# Universal RSS Feed Parser | $1/1K | Any RSS/Atom/RDF (`apivault_labs/universal-rss-scraper`) Actor

Parse any RSS, Atom, or RDF feed. Extract articles with title, link, date, author, content, categories. Perfect for AI agents, Make/n8n/Zapier workflows.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/apivault\_labs/universal-rss-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Apivault Labs](https://apify.com/apivault_labs) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Automation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, NaN bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.00 / 1,000 feed item extracteds

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/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are a software tools running on the Apify platform, for all kinds of web data extraction and automation use cases.
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.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## 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.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

In JavaScript/TypeScript projects, use official [JavaScript/TypeScript client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js.md):

```bash
npm install apify-client
```

In Python projects, use official [Python client library](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python.md):

```bash
pip install apify-client
```

In shell scripts, use [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md):

````bash
# MacOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://apify.com/install-cli.sh | bash
# Windows
irm https://apify.com/install-cli.ps1 | iex
```bash

In AI frameworks, you might use the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp.md).

If your project is in a different language, use the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).


# README

## 📰 Universal RSS Feed Parser | $1/1K | Any RSS/Atom/RDF Feed

Parse any RSS 2.0, Atom, or RDF feed and get structured article data: title, link, author, date, content, categories, media. Works on millions of blogs, news sites, podcasts, Substacks, Medium publications, YouTube channels.

### ✨ Key Features

- 📋 **3 formats supported**: RSS 2.0, Atom, RDF (RSS 1.0)
- 🔁 **Batch feeds** — fetch 100s of feeds in parallel
- 🧹 **HTML stripping** — clean plain text for AI / search indexing
- 🏷️ **Full metadata** — author, date, categories, enclosures (podcast MP3s)
- 🖼️ **Media extraction** — thumbnails, enclosures, media:content
- 📡 **Podcast-aware** — handles iTunes namespace
- 🔒 Zero API keys

### Input

#### Single feed

```json
{
  "feedUrls": ["https://hnrss.org/frontpage"]
}
````

#### Bulk news aggregator

```json
{
  "feedUrls": [
    "https://techcrunch.com/feed/",
    "https://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml",
    "https://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index"
  ],
  "maxItems": 50,
  "stripHtml": true
}
```

#### Medium / Substack publications

```json
{
  "feedUrls": [
    "https://medium.com/feed/@user",
    "https://example.substack.com/feed"
  ]
}
```

#### YouTube channel as RSS

```json
{
  "feedUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCxyz..."
  ]
}
```

#### Input Parameters

| Field | Type | Required | Description |
|-------|------|----------|-------------|
| `feedUrls` | string\[] | ✅ | RSS/Atom/RDF feed URLs |
| `maxItems` | int | ❌ | Limit per feed (0 = all). Default: 100 |
| `stripHtml` | bool | ❌ | Plain text (true) or preserve HTML (false). Default: true |
| `extractFeedMetadata` | bool | ❌ | Include feed title/description on each item |
| `maxConcurrency` | int | ❌ | Parallel feed fetches (default: 5) |
| `timeout` | int | ❌ | HTTP timeout per feed (default: 20) |

### Output

One dataset row per item:

```json
{
  "success": true,
  "feedUrl": "https://hnrss.org/frontpage",
  "feedTitle": "Hacker News: Front Page",
  "feedLink": "https://news.ycombinator.com/",
  "feedDescription": "Hacker News RSS",
  "feedLanguage": "",
  "title": "Show HN: I built a thing",
  "link": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=...",
  "guid": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=...",
  "pubDate": "Sun, 11 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000",
  "author": "username",
  "description": "Short summary here",
  "content": "Full article content...",
  "categories": "Show HN, Software",
  "comments": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=..."
}
```

### Use Cases

#### 🤖 AI Agents / LLM Pipelines

- Feed fresh content into GPT/Claude for summarization
- RAG systems monitoring industry news
- Automated briefing generation

#### 📊 News Aggregation

- Build a niche news site pulling from 50 sources
- Slack/Discord digest bots
- Daily email digests (Make/Zapier + this actor)

#### 🎙️ Podcast Monitoring

- Extract podcast episodes with audio URLs (enclosures)
- Feed transcription pipelines
- Build podcast discovery sites

#### 📰 Medium / Substack Tracking

- Follow competitor newsletters automatically
- Aggregate industry thought leaders

#### 🎬 YouTube Channel Tracking

- YouTube offers RSS feeds per channel (`/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=`)
- Get new video notifications without YouTube API quotas

#### 🔍 SEO / Content Research

- Analyze competitor publishing frequency
- Content gap analysis

### Pricing

- **$0.001 per item** ($1 per 1,000 items)
- Pay only for items actually parsed
- Broken feeds skip cleanly — no charge

### How it works

1. HTTP GET the feed URL
2. Detect format (RSS 2.0 / Atom / RDF) from root element
3. Parse items/entries with namespace-aware stdlib XML
4. Extract title, link, date, author, content, categories, media
5. Optionally strip HTML from content for clean text

Uses Python's built-in `xml.etree.ElementTree` — no third-party dependencies, fast cold starts.

