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    · 12 min read

    TikTok Explore/Trending Scraper: 26 Data Fields per Record (2026)

    By CrawlerBros Engineering Team

    Each record from the trending feed carries 26 output fields, including detailed engagement metrics like likeCount, commentCount, and full author details. You can target specific content niches by providing numeric category IDs or use a mode that automatically detects available categories from the live TikTok interface. This scraper operates without requiring login credentials or cookies to access public discovery sections. It is ideal for monitoring broad viral shifts and benchmarking creator performance across various content categories. It is not suitable for users who need to track private accounts or specific videos that are not currently appearing in the public Explore feeds.

    Try it: open TikTok Explore/Trending Scraper on Apify, sign in on the free plan and run the prefilled example.

    Yes. Apify's free plan includes $5.00 of prepaid usage every month and asks for no credit card. At $0.005 per result, that covers up to 1,000 results of TikTok Explore/Trending Scraper a month, before run-start charges and platform usage.

    The example request further down caps maxItemsPerCategory at 10 for each of its 1 categories, so a first run returns at most 10 results and costs at most $0.05 in result charges. That is enough to see the real shape of the data before deciding anything.

    TikTok Explore/Trending Scraper was last updated on 2026-06-30. It is one of 1,725 Actors CrawlerBros publishes on Apify, which together have 686,256 lifetime public runs and an average rating of 4.63 out of 5 across 416 reviews.

    Each result costs $0.005 on Apify's free plan, which is $5.00 per 1,000 results. Starting a run is charged separately at $0.005 per GB of Actor memory. Apify also bills the platform usage each run consumes, at the rates of your Apify plan, on top of these charges.

    Apify plan Per result Per 1,000 results
    FREE $0.005 $5.00
    BRONZE $0.00433 $4.33
    SILVER $0.00367 $3.67
    GOLD $0.003 $3.00
    PLATINUM $0.003 $3.00
    DIAMOND $0.003 $3.00

    The maxItemsPerCategory control has the largest effect on your bill because it directly determines the number of results written to the dataset. To find out if this Actor meets your needs before spending, run the example input which limits the output to 10 results and costs at most $0.05 in result charges.

    None of its 5 controls is strictly required, so the defaults below produce a valid run on their own. Nothing in the payload below is illustrative. Those are the schema's prefilled defaults for TikTok Explore/Trending Scraper, so the request works once your token is in place.

    Call the synchronous endpoint to start a run and receive dataset items in one request:

    curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/crawlerbros~tiktok-explore-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"categories":[{"id":123,"name":"All"}],"maxItemsPerCategory":10,"autoDiscoverCategories":false}'

    The same run from Python, using the official client:

    from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")

run_input = {
  "categories": [
    {
      "id": 123,
      "name": "All"
    }
  ],
  "maxItemsPerCategory": 10,
  "autoDiscoverCategories": False
}

run = client.actor("crawlerbros~tiktok-explore-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

    And from Node.js:

    import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client'

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' })

const input = {
  "categories": [
    {
      "id": 123,
      "name": "All"
    }
  ],
  "maxItemsPerCategory": 10,
  "autoDiscoverCategories": false
}

const run = await client.actor('crawlerbros~tiktok-explore-scraper').call(input)
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems()
console.log(items)

    Because the call is synchronous, your client waits for the whole run. Keep it for exploration. For scheduled work, start the run without waiting and collect the dataset afterwards, so network trouble costs you a retry rather than the results.

    The categories array and autoDiscoverCategories toggle are the primary controls that change your result set. Most people should leave categories as the default 'All' (id 123) for their first run to see general trending data before attempting to discover specific niche IDs.

