WeChat Official Account Scraper — Profiles, Articles & Content

WeChat Official Account Scraper — Profiles, Articles & Full Content

Search public WeChat Official Accounts (微信公众号), discover publisher profiles, collect indexed article history, and export clean WeChat / Weixin content at 1,000+ scale — no login, no coding.

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⚡ At a glance

Feature	Details
Target Platform	Public WeChat / Weixin Official Accounts (微信公众号) & mp.weixin.qq.com articles
Collection Modes	auto, search (articles by keyword), account_search (publisher profiles), account_history, articles (direct URLs)
Scale & Pagination	Automatic multi-page traversal + smart keyword expansion for 1,000+ results
Content Formats	Discovery metadata + optional full-body contentText, cleaned contentHtml, and contentMarkdown
Media & Links	Cover thumbnails, inline article images, outbound links, embedded videoIds
Deduplication	Automatic deduplication by canonical biz / mid / idx or publisher accountId / accountName
Export Formats	JSON, CSV, Excel (XLSX), XML, RSS, HTML Table, and Apify REST API
Integrations	Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Webhooks, S3 / Snowflake

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This WeChat scraper extracts public WeChat Official Account (微信公众号) articles and publisher profiles — no WeChat login and no coding required. Search with Chinese or English keywords, discover the Official Accounts covering any market or brand, collect a publisher's indexed article history, or paste known mp.weixin.qq.com links to scrape WeChat article content directly. You receive publisher names, titles, authors, publication dates, summaries, full text, cleaned HTML, Markdown, images, outbound links, and CJK-aware content statistics in one structured dataset.

Export every result to JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS, or the Apify API.

Built for China market researchers, brand and competitor monitoring teams, B2B intelligence analysts, localization and translation workflows, PR agencies, and AI / RAG engineers who need clean Chinese-language WeChat data at scale.

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🔎 Why scrape WeChat Official Accounts?

WeChat Official Accounts are the backbone of Chinese B2B and B2C digital publishing. Domestic and international brands, trade associations, research institutes, media outlets, government agencies, and vertical KOLs publish their primary long-form content as Official Account articles rather than on traditional websites. Consequently, the highest-value signal about Chinese markets, consumer sentiment, product launches, regulatory shifts, and competitor strategy lives inside Weixin.

Collecting that data manually is slow and fragile:

• Articles are rarely indexed by Western search engines.
• Manual search inside the app requires copying links one by one.
• Article pages are heavy and mix main body content with megabytes of boilerplate scripts.
• Tracking multiple keywords, competitors, or industry verticals across hundreds of articles per week is impossible by hand.

A WeChat Official Account scraper turns that scattered ecosystem into a clean, repeatable WeChat data extractor pipeline. Instead of copy-pasting individual posts, you run a single job and receive a de-duplicated table of publishers and articles with full text, Markdown, timestamps, and media — ready for competitive intelligence, translation, BI dashboards, or an LLM / RAG vector database.

Common reasons teams scrape WeChat

• Brand & competitor monitoring — track public articles mentioning your company, products, executives, campaigns, or competitors across China's media ecosystem.
• China market research & B2B intelligence — study emerging trends in AI (人工智能), EVs (新能源汽车), cross-border e-commerce (跨境电商), fintech (金融科技), healthcare (医疗健康), and retail (消费趋势).
• Official Account & KOL discovery — identify the top publishers covering a vertical, capture their profile description and avatar, and evaluate their publishing activity.
• AI, LLM training & RAG pipelines — feed clean, normalized Chinese contentText and contentMarkdown directly into embeddings, summarization, sentiment analysis, and retrieval-augmented generation workflows.
• PR & campaign impact analysis — measure media pickup, article volume, and narrative framing around trade shows, product launches, or policy announcements.
• Localization & multilingual intelligence — pull structured Chinese source articles for automated or human translation into English, Japanese, Korean, or European languages.
• Public article archiving — preserve the full text, clean HTML, Markdown, and image references of known mp.weixin.qq.com URLs before posts are edited or removed.

