Best TikTok hashtag scrapers, and how to judge a hashtag

November 8, 2026

Hashtag data answers two questions: how big is this topic, and what is working inside it. A hashtag scraper gives you the hashtag's totals and the videos posted under it. Here are the options and a short method for deciding whether a hashtag is worth your time.

What you can get for a hashtag

• Totals: total views and number of videos using the tag.
• Videos: the videos under the tag, each with plays, likes, comments, shares, saves, author and sound.
• Context: co-occurring hashtags, which creators dominate, and how recent the top videos are.

The options

Details: the Research API lets you filter videos by hashtag_name, keyword, region and date, but each query spans at most 30 days source. yt-dlp marks its TikTok tag extractor as currently broken source. Bright Data lists a TikTok hashtag scraper source. EnsembleData lists hashtag search among its TikTok endpoints source. Exolyt's free Basic plan tracks 1 hashtag; Essentials tracks 50 for $400 a month, or $330 billed annually source.

If you only need to glance at trends once a week, TikTok's own Creative Center is free and good enough. Use a scraper or API when you need the numbers in a spreadsheet or a product.

How to judge a hashtag in five numbers

Total views alone is misleading. #fyp has enormous totals and tells you nothing. Pull the top 50 to 100 videos under the tag and compute:

1. Views per video = total views / total videos. A tag with fewer videos but high views per video is less crowded.
2. Recency = share of the sampled videos posted in the last 30 days. Under 20% suggests a tag that peaked.
3. Creator concentration = share of sampled plays that belong to the top 3 creators. Over 50% means a few accounts own the tag.
4. Median plays of the sampled videos, compared with your own median. That is your realistic ceiling.
5. Engagement rate = (likes + comments + shares) / plays across the sample.

from statistics import median
from datetime import datetime, timedelta, timezone

def score(videos, total_views, total_videos):
    now = datetime.now(timezone.utc)
    recent = [v for v in videos
              if datetime.fromisoformat(v["created_at"].replace("Z", "+00:00")) > now - timedelta(days=30)]
    plays = [v["plays"] or 0 for v in videos]
    by_author = {}
    for v in videos:
        h = (v.get("author") or {}).get("handle")
        by_author[h] = by_author.get(h, 0) + (v["plays"] or 0)
    top3 = sum(sorted(by_author.values(), reverse=True)[:3])
    eng = sum((v["likes"] or 0) + (v["comments"] or 0) + (v["shares"] or 0) for v in videos)
    return {
        "views_per_video": total_views / total_videos if total_videos else None,
        "recency": len(recent) / len(videos),
        "concentration": top3 / sum(plays) if sum(plays) else None,
        "median_plays": median(plays),
        "engagement_rate": eng / sum(plays) if sum(plays) else None,
    }

Tips

• Compare tags in the same niche, not across niches. Beauty and B2B software live on different scales.
• Re-pull weekly and keep the snapshots. A tag's growth rate says more than its size.
• Look at the sounds the top videos use. Sounds often travel faster than hashtags. See tracking trending sounds.

A worked example

Say you sell running shoes and are choosing between three tags for a campaign. Pull the top 100 videos for each and score them. One tag might have the biggest totals but low recency, meaning it peaked years ago. Another might be smaller, with most of its top videos posted this month and plays spread across many creators. The second is usually the better bet: it is active, and no single account owns it. Then read the captions of the top 10 videos in the winning tag and note the hooks they use. That list becomes your creative brief.

How to do it with ScrapeIO

tiktok search hashtag API returns the hashtag's totals (videos and views) and a page of its videos in one call, at 1 credit per page. Use tiktok search keyword API to catch videos on the topic that skip the tag, and tiktok trending API to see what is rising by country.

Sources

Checked on 8 November 2026 from each vendor's own pages. Prices and limits change; follow the links before you decide.

• https://developers.tiktok.com/doc/research-api-specs-query-videos
• https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/supportedsites.md
• https://brightdata.com/products/web-scraper/tiktok
• https://ensembledata.com/tiktok-api
• https://ensembledata.com/pricing
• https://exolyt.com/pricing