Weibo Hot Search Scraper — 微博热搜 Real-Time Trending List

What it does

Weibo's hot search list (微博热搜) is where Chinese news, celebrity stories and brand crises surface first, and a topic can climb into the top ten within minutes. For PR teams and analysts outside China, watching it means refreshing a Chinese-language page and losing the history as soon as it changes.

This actor captures the current Weibo hot search board and returns each trending topic with its organic rank, heat count (热度), Weibo's badge as shown on the site (新 new, 热 hot, 沸 boiling, 爆 explosive) and a direct search link. Ads are removed and the pinned/government slot is excluded, so ranks reflect what is genuinely trending.

Use it for brand monitoring, PR and crisis alerts, China market research and news detection, or as a live China context tool for AI agents. Schedule it every 15 to 60 minutes to build a ranking history. Topics are $2 per 1,000, so the full top 50 costs $0.10 a run.

How it works

1. The actor fetches Weibo's live public hot search board; no login, cookies or configuration are needed.
2. Advertised entries are dropped and the pinned/government slot is excluded, so rank 1 is the top organic topic.
3. Each topic is written as a row with platform, rank, title, heat score, label and search URL.
4. The optional keywords filter keeps only matching topics, and topics it filters out are never charged.
5. If Weibo 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": [
    "weibo"
  ],
  "maxTopicsPerPlatform": 50,
  "keywords": [
    "比亚迪",
    "iPhone"
  ]
}

Output example

Each trending topic is one row with its organic rank, heat count and badge, like this entry from the top of the board:

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 also want Douyin, Baidu, Toutiao or Bilibili, China Trending Topics uses the same schema and price with five boards in one run. This actor is the simpler choice when Weibo is all you watch.

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.
• Ads are removed and the pinned/government slot is excluded, so rank is the organic position (1 = top).
• heatScore is each platform's own popularity metric.
• label is Weibo's own badge as shown on the site (新, 热, 沸, 爆) or null.
• Topics, ranks and heat only. No user accounts, profiles or personal data are collected.
• If Weibo 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~weibo-hot-search/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"platforms": ["weibo"], "maxTopicsPerPlatform": 50, "keywords": ["比亚迪", "iPhone"]}'

JavaScript (Node.js)

// Node.js 18+ (built-in fetch). Set APIFY_TOKEN in your environment.
const input = {
  "platforms": [
    "weibo"
  ],
  "maxTopicsPerPlatform": 50,
  "keywords": [
    "比亚迪",
    "iPhone"
  ]
};

const res = await fetch(
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/actor-forge~weibo-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": [
        "weibo"
    ],
    "maxTopicsPerPlatform": 50,
    "keywords": [
        "比亚迪",
        "iPhone"
    ]
}

run = client.actor("actor-forge/weibo-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.

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