Douyin Hot Search Scraper — 抖音热榜 Trending List of Chinese TikTok

What it does

Douyin (抖音) is the Chinese version of TikTok, and its hot list (抖音热榜) shows which topics, challenges and events are driving short-video traffic in China right now. For content strategists and brands, it is a direct read on what Chinese audiences are watching, but the board is in Chinese and changes constantly.

This actor captures the live Douyin hot list and returns each trending topic with its rank, heat value (热度), Douyin's badge in English (hot, new, first, exclusive or live), topic ID, cover image and a direct search link. The pinned slot is excluded, so rank is the board position starting at 1. There is no login, no cookies and nothing to configure.

It is aimed at social listening, influencer and content strategy, brand monitoring in China, trend detection and cross-border e-commerce product discovery. Topics cost $2 per 1,000, so a top-50 snapshot is $0.10.

How it works

1. The actor reads Douyin's live public hot list; no login, cookies or configuration are needed.
2. The pinned slot is excluded so ranks run from 1 at the top of the board.
3. Each topic is returned with rank, title, heat score, English label, topic ID, cover image and search URL.
4. Use keywords to keep only topics mentioning your terms; filtered-out topics are not charged.
5. If Douyin is temporarily unavailable, the run fails cleanly and nothing is charged.

Input example

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

{
  "platforms": [
    "douyin"
  ],
  "maxTopicsPerPlatform": 20,
  "keywords": []
}

Output example

Each topic on the Douyin board becomes one row with its rank, heat value and badge, like this top entry:

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

The app is better for actually watching the videos behind a trend; this actor returns topics and a search link, not the videos. If you want Douyin alongside Weibo and Baidu, China Trending Topics covers five boards at the same price per topic.

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. Max topics above the board size returns what the board has.
• The pinned slot is excluded, so rank is the board position (1 = top).
• heatScore is each platform's own popularity metric.
• label is Douyin's badge in English (hot, new, first, exclusive, live) or null.
• Topics, ranks and heat only. No user accounts, profiles or personal data are collected.
• If Douyin is temporarily unavailable, the run fails cleanly and nothing is charged.
• 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~douyin-hot-search/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"platforms": ["douyin"], "maxTopicsPerPlatform": 20, "keywords": []}'

JavaScript (Node.js)

// Node.js 18+ (built-in fetch). Set APIFY_TOKEN in your environment.
const input = {
  "platforms": [
    "douyin"
  ],
  "maxTopicsPerPlatform": 20,
  "keywords": []
};

const res = await fetch(
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/actor-forge~douyin-hot-search/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": [
        "douyin"
    ],
    "maxTopicsPerPlatform": 20,
    "keywords": []
}

run = client.actor("actor-forge/douyin-hot-search").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.

Related actors

More China Social Trends tools · All actors