# RSS Feed Reader & Monitor - RSS, Atom, JSON + Full Articles (`adaptive_arbor_rtz/rss-feed-reader`) Actor

Read any RSS, Atom or JSON feed, or just a website (feed auto-discovered). Only-new-items monitor mode, keyword and date filters, optional full article text for AI. Pay per item.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/adaptive\_arbor\_rtz/rss-feed-reader.md
- **Developed by:** [Björn Ólafur](https://apify.com/adaptive_arbor_rtz) (community)
- **Categories:** News, AI, Automation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.00 / 1,000 feed items

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

### What does RSS Feed Reader do?

**RSS Feed Reader** reads **any RSS, Atom or JSON feed**, or just a **website address** (the feed is **discovered automatically**), and returns clean, structured items: title, link, date, authors, categories, summary, content, image and podcast enclosures. Turn on **monitor mode** to get **only new items** on every scheduled run, and optionally **fetch the full article text** for AI summaries, alerts and RAG.

Run it in Apify Console, via the API, on a schedule, or from your AI agent through the Apify MCP server. Send new items to Slack, email, Google Sheets, Make, Zapier or n8n with Apify integrations.

### Why use RSS Feed Reader?

- 🔍 **Feed auto-discovery**: paste `theverge.com` and it finds `/rss/index.xml` for you.
- 🔔 **Only new items (monitor mode)**: schedule it hourly and get a clean stream of new posts. You only pay for new items.
- 📰 **Full article text** (optional): many feeds include only a teaser; we open each article and extract the main text, reader-mode style.
- 🎯 **Keyword and date filters**: e.g. only items mentioning "Iceland" from the last 24 hours.
- 🧠 **AI-ready**: content as plain text, Markdown or HTML, with images stripped from text.
- 🎙️ **Podcasts**: audio enclosures with URL, type and size.
- 🌍 **Every format**: RSS 0.9x/1.0/2.0, Atom, RDF and JSON Feed, any language.

**Typical uses:** news and competitor monitoring, brand and keyword alerts, feeding blogs and news to ChatGPT/Claude for summaries, building news aggregators and newsletters, tracking podcast episodes, and research datasets.

### How to monitor RSS feeds for new items

1. Click **Try for free**.
2. Add feed URLs or website addresses to **Feeds or websites**.
3. Optionally switch on **Only new items** and **Fetch full article text**, and add **Keywords**.
4. Click **Start**. Items appear in the **Output** tab.
5. To monitor, click **Schedule** (e.g. every hour) and connect an integration such as Slack or email to receive new items.

### Input

| Option             | What it does                             | Default   |
| ------------------ | ---------------------------------------- | --------- |
| `feedUrls`         | Feed URLs or website addresses           | –         |
| `maxItemsPerFeed`  | Newest items per feed                    | 50        |
| `onlyNewItems`     | Skip items returned by earlier runs      | `false`   |
| `monitorName`      | Separate memory for independent monitors | `default` |
| `publishedAfter`   | `2026-09-01` or `24 hours`, `7 days`     | –         |
| `keywords`         | Keep items containing any of these words | –         |
| `contentFormat`    | `text`, `markdown` or `html`             | `text`    |
| `fetchFullArticle` | Extract each article's main text         | `false`   |

```json
{
    "feedUrls": ["https://hnrss.org/frontpage", "theverge.com"],
    "onlyNewItems": true,
    "keywords": ["AI", "Apple"],
    "fetchFullArticle": true,
    "contentFormat": "markdown"
}
```

### Output

```json
{
    "feedUrl": "https://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml",
    "feedTitle": "The Verge",
    "siteUrl": "https://www.theverge.com/",
    "success": true,
    "id": "https://www.theverge.com/2026/9/30/...",
    "title": "The AI Tamagotchis are coming",
    "url": "https://www.theverge.com/2026/9/30/...",
    "published": "2026-09-30T23:08:49.000Z",
    "authors": ["Jay Peters"],
    "categories": ["AI", "Gadgets"],
    "summary": "While AI has made plenty of inroads on people's phones...",
    "content": "While AI has made plenty of inroads...",
    "imageUrl": "https://platform.theverge.com/.../image.jpg",
    "enclosures": [],
    "articleText": "While AI has made plenty of inroads on people's phones and computers, ...",
    "articleWordCount": 648,
    "fetchedAt": "2026-10-01T08:00:00.000Z"
}
```

`articleText` and `articleWordCount` appear only with **Fetch full article text**. Feeds that can't be found or read are listed with `success: false` and are not charged. You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV or Excel.

