TikTok Video Scraper

A Python-based Apify actor that extracts detailed metadata from TikTok videos without relying on external APIs or yt-dlp. It uses smart fetching strategies and is built for reliability in scraping scenarios.

Overview

This actor scrapes TikTok video pages to retrieve structured metadata. It's designed to be faster and more straightforward than methods using oEmbed or external APIs. Results are pushed to the default Apify dataset.

Key Features

• No External Dependencies: Does not use TikTok's oEmbed API, yt-dlp, or other external services, simplifying the stack.
• Robust Fetching:
  • Employs multiple User-Agent headers (desktop & mobile).
  • Tries URL variants (e.g., ?lang=en).
  • Falls back to a plaintext relay via r.jina.ai if needed.
• Proxy Support: Configurable to use Apify Proxy, with the RESIDENTIAL proxy group recommended for best results. Uses sticky sessions via ProxyConfiguration.new_url(session_id=…).
• Built-in Resilience: Includes retry logic with jittered backoff to handle network instability or anti-bot measures.
• Performance: Runs with async concurrency (configurable, defaulting to a maximum of 3 concurrent requests, or 1 if no proxy is set).

How to Use

Configure the actor using an input JSON object. The primary requirement is providing one or more TikTok video URLs via startUrls.

Example Input:

{
  "startUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.tiktok.com/@username/video/1234567890123456789"
    }
  ],
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Input & Output

Input Schema:
* startUrls (Array): A list of request objects containing url keys pointing to TikTok video pages.
* proxyConfiguration (Object, optional): Configuration for Apify Proxy. Using residential proxies is advised.

Output Schema:
Each processed URL yields a JSON object in the dataset. Key fields include:

{
  "fetched_at": "2025-08-21T17:07:34.693473+00:00",
  "source": "embedded_json",
  "video": {
    "id": "7534292343000730893",
    "title": "Video title and hashtags...",
    "desc": "Video description...",
    "date": "2025-08-03",
    "createTime": "1754214245",
    "duration": "17s",
    "shareUrl": "https://www.tiktok.com/@user/video/7534292343000730893",
    "videoUrl": "https://v16-webapp-prime.tiktok.com/...",
    "playAddr": "https://v16-webapp-prime.tiktok.com/...",
    "downloadAddr": "https://v16-webapp-prime.tiktok.com/...",
    "width": 576,
    "height": 1024,
    "ratio": "540p",
    "cover": "https://p16-sign.tiktokcdn-us.com/...",
    "dynamicCover": "https://p16-sign.tiktokcdn-us.com/..."
  }
}

The output contains comprehensive metadata, including video IDs, timestamps, descriptions, dimensions, and direct URLs to the video files and cover images.