RedNote (Xiaohongshu) Consumer Insights Scraper

Turn RedNote/Xiaohongshu (小红书) keyword searches into a research-ready dataset and an instant engagement summary—without supplying a RedNote cookie, residential proxy, or third-party API account.

The Actor identifies the strongest posts and creators, compares content formats, calculates engagement totals and medians, and can selectively enrich the most valuable notes with comments. Use it for China-market research, brand monitoring, creator discovery, product-demand research, and content benchmarking.

Why this Actor

• No customer cookie: users do not maintain RedNote sessions or signing logic.
• Analysis-ready output: noisy tracking, debug, and redundant media fields are removed.
• Keyword insights: totals, medians, content mix, top notes, and top creators are computed without an LLM.
• Optional comments: enrich only the highest-engagement notes or a bounded set of returned notes.
• Predictable costs: every upstream page and every saved result has a documented event price.
• Hard safety limits: the Actor stops before another paid API call when the user or owner spending ceiling is reached.

Quick start

{
  "keywords": ["护肤", "AI"],
  "maxResultsPerKeyword": 40,
  "sortBy": "mostLiked",
  "noteType": "all",
  "publishedWithin": "week",
  "commentMode": "topN",
  "maxNotesWithComments": 5,
  "maxCommentPagesPerNote": 1,
  "commentSort": "mostLiked",
  "includeMediaUrls": true
}

Chinese keywords usually return the strongest native results. Each keyword is paginated independently, and duplicate notes are removed within that keyword.

Input

Field	Default	Limits	Purpose
keywords	["AI"]	1–20	Search terms. Whitespace and case-insensitive duplicates are removed.
maxResultsPerKeyword	20	1–1,000	Maximum saved notes for each keyword.
sortBy	mostLiked	enum	relevance, latest, mostLiked, mostCommented, or mostCollected.
noteType	all	enum	all, image, video, or live.
publishedWithin	week	enum	anytime, day, week, or sixMonths.
commentMode	none	enum	none, topN, or all up to the configured safety limit.
maxNotesWithComments	5	1–50	Global maximum notes to enrich with comments.
maxCommentPagesPerNote	1	1–10	Maximum comment pages for each enriched note.
commentSort	mostLiked	enum	mostLiked or latest.
includeMediaUrls	true	boolean	Include normalized cover, image, and one preferred video URL.
debug	false	boolean	Add sanitized progress logs; never logs credentials or raw payloads.

Output

The default dataset contains one homogeneous record per note. Comments, when requested, are nested under the note that owns them.

{
  "keyword": "AI",
  "rank": 1,
  "noteId": "6a48f64e00000000110193ea",
  "noteUrl": "https://www.xiaohongshu.com/explore/6a48f64e00000000110193ea",
  "title": "Example note",
  "description": "Normalized note text",
  "contentType": "video",
  "publishedAt": "2026-07-06T00:00:00.000Z",
  "author": {
    "id": "creator-id",
    "redId": "creator-red-id",
    "nickname": "Example creator",
    "avatarUrl": "https://..."
  },
  "engagement": {
    "likes": 121006,
    "collects": 18370,
    "comments": 537,
    "shares": 3180,
    "weightedScore": 172077
  },
  "media": {
    "coverUrl": "https://...",
    "imageUrls": [],
    "videoUrl": "https://...",
    "videoDurationSeconds": 74
  },
  "comments": [],
  "commentPage": {
    "fetchedPages": 0,
    "fetchedComments": 0,
    "reportedTotal": 537,
    "hasMore": false,
    "partial": false
  },
  "source": {
    "platform": "rednote",
    "provider": "tikhub-via-monid",
    "fetchedAt": "2026-07-09T22:00:00.000Z"
  }
}

The weighted score is:

likes + (2 × collects) + (3 × comments) + (4 × shares)

The default key-value store record OUTPUT contains:

• Run status and dataset item count.
• Per-keyword totals, medians, content types, top notes, and top creators.
• Successful search and comment call counts.
• Actual upstream cost and inspected endpoint prices.
• Actual Apify event counts and effective customer charge total.
• Warnings and partial-result reasons.
• Start, completion, and elapsed timestamps.

Pricing

This Actor uses Apify pay per event (PPE):

Event	Price	Trigger
apify-actor-start	$0.00005	Apify starts the Actor (one event per GB of memory, minimum one).
apify-default-dataset-item	$0.00001	One item is written to the default dataset.
search-page	$0.02	A RedNote search page succeeds.
comment-page	$0.02	A RedNote comment page succeeds.
note-result	$0.003	A normalized note is accepted for output.
comment-result	$0.003	A normalized comment is included.

A normal single-page run returning 20 notes costs about $0.08025 including the Actor-start and dataset-item events, or about $4.01 per 1,000 notes. A 10-comment page adds about $0.05010 for the page, comment results, and their dataset items; the one-time Actor-start fee applies once per run.

Provider failures are not charged as successful pages or results. If the run reaches your Apify maximum charge, it stops before starting another upstream page and returns the records already produced.

Partial results

A partial status is deliberate and machine-readable. Common reasons include:

• The user-selected maximum charge was reached.
• The owner upstream-cost ceiling was reached.
• One keyword failed while another returned usable notes.
• Comment pagination became unavailable after earlier pages succeeded.

Check OUTPUT.warnings for the exact branch and page. A run fails only when it produces no useful note and encounters a failure condition.

Running through the API

Use the standard Apify Actor endpoints, SDK clients, CLI, MCP integration, tasks, or schedules. The input and output schemas are published with the Actor so API and agent clients can discover the contract programmatically.

For recurring research, save the input as an Apify task and schedule it. Each scheduled run receives a new dataset and OUTPUT summary.

Data minimization and responsible use

The Actor returns public RedNote content needed for legitimate research. It intentionally removes comment IP-location fields, provider tracking IDs, internal tokens, debug metadata, and redundant signed media variants.

RedNote data may include public creator names, IDs, avatars, posts, and comments. You are responsible for complying with RedNote's terms, copyright rules, privacy law, and any rules that apply to your use case. Do not use this Actor for harassment, surveillance, private-data collection, or unlawful profiling.

This Actor is independent and is not affiliated with, authorized by, or endorsed by Xiaohongshu/RedNote or TikHub.

Troubleshooting

No notes returned

• Try a Chinese keyword.
• Change publishedWithin from week to sixMonths or anytime.
• Use relevance rather than a strict engagement sort.
• Check OUTPUT.warnings for a provider or spending-limit message.

The run stopped early

Increase the run's maximum charge or reduce result/comment limits. The Actor never starts a paid page when it cannot charge at least one result from that page.

Media URLs expire

Media URLs originate from the public platform response and may be time-limited. Use them promptly. This Actor does not download or re-host media.

Owner deployment configuration

Customers never provide Monid credentials. The Actor owner must configure these runtime variables in Apify Console:

• MONID_API_KEY — mark as Secret.
• MONID_WORKSPACE_ID — mark as Secret.
• MONID_MAX_RUN_COST_USD — defaults to 1.
• MONID_MAX_SEARCH_PRICE_USD — defaults to 0.015.
• MONID_MAX_COMMENT_PRICE_USD — defaults to 0.015.

Never place the Monid values in actor.json, build arguments, source files, README examples, logs, or public input fields.