TikTok Most Liked Comments — See the Top-Liked Comments on Any Video (Free CSV, Excel & JSON Download, 2026)

Looking for the TikTok most liked comments on a video? TikTok doesn't offer a likes sort. Comments are shown by relevance, and the top one you see is not necessarily the one with the most hearts. The reliable method is to download the comments free as CSV, Excel or JSON, sort the likes column and read the real leaderboard, with the creator's hearts, pins and replies marked so you know why each comment is there.

The short answer

1. Copy the video link (Share → Copy link).
2. Paste it into the TikTok comment exporter and download. The first 100 comments are free, no signup.
3. Sort likes from largest to smallest. Done.

The rest of this post is about reading that list correctly, because on TikTok the leaderboard has more distortions than on most platforms.

How TikTok decides which comment sits at the top

TikTok's comment panel has no sort menu. The order is decided by a ranking system that TikTok describes, in general terms, on its support pages and in its explanation of how recommendations work. For comments, the signals that show up in practice are:

• Hearts from viewers, the biggest factor on most videos.
• Creator interaction. A comment the creator hearted or replied to (especially with a video reply) gets lifted.
• Reply activity. A comment that sparks a long thread can outrank a quieter one with more hearts.
• You. Comments from people you follow, and your own comments, appear higher for you.
• Pins. A pinned comment is fixed at the top.

The result is that the "top comment" is a little different for every viewer, and it shifts over the life of the video. If you need to say "the most liked comment was X with Y likes", the app can't back you up. A file can.

The heart count vs the creator's heart

TikTok has two kinds of "like" on a comment, and confusing them is the most common mistake we see:

• The heart count is the number of people who liked the comment. In the export it is the likes column.
• "Liked by creator" is a single flag meaning the video's author hearted it. In the export it is is_author_digged (true/false).

A comment can be liked by the creator and have 3 hearts, or have 40,000 hearts and no creator heart. For a "creator's favourite comment wins" giveaway, filter on is_author_digged. For an audience vote, sort on likes. They are different contests, and announcing the wrong one is how giveaway disputes start.

Sort a TikTok comment section by likes, step by step

1. Get the link

Any public video or photo post link works: the full tiktok.com/@user/video/… URL or a short vm.tiktok.com link. You do not need a TikTok account.

2. Count first

Paste the link. The exporter fetches the comment count before you download, so you know if the section has 60 comments or 60,000. The number is often lower than the badge under the video, which also counts replies and filtered comments.

3. Choose whether replies are in

Replies are off by default, which gives you a clean top-level ranking. Tick the replies option on the preview if you want reply hearts included.

4. Download and sort

In Excel use Data → Sort on the likes column, largest to smallest (Microsoft's sorting guide). In Google Sheets use Data → Sort range (Google's help page). Our TikTok comments to Google Sheets guide has the full Sheets setup.

5. Mark the special rows

Add a filter on is_pinned and is_author_digged. Now you can read three lists from one file: the audience's favourites, the creator's favourites and whatever the creator chose to pin.

Five things a likes ranking on TikTok is good for

1. Judging "most liked comment wins" giveaways. Export at the deadline and keep the file. The timestamped ranking settles disputes. For random draws instead, see the comparison of TikTok comment tools.
2. Finding your next video idea. On TikTok, the most liked comments are often requests ("part 2", "do this with the blue one") or a joke the audience wants to see acted out. Creators who reply to top comments with videos are mining exactly this list.
3. Reading a brand moment. On a viral video about your product, the top 20 comments by hearts are the public verdict, weighted by agreement. One complaint with 10,000 hearts is a bigger issue than 200 complaints with none.
4. Comparing videos. Export several videos, combine the files with a column for the video link, and compare how many hearts the top comment drew on each. It is a rough but useful engagement depth signal.
5. Quoting accurately. Journalists and researchers can cite the comment, its heart count and the capture time instead of "a top comment said".

Your own videos vs someone else's

If the video is yours, TikTok Studio shows views, likes and comment totals, but it still does not rank individual comments by hearts or let you download them. The export works the same on your own videos as on anyone else's public video, and many creators use it on their own back catalogue: export the last ten videos, combine the files, sort, and the top of the list is a ready-made content plan.

On someone else's video the purpose is usually different: a brand checking how a creator's audience reacted to a sponsored post before booking them again, or an agency comparing the top comments on two competing launches. A useful check before paying for a sponsorship is how many of the most liked comments are actually about the product. If the top 20 are all about the creator's haircut, the audience watched the creator, not the ad.

What a healthy top-comment list looks like

On a typical organic video, hearts fall off steeply: the top comment might have several times the hearts of the fifth, and by the fiftieth comment counts are in single or double digits. That long tail is normal. Warning signs are a top ten with near-identical heart counts on a video that isn't a giveaway, or a top comment that has more hearts than the video has views. Either way, sort, look and only then quote.

Exporting at the right moment

Comment hearts on TikTok accumulate fast and then freeze. Most videos collect the majority of their comment activity in the first two or three days. If you are tracking a launch, export at 24 hours and again at a week; comparing the two rankings shows which comments kept gaining hearts after the initial push and which only rode the first wave.

Replies change the leaderboard

Turn replies on and the ranking often changes completely. On viral videos, the funniest reply under the top comment frequently has more hearts than the tenth-placed top-level comment, because everyone who opened the thread saw it.

Two ways to handle it:

• Top-level only: filter to rows with an empty reply_to_id. This matches what people mean by "comments on the video".
• Everything: keep replies, but add a column that labels each row "comment" or "reply" so readers know what they are looking at.

Whichever you choose, say so when you share the result. "Most liked comment (replies excluded)" is unambiguous.

Spotting bought likes and comment-like bots

Searches for "TikTok comment like bots" are rising, and it shows in the data. Services that sell comment hearts exist so that a promotional comment ends up at the top of a big creator's video. A sorted export makes these easier to spot:

• Late, generic and huge. A comment posted days after the video, saying something bland like "this is so true 🔥", with more hearts than comments posted in the first hour.
• Promotional text near the top. "Check my profile" or a product mention among the most liked comments is a red flag.
• Clusters. Several near-identical comments from different accounts, all with similar heart counts.

Sort by created_at next to likes to see these at a glance. None of this proves manipulation, but for a giveaway or a report it is reasonable to flag outliers and explain why you excluded them. TikTok's own integrity and authenticity guidelines prohibit fake engagement, which is useful context when you exclude a suspicious entry.

What we see in exported TikTok comment files

ZocialComment started as a TikTok comment exporter, and TikTok remains one of the most exported platforms on the site. This post is based on what we see in the files people download and the questions they send us:

• The is_author_digged column is in every TikTok file because "liked by creator" and "most liked" are confused so often in giveaway disputes.
• Replies are off by default because most people asking for the "most liked comments" mean top-level ones, and replies can multiply the row count on a viral video.
• The row order of an export is not a likes ranking. TikTok serves comments roughly by relevance, so we always tell people to sort the file rather than trust the order.

The columns, the free first 100 comments and the one-time payment for larger sections are the live product values. Pew Research's social media fact sheet is a good reference for how widely TikTok is used if you are writing this up for a report.

Download TikTok comments free and sort by likes →

Related reading: viewing TikTok comments without an account, making a word cloud from TikTok comments, the best TikTok comment export tools.