Pull TikTok hashtag category captains as JSON, then pass an official category name to get a 1-N list. Pair the board with tiktok volume and google search growth in the same Trends MCP account.
Live data as of 2026-08-28
The TikTok Trending Hashtags by Category API on Trends MCP is get_top_trends with type TikTok Trending Hashtags by Category. From the August 28, 2026 scan (as_of 2026-08-28T20:01:33 UTC), an unfiltered call returned 79 rank-1 category captains, one per official name, then rank-2 rows. Passing category Games switched that payload to a 1-N list that filled ranks 1 through 200 and closed at offset 200 (count 0). The Games top 10 matched Video Games on the same stamp, with fortnite at rank 1 on both boards. Overall TikTok Trending Hashtags rank 1 was tiktokshopbacktoschool, which did not appear among those 79 captains. An unknown category returns HTTP 400 with the 79 valid names. Free tier access starts at 100 requests per month.
Omit category on type TikTok Trending Hashtags by Category and every row stays rank 1 while the category path changes. The August 28, 2026 scan stamped 2026-08-28T20:01:33 UTC. Offset 0 at limit 25 returned 25 captains. Offset 25 at limit 50 returned 50 more captains. Offset 75 then returned four leftover rank-1 rows (Romance, Gadgets and Innovation, Health and Wellness, Conventional and Mainstream Sports) before flipping to rank 2. That is 79 captains, matching the 79 names in the HTTP 400 valid-category list.
Default limit 25 therefore hides most captains. The same mixed-board pattern appears on Amazon Best Sellers by Category, where unfiltered rows are also rank-1 captains rather than a single 1-N list. Each offset page is a separate request.
The same hashtag can captain more than one official name. On this stamp, makeup was rank 1 for Beauty and Personal Care and for Beauty. fortnite was rank 1 for Games and for Video Games. pregnant captained Family and Life Services. movie captained News and Entertainment and Movies and TV. dance captained Dance and Performing Arts. That duplication is a property of the name list, not a pagination bug.
| Hashtag | Captain categories on this stamp | Overall TikTok Hashtags rank |
|---|---|---|
| movie | News and Entertainment; Movies and TV | 2 |
| dance | Dance; Performing Arts | 3 |
| football | Sports and Outdoor; Conventional and Mainstream Sports | 6 |
| fortnite | Games; Video Games | 10 |
| nfl | Sports | 15 |
| lindsayclancy | Community Updates and Issues | 18 |
| makeup | Beauty and Personal Care; Beauty | 19 |
| prank | Comedy | 26 |
| dogsoftiktok | Pet Care and Accessories; Pets | 27 |
tiktokshopbacktoschool, the overall hashtag rank 1 on the sibling TikTok Trending Hashtags board, is absent from that captain table. A category captain is the leader inside one named board. It is not a shortcut to the global hashtag ranking.
Pass category Games and the rank field becomes a true 1-N list. The same as_of stamp returned 50 rows at offset 0, 50 at offset 50, 50 at offset 150, then count 0 at offset 200. The board closed at 200. Default limit 25 therefore returns 12.5 percent of Games.
Rank 1 was fortnite. Rank 2 was minecraft. Rank 3 was pokemon. Rank 4 was gta6. Rank 5 was freefire. Those later names still leak onto the overall hashtag board, just not at the top: freefire sat at overall 102, fortniteclips (Games 6) at overall 118, genshinimpact (Games 7) at overall 172, fnaf (Games 8) at overall 191.
sort=rank_change with window 1d on Games, same as_of, used baseline 2026-08-28T02:01:40 UTC and returned climbers rather than current leaders. The largest climb in the first 25 rows was odette at rank 47, previous rank 77, rank_change 30. fortnite did not appear in that climber page. One climber row reached rank 180 (redditstoriestts, previous 198, rank_change 18), which is only visible because the filtered board actually holds 200 titles.
Beauty and Personal Care also filled through rank 200 on the same stamp (offset 175 returned ranks 176 through 200). Category length is not 25 just because the default limit is 25.
category Video Games and category Games returned the same top 10 on this stamp: fortnite, minecraft, pokemon, gta6, freefire, fortniteclips, genshinimpact, fnaf, peak, cs2. A lowercase probe of video games resolved to Video Games and produced that same head. Ranks 41 through 50 also matched, from zenlesszonezero at 41 through gamingclips at 50.
The HTTP 400 valid-name list still treats Games and Video Games as two official strings. Health and Health and Wellness behave the same way on movers: unfiltered sort=rank_change, window 1d, returned toothinfection twice at rank 65, previous rank 147, rank_change 82, once with category_path Health and once with Health and Wellness. Duplicate names are real request targets. They are not guaranteed to be independent boards.
Unfiltered rank_change mixes those paths in one page. The first 10 climbers on this stamp included overachiever at Learning and Development rank 20 (previous 114, rank_change 94) and jerseycow at Livestock and Farming rank 102 (previous 184, rank_change 82). Pass category when the job is one industry. Omit it only to learn names.
