TikTok comments API: how to pull comments in 2026

TikTok has one official comments API, and it is open only to approved academic and non-profit researchers. For everyone else, TokConnect returns any video's comments and reply threads as JSON, with no application to file. The same data powers its research agent and API. Scraping vendors charge per record instead: Apify from $1.25 per 1,000 comments on its free plan, Bright Data $1.50 per 1,000 records.

The Display API, which any developer can use, only reaches the logged-in user's own videos and never returns other people's comments.

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<a href="https://tokconnect.com/guides/tiktok-comments-api/"><img src="https://tokconnect.com/graphics/tiktok-comments-api/summary.png" alt="One official comments endpoint, and it is for researchers: 1 official endpoint: the Research API; $1.25 per 1,000 comments on Apify; $1.50 per 1,000 records on Bright Data; 169K 7-day TikTok searches for bots comment on tiktok" width="1200" height="658" style="max-width:100%;height:auto"></a><br>Source: <a href="https://tokconnect.com/guides/tiktok-comments-api/">TikTok Comments API: How to Pull Comments in 2026</a> on TokConnect

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That leaves commercial builders with two routes: pay a vendor who scrapes comments for you, or call TokConnect and get comments back as JSON. Both are covered below, with a real response and the cursor contract that trips people up.

What is the official TikTok comments API endpoint?

The Research API's comment query takes a video_id, a max_count and a cursor, and returns comment text with like count, reply count and creation time. Paging is a cursor plus a has_more flag, and TikTok's own Python and R wrapper exposes it as query_video_comments() with a fetch_all_pages option. The daily quota across the Research API is 1,000 requests, up to 100,000 records, resetting at midnight UTC.

Eligibility is the whole story. TikTok accepts academic researchers in the US, EEA, UK and Switzerland, EU-registered non-profits, and Brazilian academic or non-profit researchers studying youth safety. You need a research proposal, no conflicts of interest and a commitment to non-commercial use, and approval takes about four weeks. Product teams do not qualify. Our Research API guide walks through the application.

Which paid vendors offer a TikTok comments API?

Each vendor's own page · 5 Oct 2026

Apify's own documentation says full reply extraction is not guaranteed, which is worth knowing before you build a thread-reconstruction feature on top of it.

TokConnect is the pick for comments and reply threads in an agent or a script today, with no application.

Is there a TikTok comments API you can call without approval?

Yes: TokConnect. Here is the part for developers. The MCP route gives an agent or a script one tool with two methods, video with method: "comments" and method: "replies", one of TokConnect's 34 tools. The older names, video_comments and comment_replies, which produced the responses below, still answer. The server address is https://mcp.tokconnect.com/mcp with Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKCONNECT_KEY. Keys come from app.tokconnect.com/api-key. Free to start, no card. The REST API is on every paid plan. Paid plans from $34.99 a month, billed yearly. Every plan, Free included, works in ChatGPT, Claude and Cursor. Client setup is in the TikTok MCP guide.

Method comments takes id (the video id or its link), limit (1 to 50), sort (relevant or newest) and cursor; the older video_comments took aweme_id and count. We searched learn to code by most liked, took the top video (a 470-comment HTML guide with 697,600 views), and asked for ten comments:

{
  "comments": [
    {
      "id": "7571850576905454347",
      "text": "Can use HTML,CSS & JS to create a whole working system?",
      "createTime": 1762958989,
      "diggCount": 74,
      "replyTotal": 2,
      "authorUniqueId": "[handle removed]",
      "authorNickname": "[name removed]",
      "isAuthor": false,
      "awemeId": "7556520311135407382"
    }
  ],
  "count": 10,
  "hasMore": true,
  "nextCursor": 10,
  "total": 470,
  "awemeId": "7556520311135407382"
}

TikTok comments on the top "learn to code" video · 19 Sep 2026

Three fields do most of the work. total is the comment count TikTok reports for the whole video, so you know up front how many pages you are in for. diggCount is likes on the comment. isAuthor marks the video creator's own replies, which is how you separate the conversation from the host.

The cursor contract

Comment paging is a cursor, not a page number. Send cursor: 0 first, then send back whatever nextCursor you were given. Our second call used cursor: 10 and returned ten more with nextCursor: 20. Stop when hasMore is false, not when you hit total: deleted and hidden comments mean the two rarely line up exactly.

There is no separate "top comments" tool, and you do not need one. Results come back in TikTok's own order, which is not a like ranking. On page one the second comment had 823 likes and the third had 2. Pull two or three pages and sort by diggCount yourself.

