RedNote (Xiaohongshu) analytics for foreign brands: what you can measure from public notes without an account
Short answer: From a RedNote note's public share page you can measure what the note says (caption, the text inside every image, a video's speech), how it performed on the day you read it (likes, saves, comments, shares), what its top comments argue about, and — across a set of notes — which themes, hooks, claims and objections recur. You cannot measure followers, reach, impressions or anything behind a login. LinkDigest reads the public page from a share link, with no Xiaohongshu account and no cookies, and returns those measurements as JSON.
Disclosure: LinkDigest is the author's own service. Every number below is from a run recorded on this site, with its date.
What one note gives you
| measure | where it comes from | notes |
|---|---|---|
| caption, hashtags, author, posted date | the note | as published |
| text inside the images (OCR) and a description of each image | the images | RedNote notes keep their substance in the pictures |
| the video's speech, with times | the video | when the note is a video |
| likes · saves · comments · shares | the note's stats | a snapshot at read time, with as_of |
| top comments, each with reply count and up to 3 replies | the share page | at most 5 — see below |
| key points with quotes | LinkDigest | every quote checked against the note word for word |
Measured on 725 cached RedNote notes on 2026-11-06: 404 (56%) carried top comments, 274 of them the share page's cap of 5; Douyin videos carried none (584 of 584), because Douyin is read through its embed player. The full measurement is in the comments post.
Three analyses a brand actually runs
1. Consumer insight from one note. Add "insight": true and the read returns audience, selling points, objections and complaints, purchase intent and the questions readers asked — every item a quote from the note or its top comments, dropped if the words are not there. comments_read says how many comments the insight drew on.
2. A category in one comparison. Send 10–20 share links to the batch endpoint with synthesis: true and get one page: recurring themes, hooks, formats, claims, reader objections and gaps, each with the note number and the quote that shows it. A six-note Penang food comparison on 2026-10-18 took 172 seconds and 26 credits (competitor analysis).
3. A topic, searched and ranked. POST /api/v1/search with a Chinese query finds the notes, reads them and ranks them by likes + 2 × saves + comments. One measured run: four camping-gear notes, 7 credits (search API).
The call
curl -s -X POST https://linkdigest.dev/api/v1/digest \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ld_live_..." \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"url": "https://xhslink.com/o/...", "format": "json", "insight": true, "translate_to": "en"}'
translate_to: "en" adds an English translation of the caption, image text, speech and key points (+1 credit); the Chinese stays alongside so the quotes can be checked.
What you do not get
- No account-level data. Followers, follower growth, impressions, reach, click-through and anything inside the creator dashboard are behind a login and are not read.
- Not the whole comment thread. Five top comments with up to three replies each is what the share page embeds.
- A snapshot, not a time series. Stats are what the page showed when it was read, dated
as_of; a link already read returns the stored read free rather than fetching the page again. - Only share links read reliably. A bare
/explore/<id>withoutxsec_tokenshows RedNote's "page not found"; copy the link from the app's share sheet (why).
Pricing
An image note is 1 credit (up to 6 images, +1 per further 6); a video 1 credit plus 1 per started minute; insight +1; translation +1; a search that finds notes on Xiaohongshu 4 credits; a comparison 1 credit per started ten notes. Sign-up gives 10 free credits with no card; then $1.50 for 50, $5 for 250 or $39 for 2,000 (one-time, never expiring), or $9 a month for 500. Platform notes: Xiaohongshu.