Questions API customers have asked us, with the answers we checked against the code and the live index.
Does an empty cursor start cursor pagination? Do cursors expire?
Yes, send cursor= (empty) on the first call of /v1/creators/search. Any
cursor parameter, empty included, switches to cursor pagination: the response
carries meta.next_cursor while there is more to read, and no page or
total_pages. Leave the parameter out entirely for page-based paging.
Cursors do not expire. A cursor is the sort position of the last creator you received, and we keep nothing on our side for it, so one from yesterday still works. The index is live, so a creator whose follower count changed between your calls can move across your position: a walk spread over days can skip or repeat a few creators. See paging past 10,000.
Does min_engagement_rate drop creators with no rate? Can I keep them?
By default, yes: a minimum leaves out every creator we have never measured, the ones whose
engagement_rate comes back null. Pass
include_unknown_engagement=true to keep them. Creators measured below your minimum
stay out either way, and so do creators whose measured rate is above 35%, which we treat as not
credible. With the opt-in, a few old entries with a rate under 1% are only caught after the
search, so a page can hold fewer rows than per_page;
meta.excluded_below_min_engagement counts them.
The minimum is compared in whole percents, so min_engagement_rate=0.035 returns the
same creators as 0.04.
How often are creators re-analysed? Does looking one up refresh it?
Most creators are not re-analysed often. On 12 October 2026, of the 13.7 million creators with
1,000 to 10,000 followers, 1.6% had been analysed in the last 7 days, 8.8% in the last 30, 12.9%
in the last 90 and 45% in the last year. The median was last analysed about a year ago. We hold no
creators under 1,000 followers. last_analyzed_at on every creator says when we last
read them, and analyzed_within_days filters on it.
GET /v1/creators/:id does not refresh a creator: it returns what we hold, for
1 credit. GET /v1/creators/:id/posts on a
creator we analysed long ago puts them in our scrape queue and answers
202 analysis_pending, which is not charged. It is not instant: in a check on
12 October 2026, a creator queued this way had not been re-analysed 10 minutes later. Watch
last_analyzed_at to see when it lands; the posts call costs
25 credits once it answers with posts.
What does hashtags[] match at balanced? Are several values AND or OR?
OR: a creator needs to match one of the values. At balanced, the default
niche_level, a value matches when it is a word in the creator's bio, or when it is
one of the hashtags that recur in their top posts (for a creator we hold no top-post rollup for,
the hashtags parsed from their posts stand in). Either is enough. niche requires the
top posts, laser both, and wide any use of the hashtag.
Does include=recent_posts cost extra?
No. A search costs 1 credit per creator returned, with or without
include=recent_posts, and an empty page costs nothing. See
search billing.
Is hashtags a list of strings or of objects?
Strings. hashtags and mentions are lists of plain values, most used
first, without the # or @. Earlier versions of these docs showed
{"value", "count"} objects; the response has always sent strings, and the docs now
say so.
What order are recent posts in? Are pinned posts included? Video or photo?
recent_posts is newest first by published_at, up to 12 of the posts we
hold for the creator. Order is by publish date only, and pinned posts are not marked. We store no
post type, so nothing in the response tells a video from a photo carousel.
Do picture and cover_url expire?
For creators we analysed in 2025 or later, no: picture points at a copy on our own
storage with no expiry in the URL, and so does cover_url on the posts we stored
recently. Older entries, such as creators last analysed in 2020, can still carry
TikTok's own image URL. Some of those are signed with an expiry date and no longer load.
last_analyzed_at tells you which era a creator's picture is from. A fresh analysis
replaces the picture with our own copy; see
how fresh creator data is for what queues one.
How many creators do you hold in a country? Do crawls add creators for everyone?
Run the search you care about with per_page=1 and read meta.total, for
1 credit (one creator returned, so the price is the same before and after the per-creator billing change). For example, on 12 October 2026 we held
81,778 creators in Australia with 1,000 to 10,000 followers. A creator's country comes mostly
from the region TikTok showed on their profile, which TikTok stopped sending in 2025, so newer
creators often have none and a country filter leaves them out.
Yes. A seed campaign's crawler adds the creators it scrapes with 1,000 followers or more to the shared index, the same one every customer's search reads.