    • categories (array): Category IDs to explore. The 'All' category (id=123) is always available. Use autoDiscoverCategories=true to find additional category IDs from the live TikTok UI. Default: [{"id":123,"name":"All"}].
    • maxItemsPerCategory (integer): Maximum number of trending posts to collect per category. Default: 50.
    • maxItems (integer): Alias for maxItemsPerCategory. If both are set, maxItemsPerCategory takes precedence.
    • categoryId (integer): Shorthand: a single integer category ID. Maps to categories=[{id: N}]. Use 123 for All.
    • autoDiscoverCategories (boolean): When enabled, navigates to TikTok's Explore page and clicks each category tab to discover all available category IDs from the live UI. Discovered categories are added to the categories list. Default: false.

    The returned records are excellent for identifying viral content patterns and benchmarking engagement rates across different creator types. They do not contain profile-wide video history, as they only capture what is currently surfacing on the public trending feed.

    • feedType - always "explore"
    • categoryId - numeric TikTok category type ID
    • categoryName - human-readable category label (e.g. "All", "Entertainment", "Sports")
    • postId - unique TikTok video ID
    • postUrl - direct URL to the video
    • caption - full caption text
    • likeCount - total likes
    • commentCount - total comments
    • shareCount - total shares
    • playCount - total plays/views
    • author.id - author's TikTok user ID
    • author.secUid - author's secondary unique ID
    • author.username - author handle
    • author.displayName - author display name
    • author.verified - verification status
    • author.avatarUrl - author profile image URL
    • music.id - sound ID
    • music.title - sound title
    • music.authorName - sound creator name
    • video.width - video width in pixels
    • video.height - video height in pixels
    • video.duration - video duration in seconds
    • video.playUrl - streamable video URL (expires)
    • video.cover - cover/thumbnail image URL
    • hashtags - array of hashtag names parsed from caption
    • scrapedAt - ISO 8601 timestamp of when the record was collected

    These are the documented fields. Optional ones can be empty on a given record, so measure how often each field your deliverable depends on is populated across a real sample before automating the handoff.

    How do you build the workflow end to end?

    Open TikTok Explore/Trending Scraper and work through these in order. Each step ends with something to check, so a bad configuration surfaces on a small run rather than a scheduled one.

    1. Run the Actor with autoDiscoverCategories set to true and an empty categories array to fetch all current numeric IDs from the TikTok UI.
    2. Examine the categoryId and categoryName fields in the dataset to identify which IDs correspond to your target niches like Sports or Entertainment.
    3. Configure the categories array with the specific integer id and string name pairs identified in your discovery run.
    4. Execute a test run with maxItemsPerCategory set to 10 to verify that all 26 fields, including playCount and author metadata, are populated correctly.
    5. Confirm that the feedType field is consistently set to explore for all records in the output.
    6. Check the hashtags array for parsed keywords to ensure you are capturing the expected metadata from video captions.
    7. Schedule the Actor with your final maxItemsPerCategory limit up to 500 once the data structure meets your acceptance criteria.

    How do you apply it? Three worked playbooks

    These are TikTok Explore/Trending Scraper's own documented use cases, each worked through as an operating pattern rather than a description.

    Use case 1: Trend Content Analysis

    Outcome: Trend analysts monitoring which video formats and topics are surfacing on TikTok's Explore feed each day

    Configure: Set categories to [{"id": 123, "name": "All"}] and maxItemsPerCategory to 100.

    Working method: Schedule the Actor to run at the same time daily and compare the caption and hashtags fields across runs to see which topics persist.

    Deliverable: A daily report of trending keywords and video topics with associated playCount growth.

    Stop condition: The dataset contains zero records for the 'All' category for two consecutive days.

    Use case 2: Niche Content Benchmarking

    Outcome: Content strategists identifying high-performing content styles across specific categories like Sports or Entertainment

    Configure: Set autoDiscoverCategories to true and maxItemsPerCategory to 50.

    Working method: Run the Actor to discover current IDs, then filter the resulting dataset by categoryName to compare video.duration and likeCount across different styles.

    Deliverable: A spreadsheet comparing average engagement metrics across Entertainment, Sports, and other discovered categories.

    Stop condition: The autoDiscoverCategories function fails to return any category IDs from the UI.

