Toutiao Scraper - Scrape 今日头条 Articles, Videos & Comments

Scrape Toutiao (今日头条) and export article details, video details and comments to JSON, CSV or Excel. Paste any Toutiao article or video link and get its full detail - title, reads, plays, likes, comments, shares, favorites and author data - or collect every comment on it, all from one Actor. Each result is one clean, flat row.

No login, no cookies, no proxies and no China IP to configure - data is fetched through a fast, managed pipeline. Just pick an operation, paste your links and press Start.

Unofficial notice: This is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Toutiao, 今日头条 or ByteDance. "Toutiao" and "今日头条" are trademarks of their respective owners, used here only to describe what the Actor scrapes.

What is Toutiao?

Toutiao (今日头条, "Today's Headlines") is one of China's largest news and content platforms, run by ByteDance, with hundreds of millions of monthly users. It mixes news articles from official media, long-form posts from independent authors and short and long videos, all ranked by a recommendation feed. This scraper gives you programmatic access to Toutiao articles, videos and their comment sections so you can track coverage, measure engagement and analyze public reaction at scale without a Toutiao account.

Operations

Pick one Operation and paste links into Article / video URLs or IDs:

Operation	Input field	What you get
Article details	articleUrls	The full detail of each article: title, original source link, reads, impressions, likes, comments, shares, favorites and author data.
Video details	articleUrls	The full detail of each video: title, duration, plays, likes, comments, shares, favorites, categories and author data.
Comments on an article or video	articleUrls	Comments on each article or video, with likes, dislikes, commenter data and IP region.

articleUrls accept toutiao.com/article/<id>, toutiao.com/group/<id> and m.toutiao.com/video/<id> URLs, or bare numeric IDs - one per line.

What this Actor does not do: Toutiao keyword search, author profiles and an author's full article feed are not available, so the Actor works from the links you give it. Short m.toutiao.com/is/... share links cannot be resolved; open them in a browser and paste the full URL.

How to use it (step by step)

1. Choose an Operation.
2. Paste one or more Article / video URLs or IDs.
3. For comments, set Maximum comments per item (default 100, or 0 for all available).
4. Press Start. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or via the API.

Input

Field	Type	Description
operation	string	Required. article_detail, video_detail, or comments.
articleUrls	array	Article, group or video URLs, or bare IDs (all operations).
maxItems	integer	Max comments per article / video. 0 = all available. Default 100.

Output

Every row carries a record_type of article, video or comment. Article and video rows share one field set:

Field	Description
group_id, item_url, share_url	Item identity, canonical URL and mobile share link.
title, description, categories	Title, abstract (when present) and channel categories (videos).
source_url	The original publisher's URL (articles re-published from media sites).
read_count, play_count, impression_count	Reads, video plays and feed impressions.
like_count, comment_count, share_count, repin_count	Likes, comments, shares and favorites.
cover_url, duration_seconds	Thumbnail and video length.
create_time, is_original	Publish time (ISO-8601 UTC) and original-content flag.
author_id, author_media_id, author_name, author_description, author_avatar_url	Author data.
author_followers_count, author_verified, author_verified_reason	Author reach and verification.

Toutiao does not return a publish time for articles, so an article's create_time is its creation time, decoded from the article ID. Comment (comment) rows carry comment_id, content, like_count, reply_count, bury_count (dislikes), create_time, ip_location and the commenter's author_* fields.

Example video row:

{
  "record_type": "video",
  "operation": "video_detail",
  "input": "https://m.toutiao.com/video/7047393519773680165/",
  "group_id": "7047393519773680165",
  "item_url": "https://www.toutiao.com/video/7047393519773680165/",
  "title": "纪录片《云南》全集，5小时超清完整版，建议收藏观看",
  "categories": "news, video_culture",
  "duration_seconds": 18094,
  "create_time": "2022-01-01T23:00:00+00:00",
  "read_count": 594147,
  "play_count": 594147,
  "like_count": 3534,
  "comment_count": 184,
  "share_count": 3751,
  "repin_count": 15540,
  "author_name": "纪录片小角落",
  "author_followers_count": 118747
}

Common use cases

• Media monitoring - track how an article or video performs over time: reads, likes, shares and favorites.
• Public opinion research - collect the comment section on a news story, with commenter IP regions.
• Publisher and author analysis - see which media accounts publish a story, their follower counts and verification.
• Market and AI research - build datasets of Chinese news content and reader reactions.

Notes on reliability

• Cover and avatar URLs are served by Toutiao's CDN and are signed with an expiry; fetch them promptly.
• Read, like and comment counts reflect what Toutiao returns at scrape time.
• If an article or video is private, deleted or cannot be found, that input is skipped and the run continues.

FAQ

Do I need a Toutiao account, cookies or a proxy? No. Just paste your links and press Start.

What happens if I use Article details on a video link? You still get a row, but with fewer video fields. Use Video details for videos to get duration, categories and the full video stats.

Can I run several links at once? Yes - add multiple lines. Duplicate items and comments are removed automatically.

Can I try it for free? Yes. Users on the free Apify plan can fetch up to 10 results in total to try the Actor. Upgrade to a paid Apify plan to run it without that limit.

What export formats are supported? JSON, CSV, Excel, XML and HTML, plus the Apify API and integrations such as Google Sheets, Zapier, Make and webhooks.

Pricing

This Actor is pay per result: you are charged for each record it returns (article details, video details and comments), plus standard Apify platform usage. Different record types have different prices; see the Pricing tab for current rates. You are never charged for inputs that return nothing.

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