Toutiao 今日头条 Scraper - Articles, Videos & Comments

Toutiao Scraper (今日头条) is a Toutiao API that reads public Toutiao articles, videos, and comments from article and video IDs or links. You get the full article text, images, read, like, comment and share counts, the author and their verification, comments with IP location, and video details with a stream link. No login or cookies needed. Export to JSON, CSV or Excel.

Pricing is pay-per-event: $0.00368 per record plus a $0.00005 start fee, charged once per run. One article costs about $0.00373, 100 articles about $0.368, one article with 100 comments about $0.368.

What is Toutiao?

Toutiao (今日头条) is one of China's largest news and content apps, run by ByteDance. Publishers, media outlets and independent writers post articles, videos and short posts there, and readers comment under them.

What data can you get?

Mode	Input	What you get
article	article IDs or links	One record per article with full text, images, counts and author
video	video IDs or links	One record per video with title, length, size, cover, stream link, counts and author
comments	article or video IDs or links	One record per comment, 20 comments per request, with the commenter's public profile fields

Toutiao articles and videos

Field	Description
articleId / videoId, url, title	ID, link to the page and title
text, textAvailable	Full plain text of the article, paragraphs separated by a blank line. textAvailable is false in the rare case the text could not be read (see Tips and limits)
images, imageCount	Image links of the article
durationSeconds, width, height, coverUrl, videoUrl, description	Video details (the stream link expires after some hours)
publishedAt, publishLocation, isOriginal	Publish time (UTC), IP location, original-content flag
readCount, likeCount, commentCount, shareCount, collectCount, impressionCount	Reads or plays, likes, comments, shares, saves and feed impressions
authorId, authorName, authorAvatar, authorDescription, authorVerified, authorVerifiedInfo, authorMediaId, authorFollowerCount	The author's public profile fields

Toutiao comments

commentId, postId, text, createdAt, likeCount, replyCount, ipLocation, userId, userName, userAvatar, userVerified, userVerifiedInfo.

How to use Toutiao Scraper

1. Open the Actor and choose a mode.
2. Paste article or video IDs or links into Articles or videos.
3. Set Max results, the total number of records you want.
4. Start the run and export the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read it with the API.

Toutiao has no keyword search in this Actor: every run starts from IDs or links you already have, for example from a list of articles you track or from a news site that links to Toutiao.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description	Default
mode	string	No	article, video or comments	article
posts	list of strings	For article, video, comments	Article or video IDs or links (https://www.toutiao.com/article/<id>/, /group/<id>/, /video/<id>/, or a m.toutiao.com link with the ID in it)	one sample article
maxResults	integer	No	Maximum number of records in total (1 to 5000)	20

An empty input runs the article mode on one sample article. Short share links without an ID (m.toutiao.com/is/...) cannot be read: open them in a browser and paste the address you land on.

Article with full text:

{
  "mode": "article",
  "posts": ["7700872920532320803", "https://www.toutiao.com/article/7450114952884503059/"]
}

First 100 comments of an article:

{
  "mode": "comments",
  "posts": ["https://www.toutiao.com/article/7700872920532320803/"],
  "maxResults": 100
}

Output example

Article:

{
  "type": "article",
  "articleId": "7700872920532320803",
  "url": "https://www.toutiao.com/article/7700872920532320803/",
  "title": "Example article title",
  "text": "First paragraph.\n\nSecond paragraph.",
  "textAvailable": true,
  "images": ["https://p3-sign.toutiaoimg.com/large/example"],
  "imageCount": 1,
  "publishedAt": "2026-10-26T14:58:00Z",
  "publishLocation": "河南",
  "isOriginal": false,
  "readCount": 2723,
  "likeCount": 54,
  "commentCount": 30,
  "shareCount": 36,
  "collectCount": 37,
  "impressionCount": 81232,
  "authorId": "2694234264069886",
  "authorName": "Example account",
  "authorAvatar": "https://p3-sign.toutiaoimg.com/user-avatar/example",
  "authorDescription": null,
  "authorVerified": true,
  "authorVerifiedInfo": "Example Media Co., Ltd. official account",
  "authorMediaId": "1763944398034958",
  "authorFollowerCount": null
}

Comment:

{
  "type": "comment",
  "commentId": "7701045398806741770",
  "postId": "7700872920532320803",
  "text": "Example comment text",
  "createdAt": "2026-10-26T18:30:04Z",
  "likeCount": 8,
  "replyCount": 2,
  "ipLocation": "江苏",
  "userId": "4322911735783896",
  "userName": "Example user",
  "userAvatar": "https://p11-sign.toutiaoimg.com/motor-img/example",
  "userVerified": false,
  "userVerifiedInfo": null
}

How much does it cost?

