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 inmetrics, the next page inpage.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-Pricecaps one call, and the sameIdempotency-Keywithin 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
Each with its price; every page has the parameters, the fields and a recorded response.
Sources
What this page says of other services is from their own pages and documents, read on 2026-11-04.
Start with one key.
230 endpoints on 21 platforms, from $0.0003 a call. Errors and timeouts are not charged.