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✨ What this WeChat scraper does

• ✅ Five flexible modes — auto (chooses automatically based on your inputs), search (find articles by keyword), account_search (discover Official Account profiles by topic), account_history (collect indexed articles from specific publishers), and articles (extract full content from pasted mp.weixin.qq.com URLs).
• ✅ Bilingual keyword search — search in Simplified/Traditional Chinese or English (e.g. 人工智能, 新能源汽车, 品牌营销, Tesla, LVMH) and sort by Most relevant (relevance) or Most recent (recent).
• ✅ Unlocked 1,000+ results pagination — automatically walks multi-page search results and expands high-volume topic searches across sub-queries and multiple keywords to deliver hundreds to 1,000+ unique articles with zero hard page caps.
• ✅ Two-tier speed & cost control (includeContent) — keep includeContent: false (default) for ultra-fast, low-cost metadata discovery (title, accountName, summary, publishedAt, articleUrl, coverImage). Enable includeContent: true whenever you need full contentText, contentHtml, contentMarkdown, inline images, and links.
• ✅ Rich publisher & article identifiers — extracts biz, mid, idx, sn, isOriginal (原创 flag), author, accountId, accountAvatar, and accountDescription when present on the article page.
• ✅ CJK-aware content analytics — computes accurate wordCount (counting Chinese characters and alphanumeric words), characterCount, imageCount, linkCount, and videoCount.
• ✅ Zero-input ready — leave all inputs empty and the Actor automatically runs a curated 20-topic China tech & business discovery mix so you always get a rich sample dataset on your first test.
• ✅ Bulk export & automation — download results in JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS, or connect directly to Apify API, Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, or webhooks.

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🎯 High-value use cases

Team / Role	How they use this WeChat data extractor	Key fields used
Market Research & Strategy	Map industry narratives, emerging technologies, and consumer trends across 1,000+ recent articles.	title, summary, contentText, publishedAt, searchKeyword
Brand & PR Monitoring	Track daily brand mentions, crisis signals, and campaign coverage across Official Accounts.	accountName, title, publishedAt, articleUrl, isOriginal
AI / RAG & NLP Engineers	Build domain-specific Chinese corpora and feed clean Markdown into vector databases.	contentMarkdown, contentText, wordCount, characterCount, articleUrl
B2B Partnership & KOL Teams	Discover active publishers and trade accounts in a niche to build outreach and media lists.	recordType, accountName, accountId, description, latestArticleUrl
Competitive Intelligence	Monitor a competitor's Official Account publishing cadence, topics, and product announcements.	accountName, title, publishedAt, summary, images, links
Content & Localization Teams	Extract full articles from pasted mp.weixin.qq.com links for translation and cross-posting.	title, author, contentMarkdown, contentHtml, images

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📥 Input configuration

Configure your run in the Apify Console visual form or pass a JSON payload via the API. No fields are required — an empty input {} runs a multi-topic discovery sample automatically.

Field	Type	Default / Prefill	Description
mode	string	"auto"	Collection mode: "auto", "search" (articles by keyword), "articles" (pasted URLs), "account_search" (discover Official Accounts), or "account_history" (articles from specific accounts).
keywords	array<string>	["人工智能"]	Topics, brand names, industries, or Official Account names in Chinese or English. Pass multiple keywords to scale breadth.
articleUrls	array<string>	[]	Public mp.weixin.qq.com article links (one per line) for direct full-content extraction and archiving.
accounts	array<string>	[]	Publisher discovery topics (in account_search mode) or exact public Official Account display names (in account_history mode).
sortBy	string	"relevance"	Search ordering: "relevance" (Most relevant) or "recent" (Most recent indexed articles first).
includeContent	boolean	false	Off (default): fast, low-cost metadata discovery (title, accountName, summary, publishedAt, articleUrl, coverImage). On: also opens every article to extract contentText, contentHtml, contentMarkdown, inline images, and links.
includeImages	boolean	true	Include cover and inline article image URLs in the output (no binary image downloads).
maxItems	integer	100 (prefill 50)	Maximum number of saved article or account records across the run. Supports 1,000+ results.
maxConcurrency	integer	8	Parallel article requests (1–12). Default 8 balances speed and reliability.
proxyConfiguration	object	RESIDENTIAL	Apify Proxy configuration. Residential proxies are pre-configured by default for reliable Official Account discovery.

