TikTok API for Posting Videos and Photos

The official TikTok API

The Content Posting API has two modes: Direct Post, which publishes straight to the creator's profile and needs the video.publish scope, and upload to drafts, where the creator finishes the post in the TikTok app, which needs video.upload. Before posting, apps call the creator_info endpoint to get the privacy options and maximum video length allowed for that creator.

What posting requires

1. Register an app on TikTok for Developers, add the Content Posting API product and request the video.publish scope.
2. Until your app is audited, all content it posts is restricted to private (SELF_ONLY) viewing, only up to 5 users can post through it in 24 hours, and those accounts must be set to private.
3. Apply for the audit, including usage estimates. TikTok sets a daily cap on active creators for your app based on that application.
4. Build the posting screen TikTok requires: show the creator's nickname, a privacy dropdown with no default value, a commercial content disclosure toggle, and TikTok's music usage confirmation text.
5. To have TikTok pull media from a URL (PULL_FROM_URL), verify the domain or URL prefix first. Otherwise upload files in chunks.

Cost: TikTok's developer documentation does not list fees for the Content Posting API. The cost is the audit, the required UX work, and maintaining the integration.

Official limits

Common gotchas

• Access tokens expire after 24 hours; refresh tokens last 365 days, so your integration has to refresh tokens every day.
• Posting limits are per creator and shared across apps, so a post can fail with spam_risk_too_many_posts even if your app has posted little.
• Unaudited apps get the error unaudited_client_can_only_post_to_private_accounts when the target account is public.
• Chunked uploads have their own rules: chunks of 5 to 64 MB (the final chunk up to 128 MB) and at most 1,000 chunks.

Post to TikTok via API

curl -X POST https://api.publora.com/api/v1/create-post \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-publora-key: sk_YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "content": "3 ways we cut our editing time in half #creatortips",
    "platforms": ["tiktok-YOUR_OPEN_ID"],
    "scheduledTime": "2026-10-10T18:00:00Z",
    "mediaUrls": ["https://example.com/editing-tips.mp4"],
    "platformSettings": {
      "tiktok": {
        "viewerSetting": "PUBLIC_TO_EVERYONE",
        "allowComments": true,
        "allowDuet": false,
        "allowStitch": true,
        "commercialContent": false
      }
    }
  }'

import os
import requests

resp = requests.post(
    "https://api.publora.com/api/v1/create-post",
    headers={"x-publora-key": os.environ["PUBLORA_API_KEY"]},
    json={
        "content": "3 ways we cut our editing time in half #creatortips",
        "platforms": ["tiktok-YOUR_OPEN_ID"],
        "scheduledTime": "2026-10-10T18:00:00Z",
        "mediaUrls": ["https://example.com/editing-tips.mp4"],
        "platformSettings": {
            "tiktok": {
                "viewerSetting": "PUBLIC_TO_EVERYONE",
                "allowComments": True,
                "allowDuet": False,
                "allowStitch": True,
                "commercialContent": False,
            }
        },
    },
)
resp.raise_for_status()
print(resp.json()["postGroupId"])

Or let an AI agent post

Connect any MCP client to mcp.publora.com:

• “Schedule this video to TikTok for Thursday at 19:00 UTC, public, with comments on and Duet off.”
• “Post these 8 photos to TikTok as a photo carousel tomorrow at 18:00 UTC with the caption below.”
• “Publish this clip to TikTok and YouTube at 16:00 UTC; set the YouTube title to "Editing in half the time".”