Bilibili Scraper: Video, Creator and Search Data in Python

Bilibili is the main long form video platform in China, with a creator economy and comment culture closer to early YouTube than to the short video apps. For anyone doing China market research, competitor content analysis, or creator partnership sourcing, it is the platform where the substantive video content lives.

Its data is also unusually accessible. Bilibili serves public video metadata, search results and creator statistics from JSON endpoints that do not require a login or cookies, which means no browser and no session management.

Try it live: Bilibili Scraper: Videos, Creators and Search. Pay only for results delivered, no result no charge.

The Bilibili Scraper runs over plain HTTP with no browser, which is why a keyword search returns in around five seconds and costs a fraction of a cent.

Three input modes

Keyword search. Pass keywords and get ranked search results per term, paginated to your cap. This is the mode for “what content exists about X”.

Video lookup. Pass videoUrls for specific videos you already know about. Use this to re-read metrics on a tracked set.

Creator feed. Pass creatorIds (the numeric uid) to get a creator’s uploads and profile stats. This is the mode for partnership sourcing and competitor channel tracking.

You can combine them in one run. Each mode emits its own record_type, so filter on that when reading the dataset.

Fields you get

Field	Notes
bvid	Bilibili’s stable video id, the key to store
aid	Legacy numeric id, still present in some responses
title, description	As published
author_name, author_uid	Creator, with the uid for follow up queries
duration_seconds	Parsed to an integer
published_at	Publication timestamp
view, like and comment counts	Engagement metrics where the endpoint returns them

Finding creators in a niche

from apify_client import ApifyClient
from collections import defaultdict

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("themineworks/bilibili-scraper").call(run_input={
    "keywords": ["home coffee brewing", "espresso"],
    "maxResultsPerKeyword": 200,
})

by_creator = defaultdict(list)
for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    if row.get("record_type") != "video-search-result":
        continue
    by_creator[(row["author_uid"], row["author_name"])].append(row)

ranked = sorted(by_creator.items(), key=lambda kv: len(kv[1]), reverse=True)
for (uid, name), vids in ranked[:10]:
    print(f"{name:<24} uid={uid}  {len(vids)} videos in results")

Creators appearing repeatedly across searches in a niche are the ones with depth in it, which is a better partnership signal than a single viral video.

A note on stopping conditions

The actor breaks out of a keyword when a page returns nothing new, and caps at 25 pages. Bilibili’s search recycles results in the deep tail, so pushing further returns duplicates you would pay for twice. If you need more depth on a topic, use several narrower keywords rather than one broad keyword paginated further.

Pricing

Pay per result delivered, from $1.20 per 1,000 on higher Apify plans and $1.80 per 1,000 on the free plan. Search, video detail and creator rows are priced identically, so the quoted rate holds whatever mix you request. Keywords that return nothing are not charged.

Use it from an AI agent

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=themineworks/bilibili-scraper

Related

• Weibo Scraper for Chinese microblog posts and profiles
• YouTube Channel Scraper for the equivalent western creator data
• TikTok Shop Products for social commerce listings