Zhihu

Zhihu hot list and content search: the hot list returns current trending questions by rank; the comprehensive search returns results by keyword (each result carries the full body and images); the question / column-article detail returns the body with images, comments, related questions and "others are searching".

/api/zhihu/

Service Description

The Zhihu hot-list API returns the current rank, title, direct link, excerpt, heat and answer count for each trending item — handy for trending aggregation, topic research and content dashboards.

Comprehensive search /api/zhihu/search: search Zhihu content by keyword; each result comes with the full body and images (not an excerpt), plus author, upvotes and comment count, along with "others are searching"; use offset to page through results.

Two ways to supply the login credential: pass cookie in the request (your own Zhihu login cookie — used for this call only, never stored by us); omit it and the endpoint falls back to the platform-hosted account — the platform keeps Zhihu accounts and login cookies under "Accounts" in the console and automatically picks an available credential. Paste it into the "Local credentials" card in the right sidebar of the docs page and click "Save to this browser" so the debugger sends it automatically. If the platform-hosted credential expires, the endpoint explicitly reports that a fresh login is required and marks that account as "Expired".

Question detail /api/zhihu/question: pass a question ID (or the question page URL) to get the question body with its images, the answer list (with images and each answer's top comments), the question's own comments, related questions and "others are searching"; the number of answers and comments can be tuned with parameters.

Column article detail /api/zhihu/article: pass an article ID (or the article page URL) to get the full article body with its images, comments and "others are searching". An article page has only these three modules — there is no "answer list" and no "related questions" (those are question-page only).

/api/zhihu/check verifies whether a Zhihu credential is still valid: pass cookie to check your own (the platform account is never touched), or omit it to check the platform-hosted account and write the result back to its status.

Response Format

Every endpoint returns the same JSON envelope; the payload is always inside data:

{
  "code": 10000,
  "msg": "成功",
  "data": { ... }
}

code: business status code. 10000 means success; anything else is an error — see the Error Codes page for the full list.
msg: a human-readable message you can show to end users, but never use it for program logic.
data: the payload; usually null on error. Each endpoint's Response section lists its data fields.

Judge success by code, not by the HTTP status code. View all error codes

Zhihu

Zhihu (zhihu.com) Signature Required

Data comes from Zhihu's official web endpoints; callers may supply their own login cookie, otherwise the platform-hosted account is used.

POST /api/zhihu/hot Total calls: 1

Hot list

Get the Zhihu hot list (50 items by default, 50 max).

Number of items

Optional, 1–50, default 50. Out-of-range values return an invalid-parameter error.

Heat is kept as Zhihu's original wording (e.g. "13.7M heat") without numeric conversion, to avoid misreading the metric.
url is a web address you can open directly in a browser; question_id is the Zhihu question ID.
GET is also accepted (parameters go in the query string); because a Zhihu cookie is long, POST with the cookie in the form body is recommended.

Response Common envelope

Field	Type	Description
count	int	Number of items returned
list[].rank	int	Rank, starting from 1
list[].title	string	Title
list[].url	string	Web address (openable directly)
list[].excerpt	string	Excerpt (may be empty)
list[].hot	string	Heat text, e.g. "13.7M heat"
list[].answer_count	int	Answer count (may be 0)
list[].question_id	int	Zhihu question ID
list[].cover	string	Cover image URL (may be empty)

POST /api/zhihu/question Total calls: 0

Question detail

Question detail: the question body with images, answers (with images and comments), question comments, related questions and "others are searching".

Question ID or page URL *

Required. The Zhihu question ID (plain digits), or the question page URL (e.g. https://www.zhihu.com/question/2089437755591713926).

Number of answers

Optional, 1–20, default 5. How many answers to return.

Comments per answer

Optional, 0–20, default 3. How many top comments to return per answer (0 = none).

Number of question comments

Optional, 0–20, default 10. How many of the question's own comments to return (0 = none).