Replies

Method replies takes the same id, a comment_id from the list above, a limit and a cursor. The most-replied comment on that video was a complaint about being taught in Notepad first, with 823 likes and 14 replies. The thread under it:

[
  {
    "text": "notepad isn't bad😁",
    "diggCount": 18
  },
  {
    "text": "it asss brr😂🤝 writing every single code and debugging the whole shi not knowing u made a mistake with just spacing",
    "diggCount": 55
  },
  {
    "text": "we learn in vscode",
    "diggCount": 9
  }
]

That is the reason to read replies rather than just top-level comments. The parent is a joke. The replies are three beginners telling you which editor they were actually taught in, which is the kind of thing you cannot get from view counts.

How do you get an aweme_id from a URL?

Every comments call needs a video id. TikTok calls it an aweme_id and it is sitting in the URL.

• Standard link. https://www.tiktok.com/@creator/video/7556520311135407382. The digits after /video/ are the id.
• Short link. vm.tiktok.com/… and vt.tiktok.com/… redirect. The video tool takes the short link as it is; with the older tools, follow the redirect and read the id off the final URL.
• From search. video_search returns each result's id, which is the same value. That is how you go from a keyword to a set of videos to their comments without touching a browser.

How do you call it from Python?

With the official mcp package (pip install mcp), paging every comment on a video is short:

import asyncio, json, os
from mcp import ClientSession
from mcp.client.streamable_http import streamablehttp_client

URL, AUTH = "https://mcp.tokconnect.com/mcp", {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['TOKCONNECT_KEY']}"}

async def comments(video_id, max_pages=10):
    async with streamablehttp_client(URL, headers=AUTH) as (r, w, _):
        async with ClientSession(r, w) as s:
            await s.initialize()
            out, cursor = [], 0
            for _ in range(max_pages):
                page = json.loads((await s.call_tool("video", {
                    "method": "comments", "id": video_id, "limit": 50,
                    "cursor": cursor})).content[0].text)
                out += page["comments"]
                if not page.get("hasMore"):
                    break
                cursor = page["nextCursor"]
            return sorted(out, key=lambda c: -c["diggCount"])

for c in asyncio.run(comments("7556520311135407382"))[:20]:
    print(f'{c["diggCount"]:>6}  {c["replyTotal"]:>3} replies  {c["text"][:70]}')

import httpx2
from mcp.client.streamable_http import streamable_http_client

async with streamable_http_client(URL, http_client=httpx2.AsyncClient(headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {KEY}"})) as (read, write):
    async with ClientSession(read, write) as session:
        ...

Ten pages of 50 is 500 comments. Write the list to CSV and you have the export TikTok does not give you; the comment viewer page compares the ways to get it, and the search guide covers finding the videos in the first place.

Paste this into an assistant with TokConnect connected:

Find the three most-liked TikTok videos for "learn to code", pull 50 comments from each, and group them into the questions people ask, the complaints, and the requests. Quote the five comments with the most likes and say how many replies each one got.

What do people search about TikTok comments?

If you build on comment data, note that "bots comment on tiktok" drew 168,749 searches in 7 days with no videos matched, so a pipeline that filters out automated comments is worth more than one that counts them. The full search table, and a 313-comment study, are in the TikTok comment finder guide.

The free comment viewer reads up to 30 comments on one video without code, and the giveaway picker draws winners from up to 250.

One limit worth stating plainly: comments are written by real people. Whichever route you pick, how you store and republish them is a privacy question as much as an engineering one, and TikTok's Terms of Service restrict automated extraction.

How we got these numbers

The comment examples come from TokConnect's MCP server on 19 September 2026, under the tool names it had then (now search and video): one search_videos call for "learn to code" sorted by most liked, one video_detail call, two video_comments pages of 10 and one comment_replies call. Commenter handles and names are removed.

The search figures come from one search_topics call for "tiktok comments" (20 records) on 5 October 2026; searches are TikTok's 7-day global search popularity, and we left out TikTok's topic groups (a 7-day figure of 5,000,000 or more, 1,000,000 or more with the week's first daily reading under 5% of its last, or TikTok's Featured Content category).

Vendor prices come from Apify's, Bright Data's and EnsembleData's own pages on 5 October 2026. Research API quota and eligibility come from TikTok's developer FAQ and 2026 coverage. Data: comments, "tiktok comments" topics, facts checked, TokConnect tool catalog.