Weibo Scraper

Pull Weibo posts, profiles, comments, videos, and the hot-search board from one Actor. Give it a username, a post URL, or a keyword, and it returns structured rows — post text, repost/comment/like counts, follower counts, bios, and trending topics from Sina Weibo. The hot-search board is the one dataset here with no equivalent anywhere else in this domain: a live read of Weibo's current ranked board, roughly fifty entries, refreshed on every run.

Modes

Set scraperType to pick what this run collects. Each mode takes its own identifier below the picker.

Mode	Returns	Needs	Or use the focused Actor
User info	One profile's public data	profile	Weibo Profile Scraper
User posts	Every public post on a profile's timeline	profile	Weibo Profile Posts Scraper
User fans	A profile's followers	profile	Weibo Followers Scraper
User following	The accounts a profile follows	profile	Weibo Followers Scraper
Post detail	One post's full record	post	Weibo Post Scraper
Post comments	A post's comments	post	Weibo Comments Scraper
Post sub-comments	Replies to one specific comment	comment	Weibo Comments Scraper
Post likes	A post's public liker list	post	Weibo Post Engagement Scraper
Post reposts	A post's public repost list	post	Weibo Post Engagement Scraper
Search posts	Posts matching a keyword	query	Weibo Search Scraper
Search users	Accounts matching a keyword	query	Weibo User Search Scraper
Search topics	Topics matching a keyword	query	Weibo Topic Search Scraper
Search videos	Videos matching a keyword	query	Weibo Video Search Scraper
Hot search	The current hot-search ranking	none	Weibo Hot Search Scraper
User videos	Videos posted by a profile	profile	Weibo Video Scraper
Video detail	One video's full record	post	Weibo Video Scraper

scraperType is the only field this Actor marks required, and every other identifier is checked and reported plainly the moment its mode runs. Leave profile blank on User Info, User Posts, User Fans, User Following, or User Videos and the run stops with Provide a Weibo profile ID or URL. Leave post blank on Post Detail, Post Comments, Post Likes, Post Reposts, or Video Detail and it stops with Provide a Weibo post ID or URL. Post Sub-Comments needs comment specifically — a comment ID, not the post it's on — and stops with Provide a Weibo comment ID to fetch replies for if that's missing. Every search mode needs query, and stops with Provide a search query. Hot Search is the one mode that needs nothing at all.

One Actor or twelve?

The sixteen modes above are also sold as twelve focused Actors (a few pair two closely related modes, like User Fans and User Following, behind one Actor). Reach for a focused Actor once you know exactly which dataset you need at scale — one profile's follower list, one post's comments. Reach for this Actor when a research project spans several of those — a post plus its likers plus its reposts plus the hot-search board it's trending on, say — because that's one Actor integration instead of switching between several.

Input

{
  "scraperType": "hotSearch"
}

profile and post each accept either a bare numeric ID or a Weibo URL (weibo.com/u/<id>, m.weibo.cn/detail|status/<id>) — one field works the same way across every mode that needs it, even though the modes send it upstream under different names (status_id for likes and reposts, mid for video detail). maxItems (default 100, 0 for no limit) caps every paginated mode. User Fans, User Following, User Search, and Topic Search each return a single page per run and have no maxItems field at all — see below.

Output

Field names vary by mode. Across the sixteen, the ones you'll see most are:

Field	Contents
id, idstr, mid, mblogid	Post identifiers
text, text_raw, created_at	Post content and timestamp
reposts_count, comments_count, attitudes_count	Post engagement
screen_name, followers_count, verified	Profile data
content, floor_number, like_counts	Comment data
category, type, data	Liker/repost rows (Post Likes, Post Reposts)
rank, keyword, heat, tag	Hot-search rows

{
  "id": 5023918475601234,
  "idstr": "5023918475601234",
  "mid": "5023918475601234",
  "text_raw": "Example post text",
  "created_at": "2026-08-01T10:00:00Z",
  "attitudes_count": 342,
  "comments_count": 51,
  "reposts_count": 12
}

Questions

What happens if I forget the identifier for my mode? Every mode that needs one checks for it before making a request and stops with a plain message naming what's missing — there's no mode here that silently runs and returns nothing. The only mode that needs no identifier at all is Hot Search.

User Fans returned an error on one account and worked fine on another. Why? Large official or organizational accounts can refuse this lookup outright rather than returning an empty list — a national news outlet's account failed on repeated attempts during testing, while an ordinary individual account succeeded on the first try. This looks like a genuine account-type restriction on Weibo's side, not a rate limit, and the same applies to User Following.

Post Likes returned a row that isn't a real liker. What is it? The first row Weibo returns for a post's liker list is a summary card — counts broken down by reaction type — not an individual liker. Every row after it is a real liker. Filter on the type field if you need liker rows only.

Post Sub-Comments needs a comment ID, not the post ID. Where do I get one? From a Post Comments run first — every comment row carries its own id. Pass that into comment on Post Sub-Comments to pull replies to that specific comment; the post's own ID won't work here.

Why doesn't maxItems do anything on Search Users or Search Topics? Those two modes return one page and stop — there's no maxItems field on either, and they don't check Weibo for a next page even when one might exist. Search Posts and Search Videos both paginate fully and expose maxItems.

How current is the hot-search board? Each run is a live, unparameterized read of Weibo's own hot-search summary at request time — there's no cached or stored snapshot behind it. The board runs to roughly fifty ranked entries; pinned entries in particular sometimes carry no numeric heat value at all, which is Weibo's own board data, not a missing field on this end.

Is a Weibo login or session cookie ever required? No. Every mode goes through this Actor's own backend with a project API key; no Weibo cookie or session token is sent for any of the sixteen modes.

Related Actors

Actor	Purpose
Weibo Profile Scraper	One profile's public data
Weibo Post Scraper	One post's full record
Weibo Comments Scraper	A post's comments and replies
Weibo Hot Search Scraper	The hot-search board on its own
Weibo Search Scraper	Keyword search across posts