TikTok is the place for short-form video. The API is powerful but comes with specific restrictions around music, privacy, and image formats that will surprise you.
Supported Content Types
- Videos: 1 video, up to 10 minutes. The bread and butter.
- Photo Mode (Images): 1-10 images. JPG/JPEG only. If you’re thinking “surely PNG works too” - it doesn’t.
Quirks & Gotchas
Privacy Levels & Permalinks
If you set a video’s privacy to SELF_ONLY (Private), the API cannot return a public permalink immediately.
- The
permalink field will be null or internal-only.
- We can’t give you a link to something that doesn’t publicly exist. Physics still applies.
Music & Copyright
TikTok is extremely strict about music rights.
- Trending Audio: You generally cannot use TikTok’s “trending audio” library directly via API.
- Royalty-Free: You can use the
autoAddMusic flag to let TikTok assign royalty-free music, but you lose control over the specific track. It’s a gamble.
- Best Practice: Burn your audio into the video file before uploading.
TikTok only accepts JPG and JPEG files for Photo Mode posts. PNG, WebP, and everything else will be rejected. Convert before uploading.
The REVIEW Status
TikTok is the most common platform to put posts into a REVIEW status. This means TikTok wants to review the content before publishing. We periodically re-check and re-attempt publishing. Tell your users to be patient.
See Platform Limits for the full breakdown.
Analytics
For general analytics concepts (refresh rates, data retention, what “Returns 0” means), see the Analytics Overview.
TikTok provides some of the richest analytics data among all platforms. Demographics, audience splits, the works. Check the raw analytics for the detailed breakdowns.
Profile Analytics
Period: Rolling window (30 days). Aggregated from daily metrics.
| Metric | Description | Note |
|---|
impressions | Video views | |
impressionsUnique | Unique video views | |
views | Video views | Same as impressions for TikTok |
viewsUnique | Unique video views | Same as impressionsUnique |
likes | Total likes | Aggregated across all videos |
comments | Total comments | |
postCount | Total videos | |
followers | Followers | |
following | Following | |
Post Analytics
Period: Lifetime (Snapshot).
| Metric | Description | Note |
|---|
impressions | Video views | |
impressionsUnique | Unique views | TikTok doesn’t always distinguish; can equal impressions |
views | Video views | Same as impressions |
viewsUnique | Unique views | Same as impressionsUnique |
likes | Likes | |
comments | Comments | |
shares | Shares | |
saves | - | Returns 0 (not provided by TikTok API) |
Quirks
- Profile analytics aggregate daily metrics over a 30-day window.
- Post analytics are lifetime values.
- TikTok can take up to 48 hours to process some detailed analytics like audience demographics.
- Views and unique views are tracked separately but can sometimes be 0 if the platform decides so.
Raw Analytics - Demographics & Audience Data
TikTok provides rich audience and engagement data via raw analytics. Here’s what the raw payload looks like when enabled for your organization:
Account-Level Raw Data
{
"followers_count": 125400,
"following_count": 342,
"total_likes": 2891000,
"videos_count": 287,
"unique_video_views": 1450000,
"video_views": 8920000,
"comments": 45200,
"audience_ages": [
{ "age_range": "18-24", "percentage": 42.3 },
{ "age_range": "25-34", "percentage": 31.7 },
{ "age_range": "35-44", "percentage": 14.2 },
{ "age_range": "45-54", "percentage": 7.1 },
{ "age_range": "55+", "percentage": 4.7 }
],
"audience_cities": [
{ "city": "Los Angeles", "percentage": 8.2 },
{ "city": "New York", "percentage": 7.1 },
{ "city": "London", "percentage": 5.4 }
],
"engaged_audience": [
{ "metric": "likes", "value": 89200 },
{ "metric": "comments", "value": 4520 },
{ "metric": "shares", "value": 12300 }
],
"metrics": [
{
"date": "2026-01-15",
"new_followers": 234,
"video_views": 45600,
"profile_views": 1230,
"likes": 3400,
"comments": 120,
"shares": 890
}
]
}
Video-Level Raw Data
{
"item_id": "7123456789",
"caption": "My viral video",
"video_views": 1200000,
"likes": 89000,
"comments": 4500,
"shares": 12000,
"average_time_watched": 18.4,
"full_video_watched_rate": 0.42,
"total_time_watched": 22080000,
"reach": 890000,
"impression_sources": [
{ "source": "For You", "percentage": 72.1 },
{ "source": "Following", "percentage": 15.3 },
{ "source": "Search", "percentage": 8.4 }
],
"audience_genders": [
{ "gender": "Male", "percentage": 45.2 },
{ "gender": "Female", "percentage": 52.1 },
{ "gender": "Other", "percentage": 2.7 }
],
"audience_countries": [
{ "country": "US", "percentage": 35.2 },
{ "country": "GB", "percentage": 12.4 },
{ "country": "BR", "percentage": 8.9 }
]
}
TikTok raw data includes impression sources (For You, Following, Search), watch-through rates, audience gender/country splits, and daily metrics breakdowns. This is gold for content strategy - use it.
