China Trending Topics — Weibo, Douyin, Baidu, Toutiao and Bilibili in One Run

What it does

What is trending in China rarely looks the same on every platform. A story can top Weibo's hot search while Douyin is focused on a sports result and Baidu on a consumer scandal. Watching all of them means juggling five Chinese-language sites with different layouts and badges.

This actor captures the live hot lists of Weibo hot search (微博热搜), Douyin hot list (抖音热榜), Baidu hot search (百度热搜), Toutiao hot board (头条热榜) and Bilibili hot words (B站热搜) in one run, using the platforms' own public hot-list data. Every topic comes back in the same shape regardless of platform: rank, title, heat score, label, category and link. Ads and pinned or government slots are excluded, so rank is the organic position.

It is built for China brand monitoring, market research, news and trend detection, social listening and cross-border e-commerce product discovery, and as a real-time context source for AI agents. Topics cost $2 per 1,000, so all five boards at 50 topics each is $0.50 a run.

How it works

1. You choose which boards to capture in platforms; the default is all five.
2. Each board's live public hot list is fetched and normalised into the same row format.
3. Ads are removed and pinned or government slots on Weibo, Douyin, Baidu and Toutiao are excluded, so ranks are organic.
4. The optional keywords filter keeps only topics whose title or description contains one of your words, and filtered-out topics are not charged.
5. If one platform is temporarily unavailable, it is skipped and not charged while the other boards are still delivered.

Input example

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

{
  "platforms": [
    "weibo",
    "douyin",
    "baidu",
    "toutiao",
    "bilibili"
  ],
  "maxTopicsPerPlatform": 30,
  "keywords": []
}

Output example

Rows from all five boards share the same columns, so you can sort or pivot by platform and rank directly:

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 only care about one board, the dedicated Weibo or Douyin actor costs the same per topic and has one less setting. Choose this one when you want several boards side by side.

Limits and honest notes

• Topics are returned in their original language (mostly Simplified Chinese). Titles are not machine-translated, so pass them to your own translator or LLM if needed.
• Each board holds roughly 50 topics at a time. maxTopicsPerPlatform above the board size returns what the board has.
• Weibo ads are removed and the pinned/government slots on Weibo, Douyin, Baidu and Toutiao are excluded, so rank is the organic position (1 = top).
• heatScore is each platform's own popularity metric. Compare ranks across platforms, not raw heat values.
• label is the platform's own badge: English for Douyin and Baidu (new, hot…), Weibo's own characters (新/热/沸/爆), Toutiao's own tags (hot, new…), and null on Bilibili.
• Topics, ranks and heat only. No user accounts, profiles or personal data are collected.
• If one platform is temporarily unavailable it is skipped and never charged; the other boards are still delivered.
• 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~china-trending-topics/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"platforms": ["weibo", "douyin", "baidu", "toutiao", "bilibili"], "maxTopicsPerPlatform": 30, "keywords": []}'

JavaScript (Node.js)

// Node.js 18+ (built-in fetch). Set APIFY_TOKEN in your environment.
const input = {
  "platforms": [
    "weibo",
    "douyin",
    "baidu",
    "toutiao",
    "bilibili"
  ],
  "maxTopicsPerPlatform": 30,
  "keywords": []
};

const res = await fetch(
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/actor-forge~china-trending-topics/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 = {
    "platforms": [
        "weibo",
        "douyin",
        "baidu",
        "toutiao",
        "bilibili"
    ],
    "maxTopicsPerPlatform": 30,
    "keywords": []
}

run = client.actor("actor-forge/china-trending-topics").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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