How do I find a WeChat Official Account's biz or original ID (gh_)?

You have a list of 60 Official Account names from a media plan and every tool you want to feed them into asks for an ID instead. Official Account search turns a name into the IDs: send the name, get back matching accounts, each with its original ID (gh_…), its WeChat ID when it has one, its display name, avatar and a profile link that contains the __biz value.

Which ID is which

ID	Looks like	Where it shows up	Who asks for it
Original ID	gh_363b924965e9	id in search results	Article history on okdata, many monitoring tools
WeChat ID	a short handle, e.g. brand_news	username	Article history also accepts it; people share it
biz	MzA5NTI3MjIwMA==	in the profile url, and ext.biz with view=full	Profile links, older scrapers, some data exports

The original ID never changes for an account. The display name can change, and two accounts can look alike, so store the gh_ ID, not the name.

Look up a batch

curl -G "https://api.okdata.online/v1/wechat_mp/accounts/search" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OKDATA_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "query=36氪" \
  --data-urlencode "view=full" \
  --data-urlencode "fields=id,name,username,url,ext.biz,ext.last_published_at"

Check the name of each match before you keep its ID. A search for a common word returns several accounts, and the right one is not always first; ext.last_published_at helps you skip abandoned lookalikes.

Cost

Search is the one WeChat endpoint priced per result: $0.058 for each account returned, at most $0.58 per call. The full name of an account usually returns one or a few matches, so it costs little; a vague keyword can return a full page of 10.

Batch	Searches	Cost, worst case
1 account	1	$0.58
60 accounts from a media plan	60	$34.80

The worst case assumes every search fills a page. Exact names land well below it.

Doing it by hand

For one account, open any of its articles in a desktop browser, view the page source and search for __biz and gh_. Both IDs are in there. The account's profile page in WeChat also shows its WeChat ID. That is free and fine for a handful of accounts; it gets tedious past ten.

Good to know

• Search finds accounts, not articles. To go from an ID to its articles, use article history, which takes the gh_ ID or WeChat ID (not the biz).
• An account that went through WeChat's account migration has a new original ID; search again.
• While a search runs, its maximum cost ($0.58) is held from your balance and the unused part is released right after. A key needs at least that balance to search.
• The follower number in results is an estimate from a third-party database, labelled as such in ext.followers_note. More on that in the competitor monitoring guide.