Example 1 — Fast, low-cost article discovery (metadata only)

{
  "mode": "search",
  "keywords": ["人工智能", "大模型", "人形机器人"],
  "sortBy": "recent",
  "includeContent": false,
  "maxItems": 200
}

Example 2 — Deep 1,000+ article extraction with full Markdown & HTML

{
  "mode": "search",
  "keywords": ["新能源汽车", "自动驾驶", "动力电池", "智能座舱", "充电桩"],
  "sortBy": "relevance",
  "includeContent": true,
  "includeImages": true,
  "maxItems": 1000,
  "maxConcurrency": 8
}

Example 3 — Discover Official Account publisher profiles (account_search)

{
  "mode": "account_search",
  "accounts": ["跨境电商", "出海品牌", "独立站"],
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example 4 — Collect a specific publisher's indexed article history (account_history)

{
  "mode": "account_history",
  "accounts": ["科情智库", "机器之心"],
  "includeContent": true,
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example 5 — Extract full content from pasted mp.weixin.qq.com URLs (articles)

{
  "mode": "articles",
  "articleUrls": [
    "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/example-article-one",
    "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/example-article-two"
  ],
  "includeContent": true,
  "includeImages": true,
  "maxItems": 100
}

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📤 Output schema & field reference

Results stream into the Apify Dataset in real time and can be viewed in two tailored tabs: WeChat articles (overview) and WeChat accounts (accounts).

Sample output — Article record (recordType: "wechatArticle")

{
  "recordType": "wechatArticle",
  "title": "政策工具视角下的美国人工智能政策演进分析",
  "accountName": "科情智库",
  "accountId": "keqingzhiku",
  "accountAvatar": "https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/mmbiz_png/avatar_sample/0?wx_fmt=png",
  "accountDescription": "科技情报研究与战略分析专业智库。",
  "author": "季洪帆，王建芳",
  "publishedAt": "2026-11-01T23:30:00.000Z",
  "articleUrl": "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?src=11&timestamp=1793576246&ver=7063&signature=example",
  "sourceUrl": "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?src=11&timestamp=1793576246&ver=7063&signature=example",
  "summary": "当前，人工智能已成为新一轮科技革命与产业变革的核心驱动力，本文从政策工具视角系统梳理演进脉络……",
  "coverImage": "https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/sz_mmbiz_jpg/QJ56y5z05xu9example/640?wx_fmt=jpeg",
  "contentText": "科情智库 当前，人工智能（Artificial Intelligence，AI）已成为新一轮科技革命与产业变革的核心驱动力……",
  "contentHtml": "<p>当前，人工智能（Artificial Intelligence，AI）已成为新一轮科技革命与产业变革的核心驱动力……</p>",
  "contentMarkdown": "![](https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/sz_mmbiz_jpg/QJ56y5z05xu9example/640?wx_fmt=jpeg)\n\n科情智库\n\n当前，人工智能……",
  "wordCount": 7111,
  "characterCount": 10840,
  "images": [
    "https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/sz_mmbiz_jpg/QJ56y5z05xu9example/640?wx_fmt=jpeg"
  ],
  "imageCount": 6,
  "links": [
    "https://example.com/report"
  ],
  "linkCount": 3,
  "videoIds": [],
  "videoCount": 0,
  "isOriginal": true,
  "biz": "MzI1MDI5ODkwMA==",
  "mid": "2247510651",
  "idx": "2",
  "sn": "9f8e7d6c5b4a3210",
  "searchKeyword": "人工智能",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-08T14:22:10.604Z"
}

Sample output — Official Account profile (recordType: "wechatAccount")

{
  "recordType": "wechatAccount",
  "accountName": "科情智库",
  "accountId": "keqingzhiku",
  "description": "科技情报研究与战略分析专业智库。",
  "avatar": "https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/mmbiz_png/avatar_sample/0?wx_fmt=png",
  "latestArticleTitle": "政策工具视角下的美国人工智能政策演进分析",
  "latestArticleUrl": "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?src=11&timestamp=1793576246&ver=7063&signature=example",
  "latestPublishedAt": "2026-11-01T23:30:00.000Z",
  "searchKeyword": "人工智能",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-08T14:22:10.604Z"
}

📰 Article Identity & Metadata Fields

Field	Type	Coverage	Description
recordType	string	🟢 High (100%)	"wechatArticle" for article records or "wechatAccount" for publisher profile records.
title	string	🟢 High (100%)	Full article headline (og:title / search title).
accountName	string	🟢 High (100%)	Official Account display name (公众号名称).
publishedAt	string	🟢 High (100%)	ISO 8601 publication timestamp (e.g. 2026-11-01T23:30:00.000Z).
articleUrl	string	🟢 High (100%)	Resolved mp.weixin.qq.com article URL.
sourceUrl	string	🟢 High (100%)	Source URL fetched during extraction.
summary	string	🟢 High (~98%)	Article abstract / snippet (og:description or search summary).
coverImage	string	🟢 High (~99%)	Article cover thumbnail URL.
searchKeyword	string	🟢 High (100%)	The search query that discovered this record (null in direct URL mode).
scrapedAt	string	🟢 High (100%)	ISO 8601 extraction timestamp.

