# Is there an API to search Douyin videos by keyword?

> Search Douyin (Chinese TikTok) videos by keyword through an API: sort orders, the fields each video comes with, cost per page and per 1,000 videos, and the limits.

Canonical page: https://okdata.online/answers/douyin-video-search-api/

**Short answer: **Yes. The okdata Douyin video search endpoint takes a keyword and returns about 20 videos per call, sorted by relevance, latest or most liked, each with caption, likes, comments, shares, saves, hashtags and the author, for $0.02 a call. 1,000 videos take 50 calls and cost $1.00.

A marketer wants every Douyin video about "露营装备" from the last two weeks, ranked by likes, to see which angles and formats work. Douyin's web search needs a logged-in session, throws image captchas after a few queries, and scrapers often return an empty list once that happens, without saying why. Yes, there is: an API call per page of results returns them as JSON, sortable by likes.

## The endpoint

[Douyin video search](/apis/douyin/videos/search/) takes `query` and an optional `sort`:

- `relevance` (default), what Douyin ranks first;
- `latest`, newest first, for monitoring;
- `most_liked`, for finding what already worked.

Each video comes with its ID and link, caption (`text`), publish time, likes, comments, shares, saves (`favorites`), hashtags, image URLs for photo posts, and the author's ID, name and verification. Follow `page.next_cursor` for more pages.

## Cost

| Videos | Calls | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 5 | $0.10 |
| 1,000 | 50 | $1.00 |
| 10 keywords × 3 pages, daily for a month | 900 | $18.00 |

Single-video lookups ([video detail](/apis/douyin/videos/get/)) are much cheaper, $0.002 each, so search to discover and use detail to refresh.

## Example

```bash
curl -G "https://api.okdata.online/v1/douyin/videos/search" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OKDATA_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode 'query=露营装备' \
  --data-urlencode 'sort=most_liked' \
  --data-urlencode 'fields=id,text,published_at,metrics.likes,metrics.comments,author.name'
```

## Limits to plan for

- **No play counts.** Douyin does not publish views on other people's videos; `metrics.views` is usually null, and `meta.unavailable` says the platform hides it. Use likes, comments, shares and saves.
- **No titles.** Douyin videos have captions, not titles, so `title` is null and the caption is in `text`.
- **No date filter parameter.** Sort by `latest` and stop paging when `published_at` passes your cutoff.
- **Follower counts are not in search results.** Look authors up with [account profile](/apis/douyin/users/get/) ($0.002).
- Search depth per keyword is limited by Douyin. Narrower keywords widen coverage.

## Alternatives

Douyin's open platform gives authorized access to your own account's data, not search over everyone's videos. 巨量算数 (Ocean Engine's free keyword tool) shows search trends for a keyword, not the videos. Open-source tools like MediaCrawler and TikTokDownloader can search with a logged-in session if you are ready to handle captchas. For a full research workflow, see [content research](/solutions/content-research/).

## Endpoints used

- [Douyin video search](https://okdata.online/apis/douyin/videos/search/) `douyin.videos.search`: $0.02 per call · about 20 videos per page
- [Douyin video detail](https://okdata.online/apis/douyin/videos/get/) `douyin.videos.get`: $0.002 per call
- [Douyin account profile](https://okdata.online/apis/douyin/users/get/) `douyin.users.get`: $0.002 per call

Updated 2026-11-12