Bilibili Scraper — 哔哩哔哩 Videos, Stats and Comments Without Login

What it does

Bilibili (哔哩哔哩, B站) is where much of China's gaming, anime, tech and youth culture lives, but its interface is Chinese-only and its web API needs request signing and passes anti-bot checks. This actor handles that for you and needs no login, no cookies and nothing to configure.

Give it keywords in Chinese or English, specific video URLs, BV ids or av ids, or switch on the popular feed (热门). Each video row includes views, likes, coins (投币), favorites, shares, danmaku (弹幕) count and comment count, plus tags, category, duration, publish time, cover image, the uploader's channel and their follower count. Optionally, includeComments attaches a sample of top and newest comments, anonymised to text, time and likes.

It is used for China influencer and KOL discovery, brand and campaign monitoring, competitor content research and gaming or anime trend analysis. Videos cost $4 per 1,000 and anonymised comments $0.50 per 1,000. Text comes back in its original language, mostly Simplified Chinese, and is not translated.

How it works

1. Keyword searches run against Bilibili's own search with your chosen sortBy order, up to maxVideos per term (Bilibili caps search at 1,000 results per term).
2. Each search hit is enriched with a per-video detail lookup to add coins, shares, tags and the uploader's follower count.
3. Video URLs, BV ids and av ids in videoUrls are fetched directly; deleted, private or region-locked videos are skipped and never charged.
4. With includePopular on, the current popular feed is added, again up to maxVideos.
5. With includeComments on, about 60 top and newest comments per video (including replies) are attached, with commenter names, IDs and avatars removed.

Input example

A typical run input (JSON). Every field is also available as a form in the Apify console.

{
  "searchTerms": [
    "原神",
    "iPhone 17 review"
  ],
  "maxVideos": 50,
  "sortBy": "click",
  "includePopular": true,
  "includeComments": false
}

Output example

Every video becomes one row with Bilibili's full engagement stats, tags and the uploader's follower count, as in this sample:

Pricing

Pay per event: you are charged only for the results you receive, with no subscription. Set a maximum total charge on any run and it stops cleanly at the cap.

Prices are read from the live Apify Store listing when this page is built. The listing is always authoritative.

Use cases

How it compares

If you need full comment threads, subtitles or the 排行榜 ranking chart, a logged-in Bilibili account is the only route and this actor will not provide them. For public video stats at scale without an account, it saves you maintaining signing and anti-bot code.

Limits and honest notes

• Public data only, no login: videos, stats and channel info that any visitor can see.
• Comments are a SAMPLE, not the full thread. Without a login Bilibili shows guests only a few top and newest comment threads, about 60 comments per video including replies. Commenter names, user IDs and avatars are never returned, only text, time and likes.
• Subtitles/CC tracks and the ranking chart (排行榜) need a logged-in account on Bilibili, so they are not included. Use the popular feed for trending videos.
• Keyword search returns up to 1,000 results per term (Bilibili's own cap: 50 pages × 20).
• Search rows are enriched with a per-video detail lookup. If that lookup fails, the video is still delivered with search-level stats (coins, shares and uploader followers are null).
• Deleted, private or region-locked video URLs/BV ids are skipped and never charged.
• Text is returned in its original language (mostly Simplified Chinese) and is not translated.
• Respects your run budget: set a maximum total charge and the actor stops cleanly at the cap.

FAQ

Use it from code

Run the actor through the Apify API with the input above.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/actor-forge~bilibili-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchTerms": ["原神", "iPhone 17 review"], "maxVideos": 50, "sortBy": "click", "includePopular": true, "includeComments": false}'

JavaScript (Node.js)

// Node.js 18+ (built-in fetch). Set APIFY_TOKEN in your environment.
const input = {
  "searchTerms": [
    "原神",
    "iPhone 17 review"
  ],
  "maxVideos": 50,
  "sortBy": "click",
  "includePopular": true,
  "includeComments": false
};

const res = await fetch(
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/actor-forge~bilibili-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items",
  {
    method: "POST",
    headers: {
      Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.APIFY_TOKEN}`,
      "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    body: JSON.stringify(input),
  }
);
const items = await res.json();
console.log(items.length, items[0]);

Python

# pip install apify-client   (set APIFY_TOKEN in your environment)
import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run_input = {
    "searchTerms": [
        "原神",
        "iPhone 17 review"
    ],
    "maxVideos": 50,
    "sortBy": "click",
    "includePopular": True,
    "includeComments": False
}

run = client.actor("actor-forge/bilibili-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

The run-sync-get-dataset-items endpoint waits for the run (up to 5 minutes) and returns the dataset rows directly. For longer runs, start the run asynchronously and read the dataset when it finishes, as the Python example does. Replace APIFY_TOKEN with your own token from the Apify console.

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