🏢 Publisher & Deduplication Identifiers (Full-Content Mode)

Field	Type	Coverage	Description
author	string|null	🟡 Conditional	Article author byline when declared by the publisher (includeContent: true).
accountId	string|null	🟡 Conditional	Public WeChat ID (user_name) when exposed in the article markup.
accountAvatar	string|null	🟡 Conditional	Publisher avatar URL (https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/...) when exposed on the article page.
accountDescription	string|null	🟡 Conditional	Official Account bio / signature (signature) when exposed on the article page.
isOriginal	boolean	🟢 High (Full mode)	true when the article carries the WeChat 原创 (Original) copyright badge.
biz	string|null	🟢 High (Full mode)	Base64-encoded Official Account identifier (__biz) — primary publisher key.
mid	string|null	🟢 High (Full mode)	Message batch ID (appmsgid) — combine biz + mid + idx for exact deduplication.
idx	string|null	🟢 High (Full mode)	Article position index (1–8) within a multi-article push.
sn	string|null	🟡 Conditional	Article signature hash (sn) when present in URL/page variables.

📝 Full Content, Media & Statistics Fields

Field	Type	Coverage	Description
contentText	string|null	🟡 Conditional	Clean, normalized plain text of the article body (populated when includeContent: true).
contentHtml	string|null	🟡 Conditional	Sanitized HTML of #js_content with scripts/ads stripped and data-src images resolved (includeContent: true).
contentMarkdown	string|null	🟡 Conditional	Clean Markdown conversion with headings, lists, code blocks, and inline images (includeContent: true).
wordCount	integer	🟢 High (100%)	CJK-aware word count (counts Hanzi characters + non-CJK words; 0 when includeContent: false).
characterCount	integer	🟢 High (100%)	Total character length of contentText (0 when includeContent: false).
images	array<string>	🟡 Conditional	Array of resolved inline image URLs (includeContent: true and includeImages: true).
imageCount	integer	🟢 High (100%)	Number of inline images found in the article body.
links	array<string>	🟡 Conditional	Outbound URLs linked inside the article body (includeContent: true).
linkCount	integer	🟢 High (Full mode)	Number of outbound links in the article body.
videoIds	array<string>	🟡 Conditional	Embedded WeChat video IDs (data-mpvid / videosnap) when the article embeds video.
videoCount	integer	🟢 High (Full mode)	Number of embedded WeChat videos.

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🔁 Pagination, deduplication & 1,000+ scale

This WeChat Official Account scraper is engineered for both rapid sampling and deep 1,000+ article harvesting:

1. Multi-page index traversal: For every keyword in keywords, the Actor paginates sequentially (10 results per page) until maxItems is satisfied or the search index ends.
2. Automatic sub-topic query expansion: When you request a high maxItems (such as 500 or 1,000+) with one or a few seed keywords, the Actor automatically expands your seed terms with domain modifiers (行业, 趋势, 报告, 分析, 市场, 应用, 发展, 企业, 深度, 最新, 研究, 动态) to bypass per-query page ceilings and keep pulling relevant, unique articles.
3. Multi-layer deduplication: Search results are de-duplicated first by redirect URL and accountName + title, and final records are de-duplicated by biz | mid | idx | title (or accountId | accountName in account_search mode), ensuring 0% duplicate rows in your dataset.
4. Byte-capped streaming for cost control: When includeContent: true is enabled, the Actor streams each mp.weixin.qq.com page and stops downloading once the article body is captured — slashing residential proxy bandwidth costs without losing a single paragraph of text.

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⚙️ How to use & automate

1. Open WeChat Official Account Scraper in the Apify Console.
2. Choose your mode (auto, search, account_search, account_history, or articles).
3. Enter your keywords, accounts, or articleUrls.
4. Keep includeContent: false for fast, low-cost metadata discovery, or switch includeContent: true to extract full text, HTML, and Markdown.
5. Set Maximum results (maxItems — e.g. 50 for a quick test, or 1000 for bulk extraction) and click Start.
6. Download your data from the Dataset tab as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS, or consume it via the Apify API.

