages	integer	No	Pages to fetch for paginated ops (default 3, max 50)

Operations: articleSearch · hotArticleSearch · accountSearch · miniProgramSearch · searchSuggestions · wechatIndexSearch · articleDetail · articleMetrics · articleComments · articleCommentReplies · convertArticleLink · accountBasicInfo · accountPrincipalInfo · accountOriginalCount · accountTodayArticles · accountHistoryArticles

Example (account history by wxid):

{
  "operation": "accountHistoryArticles",
  "account": "rmrbwx",
  "maxPages": 5
}

Example (article engagement metrics):

{
  "operation": "articleMetrics",
  "articleUrl": "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XXXXXXXXXXXX"
}

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📤 Output

Results are saved to the Apify dataset with 40+ fields (the exact set depends on the operation), including:

Field	Type	Description
title	string	Article title
content	string	Full article content (detail op)
accountName	string	Official account display name
wxid / ghid	string	Account short id / gh_ id
articleUrl	string	Canonical article link
cover	string	Cover image URL
postDate / publishDate	string	ISO publish timestamp
readNum / likeNum	number	Read and like counts
shareNum / collectNum	number	Share and collect counts
commentContent	string	Comment text (comments op)
companyName / verifyStatus	string	Registration intelligence (principal op)
latestIndex / trend	number / array	WeChat Index trend signal (index op)

Example (article search row):

{
  "_operation": "articleSearch",
  "status": "success",
  "title": "事关数据赋能人工智能发展，国家层面首次系统部署",
  "accountName": "中国发展改革",
  "articleUrl": "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XXXXXXXXXXXX",
  "cover": "https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/...",
  "publishDate": "2026-06-09T01:57:54.000Z",
  "desc": "数据从供给到价值释放的良性循环基本形成…",
  "docID": "16009154363152756282"
}

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💼 Use Cases & Examples

1. Brand & Competitor Content Monitoring

Marketing teams tracking how a brand or campaign appears across WeChat Official Accounts.

Input: A keyword via articleSearch, scheduled daily. Output: Article titles, accounts, publish dates, and engagement. Use: Benchmark share of voice and spot competitor campaigns early.

2. Account Intelligence & Partner Due Diligence

Business development teams vetting accounts, KOLs, or partners before a deal.

Input: A wxid or ghid via accountPrincipalInfo + accountHistoryArticles. Output: Company name, owner, verification status, registration date, and full article history. Use: Confirm an account's operating entity and publishing track record.

3. Article Engagement & Audience Research

Content strategists measuring what resonates on WeChat.

Input: An article URL via articleMetrics and articleComments. Output: Read, like, looking, share, collect counts plus comment threads. Use: Reverse-engineer high-performing content and audience sentiment.

4. Trend & Keyword Discovery

Market researchers mapping rising topics in China.

Input: A keyword via wechatIndexSearch, hotArticleSearch, and searchSuggestions. Output: Keyword-trend timeseries, viral article rankings, and autocomplete signals. Use: Identify emerging narratives before they peak.

5. Content Pipeline & Dataset Building

Data scientists assembling Chinese-language corpora.

Input: Keywords or accounts via articleSearch and articleDetail. Output: Article URLs, covers, and full content at scale. Use: Feed downstream NLP, classification, or media pipelines.

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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/wechat-official-account-data-scraper').call({
  operation: 'articleSearch',
  keyword: '人工智能',
  maxPages: 3
});

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/wechat-official-account-data-scraper').call(
    run_input={'operation': 'accountHistoryArticles', 'account': 'rmrbwx', 'maxPages': 5}
)

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

cURL

curl -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/sian.agency~wechat-official-account-data-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"operation": "articleMetrics", "articleUrl": "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XXXXXXXXXXXX"}'

Automation Workflows (N8N / Zapier / Make)

1. Trigger: Schedule or webhook
2. HTTP Request: Call the actor API with your operation + input
3. Process: Handle the JSON dataset
4. Action: Save to a sheet, notify a channel, or feed a dashboard

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📊 Performance & Pricing

FREE Tier (Try It Now)

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

PAID Tier (Production Ready)

• Higher volumes per run across every operation
• Faster, uninterrupted processing
• Pay-per-result: you're only charged for successful rows — empty results are never billed

💰 Transparent per-row pricing — bulk search and listing operations are priced lower than single-row premium lookups, so you pay for the depth you actually use.

🔗 View current pricing

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I need a WeChat account, login, or API key? A: No. The actor handles data access for you — just provide a keyword, account, or article URL.

Q: Can I use the short wxid (公众号 id) I already know? A: Yes. Account operations accept a wxid (e.g. rmrbwx), a ghid (gh_363b924965e9), or an account URL — the actor resolves the rest.

Q: Does it work with private content? A: No — only publicly accessible WeChat Official Account content is supported.

Q: Why are some articles' comments empty? A: WeChat restricts comment visibility on many articles. When comments aren't public the actor returns an empty result (and never charges you for it).

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

Q: What is gongzhonghao (公众号)? A: It's the Chinese term for a WeChat Official Account — the publishing accounts this actor extracts data from.

Q: Is this legal? A: Yes — we only extract publicly available data. See the legal section below.

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🐛 Troubleshooting

An account operation says it couldn't resolve a ghid

• Double-check the wxid spelling, or pass the gh_... ghid or an account URL directly.

An article operation returns an error row

• Confirm the articleUrl is a full mp.weixin.qq.com link and the article is still published.

A search returns fewer rows than expected

• WeChat web search recycles results across deep pages; the actor de-duplicates and stops early. Lower maxPages or refine the keyword.

Comment replies return no rows

• The comment may have no replies, or the contentId is from a different article. Use a commentId from the same article's articleComments run.

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⚠️ Trademark Disclaimer

This is an independent, third-party tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or in any way officially connected to Tencent Holdings Ltd., WeChat, Weixin (微信), or the WeChat Official Accounts platform (微信公众平台). "WeChat", "Weixin", "微信", and "公众号" and all related names, marks, and logos are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here for descriptive and identification purposes only.

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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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