The Actor uses pay-per-event pricing. These are the charge events and their prices:

Event	Price (USD)	When it is charged
run-start	$0.00005	Once per run, charged when the first request succeeds. It is not charged when the run fails from the start, or when your spending limit cannot cover it.
result	$0.00368	For each record returned: an article, a video or a comment

Worked examples:

• One article: $0.00005 + $0.00368 = $0.00373.
• 100 articles: $0.00005 + 100 x $0.00368 = $0.36805.
• One article with 100 comments: $0.00005 + 100 x $0.00368 = $0.36805.
• The first 20 comments of each of 10 articles: $0.00005 + 200 x $0.00368 = $0.73605.

You never pay for more than maxResults records, you are never charged for records that were not delivered, and the run stops by itself if your spending limit is reached. An ID that returns nothing (a deleted article or video, a post without comments) is not charged as a record.

On the free Apify plan, every run returns a sample dataset: a real result of this Actor's prefilled input, captured on the date shown in the run status, so you can see exactly what the output looks like. Your own input is not used and nothing is charged. To run your own queries, use any paid Apify plan.

Use cases

• Media monitoring: pull the full text and read counts of articles your team tracks.
• Content research: compare reads, likes and comments across articles from the same author.
• Audience and sentiment analysis: collect comments with their IP location and like counts.
• Publisher research: list an author's verification, followers and the reach of their posts.
• Archiving: keep a copy of article text and images before they are taken down.

Why use this Toutiao scraper

• No account, no cookies, no proxies. You give keywords, links or IDs; the Actor does the rest.
• You pay for data you get. Per-result fees are charged only for records delivered to your dataset. A failed or empty run tells you why in its status message and whether anything was charged.
• It runs. In the 30 days to 2 November 2026, 8 of 8 public runs succeeded (100%, Apify run statistics).
• Try before paying. On a free Apify plan every run returns a stored sample, so you can check the exact output format first.
• Flat JSON records ready for spreadsheets, databases and AI pipelines; export as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Integrations and API

You can start runs from your own code with the Apify API, schedule runs (for example a daily refresh of the counts of tracked articles), and connect the dataset to Apify integrations and webhooks. Results can be read from the API as JSON, CSV or Excel.

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("clover_folktale/toutiao-scraper").call(run_input={
    "mode": "comments",
    "posts": ["7700872920532320803"],
    "maxResults": 100,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["likeCount"], item["text"])

Use it from AI agents (MCP, n8n, Make)

This Actor works as a tool for AI agents through the Apify MCP server. Add it to Claude, Cursor or any MCP client with https://mcp.apify.com?tools=clover_folktale/toutiao-scraper, and the agent can search Toutiao and read the results itself. It also has ready-made integrations for n8n, Make and Zapier on the Apify platform.

Tips and limits

• IDs and links only. There is no keyword or trending search; each run needs article or video IDs or links. The ID is the long number in the address, for example 7700872920532320803 in https://www.toutiao.com/article/7700872920532320803/.
• Articles and videos use different modes. Use article for text articles and video for video pages; the wrong mode returns nothing for that ID.
• Deleted or unknown IDs return no record and are not charged as a record. If every input returns nothing, the run says so in its status message.
• Text from an alternate lookup. An article may be read through an alternate lookup that has counts and author but no text, images or publish time. Those records have textAvailable set to false and text empty. A video from the standard lookup has no publishedAt or description; the alternate lookup fills them.
• Comments. 20 comments come back per request, in the platform's own ranking. commentCount of the article can be higher than what the list returns, because the platform hides some comments from the public list.
• Counts and IP location are what the platform shows at the time of the run. Run again later to track changes.
• Free plan. Every run on the free Apify plan returns a stored sample dataset; your own input is not used and nothing is charged.
• Feedback. Missing a field? Open an issue from the Actor page and it will be looked at.

FAQ

Do I need a Toutiao account or cookies?

No. The Actor reads public pages only, with no login.

Can I search Toutiao by keyword?

No. This Actor has no keyword search, trending list or channel feed. Give it IDs or links you already have, and it returns the records behind them.

Is it legal?

It collects only information that anyone can see on public Toutiao pages, and no private data such as phone numbers or messages. You are responsible for how you use the data and for following the laws that apply to you.

How fresh is the data?

Every run reads the live page, so counts and comments are current as of the run.

Why are some fields empty?

Not every post has every field. Images only exist on some articles, an author may have no bio, and a comment may have no IP location. Videos from the standard lookup carry no publish time.

How many comments can I get?

As many as the platform lists publicly, up to the maxResults you set (at most 5000 per run).

Which formats can I export?

JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, HTML or RSS from the dataset, or through the API.

Support

Found a bug, a missing field or a mode you need? Open an issue on the Issues tab. We reply within 24 hours, and a mode that stops working is fixed within 24 hours. What changed and when is listed on the Changelog tab.

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