TikTok Trending Hashtags, same as_of 2026-08-28T20:01:33 UTC, filled ranks 1 through 200 and closed at offset 200. Rank 1 was tiktokshopbacktoschool. That tag was not a rank-1 captain on any of the 79 category names. Rank 4 ad, rank 5 spiderman, rank 7 onthisday, rank 8 school, and rank 9 relateable were also missing from the captain rows. The global board and the category captains share a clock. They do not share a ranking rule.
Captains that did join overall 200 clustered in two bands: a few near the top (movie 2, dance 3, football 6, fortnite 10) and a long tail (contenido at 54, squishy at 57, pokemon at 59, gta6 at 60, bluecollar at 66, starbucks at 68, homedecor at 69, rickandmorty at 71, pregnant at 90, foodtok at 130, perfume at 174, islammakhachev at 176). Comedy rank 1 prank sat at overall 26, while Comedy rank 2 memes sat at overall 81.
tiktokshopfinds, Apparel and Accessories rank 2, appeared at overall 134. The overall leader tiktokshopbacktoschool never showed up as a captain. Shop-adjacent tags can dominate the global hashtag board without winning a category row.
For a hashtag-versus-search split on the unfiltered TikTok feeds, see TikTok hashtags vs searches. Google's named-board version of the same filter idea is Google Trends by Category.
get_growth on source tiktok is a second call with a keyword, not a field on the live board. The August 28, 2026 captains demonstrate three failure modes on tags that still hold a rank.
makeup, Beauty and Personal Care rank 1 and overall hashtag rank 19, returned source tiktok unavailable. google search for makeup sat at 48.0 on 2026-08-22, down 11.11% over 7 days from 54.0 (261 weekly points). The live hashtag rank did not imply a tiktok series.
minecraft, Games rank 2 and overall rank 23, returned HTTP 404 no_data on source tiktok. gta6, Games rank 4 and overall rank 60, also returned tiktok unavailable. google search for gta6 sat at 39.0 on 2026-08-22, up 200.0% over 7 days from 13.0 and up 225.0% over 30 days from 12.0.
prank, Comedy rank 1 and overall rank 26, did return a tiktok series, and the index was the trap. Recent value was 0.0 on 2026-08-26 against 43.0 on 2026-08-19, which prints as -100.0% index growth, while recent_volume was 85,571,314 against baseline_volume 101,953,648 (-16.07%). Quote both numbers. The 0.0 index is not an empty tag.
fortnite, the Games captain, is the clean follow-up. tiktok index 16.5 on 2026-08-26 versus 9.8 on 2026-08-19 (+68.37%), while volume moved from 118,302,902 to 124,143,498 (+4.94%). The 30-day tiktok window used 30 daily points from 2026-07-28 through 2026-08-26; preset 3M returned date_out_of_range. google search for fortnite sat at 35.0 on 2026-08-22, up 45.83% over 7 days from 24.0, across 261 weekly points. youtube sat at 28.0, up 47.37% over 7 days from 19.0.
tiktokshopbacktoschool, overall hashtag rank 1 and not a captain, had tiktok index 98.5 on 2026-08-26 versus 65.2 on 2026-08-19 (+51.07%), volume 205,128,733 versus 137,873,759 (+48.78%). The 30-day tiktok index compared 98.5 against baseline_value 0.0 on 2026-07-28; the printed percent is unusable. Volume on that window moved from 6,198,181 to 205,128,733 (+3,209.5%). Report the two values.
MCP and REST both use type TikTok Trending Hashtags by Category. REST body:
{"mode": "get_top_trends", "type": "TikTok Trending Hashtags by Category", "category": "Games", "limit": 25}
The MCP get_top_trends schema on this run listed TikTok Trending Hashtags and TikTok Trending Searches, and did not list TikTok Trending Hashtags by Category. The call still returned HTTP 200. llms.txt on 2026-08-28 does list the type and the 79 names. Do not "correct" the type string down to TikTok Trending Hashtags; that is the overall board.
category is a display name, not a TikTok Creative Center industry_id. Games works. video games resolved to Video Games. NotARealCategory returned HTTP 400 invalid_request with message prefix Unknown category 'NotARealCategory'. Valid categories: followed by 79 comma-separated names, including Games, Video Games, Beauty, Beauty and Personal Care, Health, and Health and Wellness.
Unfiltered example (captains):
{"mode": "get_top_trends", "type": "TikTok Trending Hashtags by Category", "limit": 25}
Climbers inside one board:
{"mode": "get_top_trends", "type": "TikTok Trending Hashtags by Category", "category": "Games", "sort": "rank_change", "window": "1d", "limit": 25}
Each of those calls counts as one request. The free plan includes 100 requests per month. Starter is $19 per month for 1,000 requests. Check current pricing before locking a production budget.
FAQ