Images: both the question body and each answer body come with the raw HTML (detail / content, ready to render) and a pre-extracted images array of image URLs (original resolution preferred, de-duplicated).
Comments: the question's comments are in question.comments, and each answer's comments are in that answer's comments; every comment inlines up to 3 child comments (replies).
answer_count / comment_count are totals, not the number returned in this call — the returned counts are controlled by answer_limit / comment_limit.
"Related questions" are supplied dynamically by Zhihu, so the count varies (5 max); "others are searching" always returns 10 items, each with a ready-to-open Zhihu search URL.
The question itself (title / body / topics / counters) is parsed from data embedded in the question page (Zhihu's own endpoint is signature-gated and cannot be called directly); if parsing fails, the endpoint reports it explicitly.
GET is also accepted (parameters go in the query string); because a Zhihu cookie is long, POST with the cookie in the form body is recommended.

Response Common envelope

Field	Type	Description
question.id	string	Question ID
question.title	string	Title
question.url	string	Question page URL
question.detail	string	Question body HTML (kept verbatim)
question.images	array	Image URLs in the question body
question.excerpt	string	Body excerpt
question.topics[].name	string	Topic name
question.topics[].url	string	Topic page URL
question.answer_count	int	Total answers
question.follower_count	int	Followers
question.comment_count	int	Total comments
question.visit_count	int	View count
question.created_time	int	Created time (Unix seconds)
question.updated_time	int	Updated time (Unix seconds)
question.comments[]	array	Question comments (shape listed below)
comments[].id	string	Comment ID
comments[].content	string	Comment body (plain text)
comments[].author.name	string	Commenter name
comments[].like_count	int	Like count
comments[].child_comment_count	int	Total child comments
comments[].reply_to_author	string	Reply target (child comments only)
comments[].child_comments[]	array	Inlined child comments (up to 3, same shape as the parent)
answers[].id	string	Answer ID
answers[].url	string	Answer page URL
answers[].content	string	Answer body HTML
answers[].images	array	Image URLs in the answer body
answers[].excerpt	string	Answer excerpt
answers[].author.name	string	Author name
answers[].author.url	string	Author profile URL
answers[].voteup_count	int	Upvotes
answers[].comment_count	int	Total comments on this answer
answers[].comments[]	array	This answer's comments (same shape as question.comments[])
related_questions[].title	string	Related question title
related_questions[].url	string	Related question page URL
related_questions[].answer_count	int	Answer count
related_questions[].follower_count	int	Followers
hot_searches[].query	string	Search term
hot_searches[].hot	int	Heat value
hot_searches[].hot_show	string	Heat text (e.g. "6.48M")
hot_searches[].url	string	Zhihu search page URL

POST /api/zhihu/article Total calls: 0

Column article detail

Zhihu column article detail: the full article body with images, comments and "others are searching".

Article ID or page URL *

Required. The Zhihu article ID (plain digits), or the article page URL (e.g. https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/608180793).

Comment count

Optional, 0–20, default 10. How many top comments to return (0 = none).

The body is the full text: it is the complete article body embedded in the page, not an excerpt; content_truncated is true only when Zhihu itself truncated a very long article (rare).
Images: content is the raw HTML (ready to render) and images is a pre-extracted array of image URLs (original resolution preferred, de-duplicated).
An article page has only three modules: body, comments and "others are searching" — there is no "answer list" and no "related questions" (those are question-page only).
comment_count is the total number of comments, not the number returned in this call (that is controlled by comment_limit).
GET is also accepted (parameters go in the query string); because a Zhihu cookie is long, POST with the cookie in the form body is recommended.