Node.js (apify-client) example

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });

const run = await client.actor('haketa/wechat-official-account-scraper').call({
  mode: 'search',
  keywords: ['人工智能', '新能源汽车'],
  sortBy: 'recent',
  includeContent: false,
  maxItems: 200,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Extracted ${items.length} WeChat articles:`, items[0]);

Python (apify-client) example

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("haketa/wechat-official-account-scraper").call(run_input={
    "mode": "search",
    "keywords": ["跨境电商", "出海品牌"],
    "includeContent": True,
    "maxItems": 100,
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["publishedAt"], "|", item["accountName"], "|", item["title"])

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💡 Pro tips for best results

• Start with includeContent: false for discovery: Metadata-only runs finish in seconds and use minimal residential proxy transfer. Once you filter the best articleUrl links, feed those into a second run with mode: "articles" and includeContent: true.
• Use Simplified Chinese keywords for maximum depth: While English brand names ("Apple", "Tesla") work well, Chinese industry terms ("智能制造", "医疗器械", "美妆护肤") surface 5–10× more native Official Account coverage.
• Schedule daily monitoring runs: Pair sortBy: "recent" with an Apify Cron Schedule (e.g., every morning at 08:00 CST) and push new articles into Slack, Feishu/Lark, Notion, or Google Sheets.
• Use exact display names in account_history mode: Enter the exact Chinese name of the Official Account (e.g., 机器之心) so the account matcher filters cleanly.

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⚠️ Honest limitations

• Publicly indexed content only: This Actor extracts public WeChat Official Account articles and profiles that are accessible without logging into a personal WeChat account. Private group chats, Moments (朋友圈), and paywalled/member-only articles are not accessible.
• Engagement metrics (views, likes, comments): WeChat only exposes live read counts (阅读) and thumbs-up counts (在看) to authenticated in-app sessions with short-lived tokens, so public web extraction does not include read/like counts.
• Publisher-dependent fields: Fields such as author, accountId, accountAvatar, accountDescription, and sn depend on whether the publisher's article template exposes them; when absent, they are returned as null rather than guessed.

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Do I need a WeChat account, QR code scan, or API key?

No. This WeChat scraper runs completely keyless and login-free. You never need to scan a QR code or risk a personal WeChat account.

How can I scrape 1,000+ WeChat articles in one run?

Simply set maxItems: 1000 (or higher). You can provide a list of keywords in keywords, or let the Actor automatically expand your seed keywords across sub-topics and paginate until your target count is reached.

Why is includeContent turned off by default?

Full WeChat article pages are large (often 1–3 MB of HTML and embedded scripts) and require residential proxy bandwidth. Keeping includeContent: false by default makes initial discovery runs 5–10× faster and far cheaper. Turn includeContent: true whenever you need contentText, contentHtml, and contentMarkdown.

Can I use English keywords?

Yes. International brand names, product model numbers, and English tech terms ("AI Agent", "SaaS", "IPO") return public WeChat articles that mention those terms. For broad market research, Simplified Chinese keywords yield the deepest coverage.

What is the difference between account_search and account_history?

• account_search returns one row per publisher (recordType: "wechatAccount") matching your topic or query, along with their latest article.
• account_history returns all publicly indexed articles (recordType: "wechatArticle") published by the exact Official Account names you specify in accounts.

What export formats are supported?

You can export your dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel (XLSX), XML, RSS, or HTML table, or fetch items programmatically via the Apify REST API and SDKs.

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🔗 Related scrapers for Asian & creator intelligence

• Xiaohongshu / RedNote Scraper — scrape RedNote posts, consumer reviews, KOL profiles, and engagement metrics.
• Bilibili Scraper — extract Chinese video metadata, creator stats, danmaku, and comments.
• YouTube Contact Scraper — extract YouTube creator business emails, websites, social links, and subscriber counts.
• YouTube Comments Scraper — bulk extract viewer comments for sentiment analysis.
• Patreon Scraper — discover creator memberships, tiers, and public posts.
• Linktree Scraper — extract creator bio links, social profiles, and contact endpoints.

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📋 Changelog

• v1.2 (2026-11) — Unlocked 1,000+ results deep pagination: removed the 10-page per-keyword ceiling and the 100-item discovery clamps on account_search and account_history, added automatic sub-topic keyword expansion (EXPANSION_SUFFIXES) + title/account deduplication for high-volume runs, expanded default discovery topics to 20 verticals, and tuned prefill (maxItems: 50, includeContent: false) for fast, low-cost execution under 60 seconds.
• v1.1 (2026-10) — Added byte-capped streaming (ARTICLE_BYTE_CAP) for full-content extraction to cut residential transfer cost while preserving 100% of #js_content text, HTML, and Markdown.
• v1.0 (2026-09) — Initial release with 5 collection modes (auto, search, articles, account_search, account_history), CJK word counting, Turndown Markdown conversion, and residential session rotation.