### How much does it cost to read RSS feeds?

- **$1 per 1,000 feed items** ($0.001 each)
- **+ $3 per 1,000 full articles** when **Fetch full article text** is on, charged only when real article text is found
- **+ $0.002 per run**

Example: monitoring 20 news feeds hourly (720 runs a month) with ~200 new items a day costs about **$7.50 a month**: $6 for items plus $1.44 in run fees. Platform usage is included. Set a **maximum cost per run** to stay in budget.

### Tips

- In monitor mode, the first run returns the current items (up to **Max items per feed**); later runs return only new ones.
- Use **Published after** = `24 hours` for a daily digest without monitor mode.
- Some sites render articles with JavaScript only, so full text may be missing there (not charged).
- If a site blocks data-centre traffic, enable **Proxy**.

### FAQ

**Where is the "seen items" memory kept?** In a key-value store named `rss-feed-reader-state` in **your own** Apify account. Delete it to start over, or use a new **Monitor name**.

**Is it legal?** Feeds are published to be read by software. Full-article extraction reads public pages; respect each site's terms and copyright when you reuse content.

**Something not working?** Open an issue in the **Issues** tab with the feed URL and I'll fix it quickly.

### Related tools

- [Document to Markdown](https://apify.com/adaptive_arbor_rtz/document-to-markdown): PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files to clean Markdown for AI
- [Website Screenshot](https://apify.com/adaptive_arbor_rtz/website-screenshot): full-page screenshots and PDFs of any website, cookie banners removed
- [Sitemap Extractor](https://apify.com/adaptive_arbor_rtz/sitemap-extractor): every URL of a website from its sitemaps, plus a broken-link check

# Actor input Schema

## `feedUrls` (type: `array`):

RSS, Atom or JSON Feed URLs, or plain website addresses (e.g. theverge.com). For websites, the feed is discovered automatically from the page's <link rel="alternate"> tag or common paths like /feed and /rss.xml.

## `maxItemsPerFeed` (type: `integer`):

Newest items first. Stop after this many items per feed.

## `onlyNewItems` (type: `boolean`):

Return only items that earlier runs with the same monitor name did not return. Schedule the Actor (e.g. hourly) to get a stream of new posts, and only pay for new items. The memory is kept in a key-value store named 'rss-feed-reader-state' in your own account.

## `monitorName` (type: `string`):

Used with 'Only new items'. Runs with the same name share their memory of seen items; use different names for independent monitors.

## `publishedAfter` (type: `string`):

Optional. Skip older items. A date (2026-09-01) or a relative time like '24 hours', '7 days' or '2 weeks'.

## `keywords` (type: `array`):

Optional. Keep only items whose title, summary or categories contain at least one of these words (case-insensitive).

## `contentFormat` (type: `string`):

Format of the item content (and full article text): plain text, Markdown (best for AI/LLMs) or the original HTML.

## `fetchFullArticle` (type: `boolean`):

Many feeds include only a short summary. Turn this on to open each item's web page and extract the main article text (reader-mode style) into 'articleText'. Charged per article.

## `maxConcurrency` (type: `integer`):

How many feeds or articles to fetch at the same time.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Optional. Use a proxy if a website blocks data-centre traffic.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "feedUrls": [
    "https://www.ruv.is/rss/frettir",
    "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
  ],
  "maxItemsPerFeed": 50,
  "onlyNewItems": false,
  "monitorName": "default",
  "contentFormat": "text",
  "fetchFullArticle": false,
  "maxConcurrency": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "feedUrls": [
        "https://www.ruv.is/rss/frettir",
        "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("adaptive_arbor_rtz/rss-feed-reader").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "feedUrls": [
        "https://www.ruv.is/rss/frettir",
        "https://hnrss.org/frontpage",
    ] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("adaptive_arbor_rtz/rss-feed-reader").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "feedUrls": [
    "https://www.ruv.is/rss/frettir",
    "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
  ]
}' |
apify call adaptive_arbor_rtz/rss-feed-reader --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,adaptive_arbor_rtz/rss-feed-reader"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/F5TpYLUQdsMIcvlcY/builds/eHzYfkevcigfGwQF6/openapi.json