### Notes

- Works on any public feed — no auth
- Some feeds rate-limit aggressive re-polling (respectful defaults)
- Malformed XML feeds return an error per feed, other feeds continue
- Some feeds only return last 10-20 items regardless of `maxItems`

### Pro tips

- **Automation**: Apify Scheduler → every hour → Zapier → Slack = real-time news bot
- **YouTube RSS**: use `/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<id>` for any YouTube channel (free, no API)
- **Substack**: append `/feed` to any Substack URL
- **Medium**: `medium.com/feed/@user` or `medium.com/feed/publication-name`
- **Podcasts**: iTunes podcast URLs have RSS feeds — find them via `https://podcastindex.org`

# Actor input Schema

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

RSS/Atom/RDF feed URLs. Examples:
• https://hnrss.org/frontpage
• https://techcrunch.com/feed/
• https://medium.com/feed/@user
• https://substack.example.com/feed

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Limit items per feed (0 = all)

## `stripHtml` (type: `boolean`):

If true, content fields are returned as plain text. If false, original HTML is preserved.

## `extractFeedMetadata` (type: `boolean`):

Include feed title, description, language in each item row

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

Parallel feed fetches (default: 5)

## `timeout` (type: `integer`):

HTTP timeout per feed request

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "feedUrls": [
    "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
  ],
  "maxItems": 100,
  "stripHtml": true,
  "extractFeedMetadata": true,
  "maxConcurrency": 5,
  "timeout": 20
}
```

# 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://hnrss.org/frontpage"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("apivault_labs/universal-rss-scraper").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://hnrss.org/frontpage"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("apivault_labs/universal-rss-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print("💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/" + run["defaultDatasetId"])
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).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://hnrss.org/frontpage"
  ]
}' |
apify call apivault_labs/universal-rss-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=apivault_labs/universal-rss-scraper",
                "--header",
                "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_TOKEN>"
            ]
        }
    }
}

