Is there an API for the Weibo hot search list?

Weibo does not publish a documented endpoint for its hot search board, so most people either parse the web page or call an internal JSON route that changes without notice. With okdata the board is a single GET request. You get the topics a newsroom editor or a brand's social team is watching right now, in order, with the heat number Weibo prints next to each one.

The endpoint

Weibo hot search takes no parameters. Each row has four fields:

Field	What it holds
rank	Position on the board; 1 is the top
name	The topic text, without the # marks
heat	The heat number Weibo shows, or null when it shows none
url	A Weibo search link for the topic

Promoted rows are dropped before the response is built, so the ranks can skip a number where an ad used to sit.

What it costs

How often	Calls	Cost
Once	1	$0.002
Every hour for a day	24	$0.048
Every hour for 30 days	720	$1.44

The board is a single page, so one call always returns the whole list. There is no monthly plan, and a call that fails is not charged.

Python

import os, requests

r = requests.get(
    "https://api.okdata.online/v1/weibo/trends/list",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['OKDATA_API_KEY']}"},
    timeout=30,
).json()
if r["code"] != "ok":
    raise SystemExit(f"{r['code']}: {r['message']}")

for row in r["data"]["items"][:10]:
    print(row["rank"], row["name"], row["heat"])

Add fields=rank,name,heat when a model reads the result. The payload gets much shorter.

What it does not cover

• It is the board as it stands now. There is no date parameter, so yesterday's board exists only if you saved it yesterday.
• The entertainment, local and news sub-boards are not separate endpoints.
• To read what people say under a topic, search the topic with Weibo post search, $0.002 a page.

Other ways to get it

• If you look twice a day, the hot search page on weibo.com is free and quicker than any code.
• Open-source projects on GitHub fetch the board on a schedule. They suit you if you are happy to maintain one and fix it when Weibo changes its page.
• Weibo's open platform is the route when you need a formal agreement with Weibo itself. Its APIs need a developer account and approval.

To compare the Weibo board with Douyin, Bilibili and Xiaohongshu, see trend research. Agents such as Claude can call the same endpoint through the MCP server.