Response Common envelope

Field	Type	Description
article.id	string	Article ID
article.title	string	Title
article.url	string	Article page URL
article.content	string	Article body HTML (kept verbatim; may contain images / code blocks / quotes)
article.images	array	Image URLs in the body
article.excerpt	string	Excerpt
article.topics[].name	string	Topic name
article.topics[].url	string	Topic page URL
article.author.name	string	Author nickname
article.author.url	string	Author profile URL
article.voteup_count	int	Upvotes
article.comment_count	int	Total comments
article.liked_count	int	"Like" count
article.favlists_count	int	Favorite count
article.content_truncated	bool	Whether Zhihu truncated the body (true means this is not the full text)
article.created_time	int	Published time (Unix seconds)
article.updated_time	int	Updated time (Unix seconds)
article.comments[]	array	Comments (same shape as question.comments[])
hot_searches[].query	string	Search term
hot_searches[].url	string	Zhihu search page URL

POST /api/zhihu/search Total calls: 0

Comprehensive search

Zhihu comprehensive search: a result list (each result carries the full body and images) plus "others are searching".

Search keyword *

Required. The keyword to search for.

Number of items

Optional, 1–20, default 20 (a single Zhihu page returns at most 20 items).

Page offset

Optional, 0–1000, default 0. To page through results, pass the next_offset returned by the previous call.

Each result carries the full body directly (content, up to tens of thousands of characters in practice, not an excerpt), so "read the full text" needs no per-item round trip.
Result types are answer, article and zvideo; a video has no body, so content is an empty string. An answer includes question (the question it belongs to); for articles and videos it is null.
Comments are given as a count only (comment_count, i.e. the "N comments" shown on the page) rather than fetched item by item — otherwise a single search would fire dozens of requests; for comment content use the question detail / column-article detail endpoints.
The <em> highlight tags in titles and excerpts have been stripped and HTML entities restored, so they are plain text ready for display.
Paging: pass the returned next_offset as the next call's offset; when is_end is true, next_offset is null, meaning there is no next page.
GET is also accepted (parameters go in the query string); because a Zhihu cookie is long, POST with the cookie in the form body is recommended.

Response Common envelope

Field	Type	Description
count	int	Number of items returned
is_end	bool	Whether the last page has been reached
next_offset	int	Offset of the next page (null on the last page)
list[].index	int	Index within this page, starting from 1
list[].type	string	Result type: answer / article / zvideo
list[].id	string	Content ID
list[].title	string	Title (highlight tags removed)
list[].url	string	Web address (openable directly)
list[].content	string	Full body HTML (empty for videos)
list[].images	array	Image URLs in the body
list[].excerpt	string	Excerpt (highlight tags removed)
list[].author.name	string	Author nickname
list[].author.url	string	Author profile URL
list[].voteup_count	int	Upvotes
list[].comment_count	int	Comment count
list[].created_time	int	Published time (Unix seconds)
list[].question.title	string	Title of the question the answer belongs to (empty for non-answers)
hot_searches[].query	string	Search term
hot_searches[].url	string	Zhihu search page URL

POST /api/zhihu/check Total calls: 0

Verify login credentials

Verify whether a Zhihu login credential is valid (pass `cookie` to check your own, otherwise the platform-hosted account is checked).

An invalid credential does not count as an API failure: the endpoint still returns a success code, with valid=false and the reason in data, letting the caller decide whether to prompt the user to sign in again.
Checking the platform-hosted account updates its "credential status" and "last check result", visible directly on the console's "Accounts" page; checking your own cookie does not touch the platform account.
GET is also accepted (parameters go in the query string); because a Zhihu cookie is long, POST with the cookie in the form body is recommended.

Response Common envelope

Field	Type	Description
valid	bool	Whether the credential is valid
account	string	The account identifier that was checked (empty when checking your own cookie)
message	string	Check message (includes the signed-in username when valid)

Endpoint catalog 5

Zhihu

POST Hot list /api/zhihu/hot POST Question detail /api/zhihu/question POST Column article detail /api/zhihu/article POST Comprehensive search /api/zhihu/search POST Verify login credentials /api/zhihu/check

Auth Settings

Stored locally only

Local Credentials

Stored locally only

Zhihu login Cookie

Optional. If provided, your cookie is used for this call only — never stored and never uploaded to us; if omitted, the platform-hosted account is used.

Stored only in this browser — never uploaded or persisted; attached automatically when you debug an endpoint that uses it.