# Zhihu API: questions, answers and comments (2026)

Two routes: Zhihu's own data platform has search, a hot list and question answers under its own quotas and prices; a third-party data API reads questions, whole answers, comments, columns, pins and users. DataXAPI has 16 Zhihu endpoints at $0.0020 a call, on one key with no account or cookie of yours. The free trial covers up to 333 calls; a failed call is not charged.

Updated 2026-11-06

## Does Zhihu have an official API?

Yes: Zhihu's data platform. By its documents as read on 2026-11-04, search gives up to 10 results with `HasMore` always false for now; question answers give 1 to 50 a request, as summaries; its home page offers 5,000 free calls a day on signing up, and past that search and answers are 20 yuan per 1,000.

## What do DataXAPI's Zhihu endpoints return?

Questions, answers and articles take an ID or the link pasted as it is; a user is named by the handle in their profile's address (url_token).

| You want | Endpoint | Returns |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Answers and articles by keyword | `zhihu.posts.search` | About 18 a page with further pages, by relevance, newest or upvotes |
| A question and its answers | `zhihu.questions.get`, `zhihu.questions.answers.list` | The first 20 answers with text, upvotes, comments and saves |
| One answer, its comments and replies | `zhihu.answers.get`, `zhihu.answers.comments.list`, `zhihu.comments.replies.list` | The whole answer; comments about 10 a page |
| Columns, articles, pins | `zhihu.columns.articles.list`, `zhihu.articles.get`, `zhihu.pins.get` | Title, text, upvotes and comments |
| A user and what they wrote | `zhihu.users.get`, `zhihu.users.answers.list`, `zhihu.users.articles.list` | Newest first |
| Hot list | `zhihu.trends.list` | Listed questions, rank, heat and answer count |

## What does a study cost?

20 keywords 3 pages deep (about 1,080 results) $0.12, the answers to 50 questions (about 1,000) $0.10, 3 pages of comments under 100 answers (about 3,000) $0.60: $0.82 in all. A failed call is not charged.

## Why DataXAPI

- Steady: endpoints were available 100% of the last 30 days, on a public status page you can check.
- Fast: a paid call took 1.7 seconds at the median over the last 7 days (counted 2026-11-06).
- Fewer tokens: across 16 endpoints on Zhihu, one recorded real response each, the platform's own JSON comes to 712k tokens and what an AI reads through DataXAPI's MCP server to 63k, 91% fewer; the JSON of a direct API call is 73% fewer too (counted 2026-11-06). Every platform answers in one shape: the author in `author`, counts in `metrics`, the next page in `page.next_cursor`, so another platform needs no new parser.
- See before you pay: every endpoint's page shows a recorded real response, field by field.
- Spending you control: a failed call is not charged; each key can have a limit, `X-Max-Price` caps one call, and the same `Idempotency-Key` within 24 hours is never charged twice.
- Ready for AI: a remote MCP server listed in the official MCP registry as `com.dataxapi/mcp`, usable from Claude, Cursor and ChatGPT.
- Free trial of up to 333 calls, no card.

## Endpoints

- [Zhihu content search](https://dataxapi.com/apis/zhihu/posts/search/) ($0.0020 / a call): Get a page of Zhihu answers and articles matching a search; either kind alone, by relevance, newest or most upvoted.
- [Zhihu question detail](https://dataxapi.com/apis/zhihu/questions/get/) ($0.0020 / a call): Get one Zhihu question by ID or link: title, details, when it was asked, answer, follower and view counts.
- [Zhihu question answers](https://dataxapi.com/apis/zhihu/questions/answers/list/) ($0.0020 / a call): Get the first 20 answers to a Zhihu question by ID or link, in Zhihu's own order: text, author, upvotes, comment and save counts. One page only.
- [Zhihu answer detail](https://dataxapi.com/apis/zhihu/answers/get/) ($0.0020 / a call): Get one Zhihu answer by ID or link: its question, text, author, time posted.
- [Zhihu answer comments](https://dataxapi.com/apis/zhihu/answers/comments/list/) ($0.0020 / a call): Get a page of comments on a Zhihu answer: text, commenter, likes, reply count, time posted.
- [Zhihu user profile](https://dataxapi.com/apis/zhihu/users/get/) ($0.0020 / a call): Get a Zhihu user's profile by the handle in its address: name, headline, follower count, answer and article counts.
- [Zhihu hot list](https://dataxapi.com/apis/zhihu/trends/list/) ($0.0020 / a call): Get Zhihu's hot list: the questions on it, their rank, heat (approximate) and answer count; an entry's ID is its question's.

## How-to guides

- [Zhihu API in Python: questions and answers (2026)](https://dataxapi.com/guides/zhihu-api-python/)

## Sources

What this page says of other services is from their own pages and documents, read on 2026-11-04.

- [Zhihu data platform: home page](https://developer.zhihu.com/)
- [Zhihu data platform: prices](https://developer.zhihu.com/docs?key=billing_price)
- [Zhihu data platform: search API](https://developer.zhihu.com/docs?key=zhihu_search)

## More about Zhihu

- [Zhihu API](https://dataxapi.com/apis/zhihu/)
- [What is x-zse-96 on Zhihu? (2026)](https://dataxapi.com/answers/zhihu-x-zse-96/)
- [My Zhihu scraper stopped working: what now? (2026)](https://dataxapi.com/answers/zhihu-scraper-not-working/)
- [How do I let my AI read Zhihu, Bilibili and Weibo? (2026)](https://dataxapi.com/answers/ai-read-zhihu-bilibili-weibo/)
- [What does Zhihu error 40362 mean? (2026)](https://dataxapi.com/answers/zhihu-40362/)
- [Zhihu MCP server for Claude and Cursor (2026)](https://dataxapi.com/answers/zhihu-mcp/)
- [How to find Zhihu question and answer ids (2026)](https://dataxapi.com/answers/zhihu-question-answer-id/)
- [Zhihu API for AI agents and LLMs: fewer tokens, called from Claude and Cursor (2026)](https://dataxapi.com/answers/zhihu-api-for-ai-agents/)

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Catalog revision 9d3b7fa5a896745d. [HTML version](https://dataxapi.com/answers/zhihu-data-apis/)