```

## OpenAPI specification

```json
{
    "openapi": "3.0.1",
    "info": {
        "title": "Universal RSS Feed Parser | $1/1K | Any RSS/Atom/RDF",
        "description": "Parse any RSS, Atom, or RDF feed. Extract articles with title, link, date, author, content, categories. Perfect for AI agents, Make/n8n/Zapier workflows.",
        "version": "1.0",
        "x-build-id": "ngIsgSWxhbep4V08q"
    },
    "servers": [
        {
            "url": "https://api.apify.com/v2"
        }
    ],
    "paths": {
        "/acts/apivault_labs~universal-rss-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items": {
            "post": {
                "operationId": "run-sync-get-dataset-items-apivault_labs-universal-rss-scraper",
                "x-openai-isConsequential": false,
                "summary": "Executes an Actor, waits for its completion, and returns Actor's dataset items in response.",
                "tags": [
                    "Run Actor"
                ],
                "requestBody": {
                    "required": true,
                    "content": {
                        "application/json": {
                            "schema": {
                                "$ref": "#/components/schemas/inputSchema"
                            }
                        }
                    }
                },
                "parameters": [
                    {
                        "name": "token",
                        "in": "query",
                        "required": true,
                        "schema": {
                            "type": "string"
                        },
                        "description": "Enter your Apify token here"
                    }
                ],
                "responses": {
                    "200": {
                        "description": "OK"
                    }
                }
            }
        },
        "/acts/apivault_labs~universal-rss-scraper/runs": {
            "post": {
                "operationId": "runs-sync-apivault_labs-universal-rss-scraper",
                "x-openai-isConsequential": false,
                "summary": "Executes an Actor and returns information about the initiated run in response.",
                "tags": [
                    "Run Actor"
                ],
                "requestBody": {
                    "required": true,
                    "content": {
                        "application/json": {
                            "schema": {
                                "$ref": "#/components/schemas/inputSchema"
                            }
                        }
                    }
                },
                "parameters": [
                    {
                        "name": "token",
                        "in": "query",
                        "required": true,
                        "schema": {
                            "type": "string"
                        },
                        "description": "Enter your Apify token here"
                    }
                ],
                "responses": {
                    "200": {
                        "description": "OK",
                        "content": {
                            "application/json": {
                                "schema": {
                                    "$ref": "#/components/schemas/runsResponseSchema"
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        },
        "/acts/apivault_labs~universal-rss-scraper/run-sync": {
            "post": {
                "operationId": "run-sync-apivault_labs-universal-rss-scraper",
                "x-openai-isConsequential": false,
                "summary": "Executes an Actor, waits for completion, and returns the OUTPUT from Key-value store in response.",
                "tags": [
                    "Run Actor"
                ],
                "requestBody": {
                    "required": true,
                    "content": {
                        "application/json": {
                            "schema": {
                                "$ref": "#/components/schemas/inputSchema"
                            }
                        }
                    }
                },
                "parameters": [
                    {
                        "name": "token",
                        "in": "query",
                        "required": true,
                        "schema": {
                            "type": "string"
                        },
                        "description": "Enter your Apify token here"
                    }
                ],
                "responses": {
                    "200": {
                        "description": "OK"
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    },
    "components": {
        "schemas": {
            "inputSchema": {
                "type": "object",
                "required": [
                    "feedUrls"
                ],
                "properties": {
                    "feedUrls": {
                        "title": "Feed URLs",
                        "type": "array",
                        "description": "RSS/Atom/RDF feed URLs. Examples:\n• https://hnrss.org/frontpage\n• https://techcrunch.com/feed/\n• https://medium.com/feed/@user\n• https://substack.example.com/feed",
                        "items": {
                            "type": "string"
                        }
                    },
                    "maxItems": {
                        "title": "Max items per feed",
                        "minimum": 0,
                        "maximum": 10000,
                        "type": "integer",
                        "description": "Limit items per feed (0 = all)",
                        "default": 100
                    },
                    "stripHtml": {
                        "title": "Strip HTML from content",
                        "type": "boolean",
                        "description": "If true, content fields are returned as plain text. If false, original HTML is preserved.",
                        "default": true
                    },
                    "extractFeedMetadata": {
                        "title": "Include Feed Metadata",
                        "type": "boolean",
                        "description": "Include feed title, description, language in each item row",
                        "default": true
                    },
                    "maxConcurrency": {
                        "title": "Max Concurrency",
                        "minimum": 1,
                        "maximum": 20,
                        "type": "integer",
                        "description": "Parallel feed fetches (default: 5)",
                        "default": 5
                    },
                    "timeout": {
                        "title": "Timeout per feed (seconds)",
                        "minimum": 5,
                        "maximum": 120,
                        "type": "integer",
                        "description": "HTTP timeout per feed request",
                        "default": 20
                    }
                }
            },
            "runsResponseSchema": {
                "type": "object",
                "properties": {
                    "data": {
                        "type": "object",
                        "properties": {
                            "id": {
                                "type": "string"
                            },
                            "actId": {
                                "type": "string"
                            },
                            "userId": {
                                "type": "string"
                            },
                            "startedAt": {
                                "type": "string",
                                "format": "date-time",
                                "example": "2025-01-08T00:00:00.000Z"
                            },
                            "finishedAt": {
                                "type": "string",
                                "format": "date-time",
                                "example": "2025-01-08T00:00:00.000Z"
                            },
                            "status": {
                                "type": "string",
                                "example": "READY"
                            },
                            "meta": {
                                "type": "object",
                                "properties": {
                                    "origin": {
                                        "type": "string",
                                        "example": "API"
                                    },
                                    "userAgent": {
                                        "type": "string"
                                    }
                                }
                            },
                            "stats": {
                                "type": "object",
                                "properties": {
                                    "inputBodyLen": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 2000
                                    },
                                    "rebootCount": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "restartCount": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "resurrectCount": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "computeUnits": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    }
                                }
                            },
                            "options": {
                                "type": "object",
                                "properties": {
                                    "build": {
                                        "type": "string",
                                        "example": "latest"
                                    },
                                    "timeoutSecs": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 300
                                    },
                                    "memoryMbytes": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 1024
                                    },
                                    "diskMbytes": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 2048
                                    }
                                }
                            },
                            "buildId": {
                                "type": "string"
                            },
                            "defaultKeyValueStoreId": {
                                "type": "string"
                            },
                            "defaultDatasetId": {
                                "type": "string"
                            },
                            "defaultRequestQueueId": {
                                "type": "string"
                            },
                            "buildNumber": {
                                "type": "string",
                                "example": "1.0.0"
                            },
                            "containerUrl": {
                                "type": "string"
                            },
                            "usage": {
                                "type": "object",
                                "properties": {
                                    "ACTOR_COMPUTE_UNITS": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "DATASET_READS": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "DATASET_WRITES": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "KEY_VALUE_STORE_READS": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "KEY_VALUE_STORE_WRITES": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 1
                                    },
                                    "KEY_VALUE_STORE_LISTS": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "REQUEST_QUEUE_READS": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "REQUEST_QUEUE_WRITES": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "DATA_TRANSFER_INTERNAL_GBYTES": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "DATA_TRANSFER_EXTERNAL_GBYTES": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "PROXY_RESIDENTIAL_TRANSFER_GBYTES": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "PROXY_SERPS": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    }
                                }
                            },
                            "usageTotalUsd": {
                                "type": "number",
                                "example": 0.00005
                            },
                            "usageUsd": {
                                "type": "object",
                                "properties": {
                                    "ACTOR_COMPUTE_UNITS": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "DATASET_READS": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "DATASET_WRITES": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "KEY_VALUE_STORE_READS": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "KEY_VALUE_STORE_WRITES": {
                                        "type": "number",
                                        "example": 0.00005
                                    },
                                    "KEY_VALUE_STORE_LISTS": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "REQUEST_QUEUE_READS": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "REQUEST_QUEUE_WRITES": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "DATA_TRANSFER_INTERNAL_GBYTES": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "DATA_TRANSFER_EXTERNAL_GBYTES": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "PROXY_RESIDENTIAL_TRANSFER_GBYTES": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    },
                                    "PROXY_SERPS": {
                                        "type": "integer",
                                        "example": 0
                                    }
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}
```