WeChat Official Account Scraper - Articles & Content Search

Search WeChat Official Account (公众号) articles by keyword and get the full article back - title, complete text, cover image, publish date, and the account's own name and wxid - without a WeChat login, an API key, or a browser. Try it free on the Apify Store or paste your own article links straight in.

What does WeChat Official Account Scraper do?

WeChat itself requires a login for everything, but its Official Account ecosystem - the platform China's brands, media outlets, and independent writers publish on - has one open door: Sogou's own index of that content. This Actor searches it by keyword and follows every result through to the article's real page for the full text.

For each article you get:

• The full article title and body text (not a truncated snippet)
• The publishing account's display name, wxid, and internal biz ID
• The cover image and an exact publish timestamp
• The canonical mp.weixin.qq.com article URL

No account, no API key, no browser fingerprinting to maintain - just keywords in, structured articles out. Run it once, on a schedule, or wire it into your own pipeline through the Apify API or MCP.

Why use this WeChat scraper?

WeChat Official Accounts are where Chinese brands, state media, and industry writers actually publish long-form content - press coverage, product launches, KOL commentary, policy explainers. If your work touches China market research, brand monitoring, or competitive intelligence, this is a source you cannot get from Google.

• China market research - track how a brand, product, or policy topic is being covered across the Official Account ecosystem.
• KOL and media monitoring - see who is writing about a topic, how often, and what they are saying, without a WeChat account of your own.
• Content and SEO teams - source raw Chinese-language material for translation, trend spotting, or LLM training/RAG data.
• Competitive intelligence - pull a competitor's press mentions and sponsored placements across the accounts that cover their category.

How to use WeChat Official Account Scraper

1. Click Try for free on the Actor page.
2. Enter one or more search keywords (Chinese or English) under Search queries - or paste article links you already have under Direct article URLs.
3. Set Maximum articles per query (WeChat's public search index serves at most 100 results per query).
4. Click Start and download your results as JSON, CSV, Excel, or query them through the API.

The default input runs out of the box - no configuration required for a first test.

Input

Field	Type	Description
searchQueries	array of strings	Keywords, brands, or topics to search across Official Account articles.
articleUrls	array of URLs	mp.weixin.qq.com links you already have - scraped directly, skipping search.
maxArticlesPerQuery	integer	Caps articles returned per query. Default 20, maximum 100.
fetchFullContent	boolean	Follow through to each article's own page for the full text, cover image, and account IDs. Turn off for a faster, cheaper search-snippet-only run. Default true.

See the Input tab for the live form.

Output

Every row is one article. Example with fetchFullContent on:

{
  "query": "人工智能",
  "title": "前所未有的人工智能失控事件：更多内幕曝光",
  "accountName": "参考消息",
  "accountWxid": "gh_2837b93c1976",
  "accountBiz": "MjM5MzA0MTg2MA==",
  "summary": "据路透社9月11日报道，研究人员称，在对...",
  "content": "据路透社9月11日报道，研究人员称，在对“抱抱脸”公司作出黑客攻击的两个月前...",
  "coverImageUrl": "https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/.../0?wx_fmt=jpeg",
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-12T13:00:00Z",
  "url": "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?...",
  "fullContentFetched": true,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-12T19:50:45Z"
}

Download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS from the Apify Console, or read it through the Dataset API.

Output fields

Field	Description
query	The search keyword that found this article, or null for a direct URL.
title	Article headline.
accountName	The Official Account's display name.
accountWxid	The account's WeChat ID (only from a full-content fetch).
accountBiz	The account's internal biz ID (only from a full-content fetch).
summary	The search-result digest Sogou serves for this article.
content	Full article text, null when fetchFullContent is off.
coverImageUrl	The article's cover/share image.
publishedAt	ISO 8601 publish timestamp.
url	The canonical mp.weixin.qq.com article URL.
fullContentFetched	Whether this row's full text was actually fetched.
scrapedAt	When this Actor collected the row.

Pricing

Pay only for what you receive - no subscription, no start fee.

• Article found - a search-result row (title, digest, account, link). For buyers who only need a monitoring feed.
• Article scraped - a full-content row (everything above, including the complete article text). This is the default.

See the Pricing tab for the current per-tier rate table - pricing improves automatically as your Apify plan tier goes up, with no code changes needed.

Tips for faster, cheaper runs

• Turn Fetch full article text off if you only need headlines and digests for a monitoring dashboard - it skips the second request per article entirely.
• Narrower keywords return more relevant results per page than broad ones, so you spend fewer of your maxArticlesPerQuery slots on off-topic hits.
• Already have article links from another tool? Paste them into Direct article URLs and skip search altogether.

Limits and caveats

Read this before assuming a result is missing due to a bug:

• Read counts and like counts are not available. WeChat fills those in with an authenticated AJAX call from inside the WeChat app itself - there is no public equivalent, so this Actor does not fabricate a fake 0 for them; it leaves them out entirely.
• Sogou's public search index caps at 100 results (10 pages) per keyword. This is WeChat's own limit on the anonymous search surface, not something this Actor can page past. Split a broad topic into several narrower keywords to cover more ground.
• Official Account bio/account search is not supported. Sogou's account-lookup endpoint is a stricter, separate surface that soft-blocks even well-known account names; this Actor only searches articles, which is the open and reliable surface.

Is it legal to scrape WeChat Official Account articles?

Scraping publicly accessible pages that do not require a login is generally permitted, but you are responsible for how you use the data. Do not scrape personal data or use this Actor to violate WeChat's Terms of Service. Read the Apify legal analysis of web scraping for more information.

FAQ

Do I need a WeChat account or API key?

No. This Actor uses WeChat Official Account content's open, publicly indexed surface. No login, cookies, or credentials are ever requested.

Can I search in English?

Yes, but results will be sparse - Official Account content is overwhelmingly Chinese-language. For best coverage, search the Chinese term (a brand's Chinese name, a translated topic, etc.).

Why did a query return fewer than my "Maximum articles" setting?

WeChat's public search index caps at 100 results per keyword, and some queries genuinely have fewer than that many matching articles. The run's summary output reports exactly why each query stopped.

Can I monitor a topic on a schedule?

Yes - use Apify's Scheduler to run this Actor daily or weekly against a saved list of keywords.

Example tasks

Ready-to-run configurations for common searches:

• WeChat AI News Monitor - AI and tech coverage across Official Accounts.
• WeChat New Energy Vehicle Coverage - EV and auto-industry articles.
• WeChat Health and Wellness Content - health, fitness, and wellness content.
• WeChat Livestream E-Commerce News - livestream-selling and social-commerce coverage.
• WeChat Article Full-Text Extractor - paste your own article links and skip search entirely.

Use this Actor with AI agents via MCP

This Actor is available over the Apify MCP Server, so Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, and other MCP-compatible agents can call it directly as a tool - just add webdata_labs/wechat-official-account-scraper to your agent's Apify MCP tool list and ask it to search a topic.

Use this Actor in n8n

Add the Apify node to your n8n workflow, select this Actor, and map your search keywords from an upstream node - no code required.

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Changelog

2026-09-12 - Initial release: keyword article search, direct article URL mode, and optional full-content fetch.

Support

Found a bug or have a feature request? Open an issue on the Issues tab of this Actor, or reach out for a custom China-data solution.