    Use case 3: Creator Discovery

    Outcome: Media companies benchmarking which creators and formats are being amplified by TikTok's discovery system

    Configure: Set categories to include multiple specific IDs like 123 and 4 with maxItemsPerCategory set to 200.

    Working method: Scan the author.username and author.verified fields in the results to identify which users appear most frequently across different trending categories.

    Deliverable: A prioritized list of authors and their verification status based on their presence in the trending feeds.

    Stop condition: The author.id field is consistently missing from the dataset output.

    What breaks, and how do you design around it?

    TikTok signs its video.playUrl links with short-lived tokens, which will eventually expire. You should design your post-processing pipeline to download or cache the media files immediately after the Actor run finishes to ensure you have a permanent copy.

    If you need to monitor a specific, predefined list of videos or hashtags that are not currently trending on the global Explore page, this scraper is not the right tool. Use TikTok Post Scraper for specific URLs or TikTok Hashtag Scraper for targeted keyword monitoring. For those who require time-series popularity curves and historical rank data rather than a real-time snapshot, TikTok Hashtag Trends Scraper is the better choice for trend analysis. If your workflow depends on private user feeds, TikTok For You Feed Scraper should be used instead.

    What should you check before trusting the output?

    • Verify that the postId is present for every record to ensure unique video identification.
    • Confirm that playCount and shareCount are returned as numeric values for engagement analysis.
    • Ensure the author.username field is not null to maintain creator attribution in your dataset.
    • Validate that categoryId matches the specific numeric ID you provided in the input configuration.
    • Check that the scrapedAt timestamp is present to allow for accurate time-series reporting.
    • Monitor for empty records in the caption field to determine if the scraper is failing to parse video text.

    None of this proves a record is correct. It gives a scheduled TikTok Explore/Trending Scraper run defined points where it should stop instead of quietly passing bad data downstream.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is the cost for 1,000 results?

    On the free-plan price, 1,000 results cost $5.00 in result charges. This charge applies only to the records successfully written to your dataset. Note that Apify also bills for platform usage on top of these charges, and a run-start fee is applied every time a run starts. Apify's free plan includes $5.00 of monthly usage, which covers up to 1,000 results.

    Does this Actor require TikTok login or cookies?

    No. TikTok's Explore feed is publicly accessible. This makes it a reliable choice for automated discovery without the risk of compromising your own TikTok account or managing complex cookie rotations.

    How do I find numeric category IDs?

    The easiest way is to enable autoDiscoverCategories by setting it to true. The Actor will then navigate the live TikTok Explore page and extract the IDs for every category tab it finds. You can then view these in your dataset under categoryId and hardcode them for future runs.

    Do the video URLs in the results expire?

    Yes. TikTok signs all CDN URLs with short-lived tokens. The video.playUrl field provides a streamable link, but you should download or cache the media promptly as these links are not permanent.

    How many posts can I get per category?

    You can collect up to 500 results per category. The Actor automatically paginates through TikTok's Explore API, which usually returns about 8 posts per page. You can control this volume using the maxItemsPerCategory input to manage both the depth of your data and your total costs.

    Where to go next

    When you are ready to run it, open TikTok Explore/Trending Scraper on Apify; the free plan covers up to 1,000 results a month.

    Start with the TikTok Explore/Trending Scraper Actor page for the current input schema, pricing tier, and run history.

    It is part of the TikTok Scraping Suite, which puts every related Actor on one page with its price and run history.

    If you are comparing approaches rather than committing to one Actor, these category pages list every option we publish:

    Other Actors we maintain for related data:

    Related guides:

    Resources

    • Actor documentation, input schema, and pricing: verified against the published Actor on 2026-09-27.

    • Actor last updated by its maintainers on 2026-06-30.

    • Run outcome figures cover the 30 day public window ending 2026-09-27.

    • TikTok Explore/Trending Scraper on Apify

    Featured actors

    TikTok Explore/Trending Scraper

    Scrape TikTok's Explore/Trending feed across categories. Get the latest trending posts with full video metadata, engagement stats, and author info. Supports auto-discovery of all available categories.

    Run on Apify ↗