# Website to Markdown Crawler for LLM, RAG and AI Agents (`arqlabs/website-to-markdown-polite`) Actor

Crawl a website and convert each page's main content to clean Markdown for LLMs, RAG pipelines, vector databases and AI agents. Removes navigation, footers and cookie banners. Respects robots.txt and crawl-delay. Pay per page.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/arqlabs/website-to-markdown-polite.md
- **Developed by:** [Muhammad Ariq Fauzan](https://apify.com/arqlabs) (community)
- **Categories:** AI, Developer tools
- **Security:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

Pay per event

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

## Website to Markdown Crawler for LLM, RAG and AI Agents

Use it to crawl a website into clean Markdown for LLM context, RAG pipelines, vector databases and AI agents.

Website to Markdown Scraper crawls a website and converts the main content of each page into clean Markdown. Use it to feed LLMs, RAG pipelines, vector databases, custom GPTs and AI agents, or to mirror documentation as Markdown.

### Why this Actor

- Clean main content. It prefers `<main>`/`<article>` and strips site chrome.
- Polite by design. It obeys `robots.txt` and `Crawl-delay`, waits at least 1 second between requests, and identifies itself with a clear user agent.
- Same-site crawl with `maxPages`, `maxDepth` and an optional URL `includePattern`.
- Pay only for pages saved. There is no subscription.

### Example run

Real input and the first output record from run WkwarA6LKhStwlqcd on 2026-10-30. Long text fields are shortened here with "...".

Input:

```json
{
  "startUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://docs.apify.com/academy"
    }
  ],
  "maxPages": 20,
  "maxDepth": 2
}
```

Output (first record):

```json
{
  "url": "https://docs.apify.com/academy",
  "title": "Apify Academy | Academy | Apify Documentation",
  "description": "Learn everything about web scraping and automation with our free courses that will turn you into an expert scraper developer.",
  "lang": "en",
  "markdown": "# Apify Academy\n\nLearn everything about web scraping and automation with our free courses that will turn you into an expert scraper developer.\n\n## Beginner courses\n\n[\n\n![](/img/academy/scraping-basics-javascript.svg)\n\n#### Web scraping basi...",
  "wordCount": 207,
  "depth": 0
}
```

### Input

| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| `startUrls` | One or more URLs to start from |
| `maxPages` | Stop after this many pages |
| `maxDepth` | Link depth from the start URLs (0 = start pages only) |
| `includePattern` | Optional regex; only matching URLs are crawled |

### Output (one item per page)

```json
{"url":"https://docs.example.com/guide","title":"Guide","description":"...","lang":"en","markdown":"# Guide\n\n...","wordCount":648}
```

Export as JSON, CSV, Excel or via API, or connect to LangChain, LlamaIndex, Make, Zapier or n8n through Apify integrations.

### Limits and fair use

It reads only public HTML pages and never logs in. Pages disallowed by `robots.txt` are skipped and counted. You are responsible for respecting each site's terms and copyright.

### Pricing

Pay-per-event: a small start fee plus a fee per page saved (see the Pricing tab).

# Actor input Schema

## `startUrls` (type: `array`):

Pages to start from; crawl stays on the same host.

## `maxPages` (type: `integer`):

Max pages

## `maxDepth` (type: `integer`):

Max link depth

## `includePattern` (type: `string`):

Only URLs matching (regex)

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "startUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://docs.apify.com/academy"
    }
  ],
  "maxPages": 3,
  "maxDepth": 1
}
```

# 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 = {
    "startUrls": [
        {
            "url": "https://docs.apify.com/academy"
        }
    ],
    "maxPages": 3,
    "maxDepth": 1
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("arqlabs/website-to-markdown-polite").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 = {
    "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://docs.apify.com/academy" }],
    "maxPages": 3,
    "maxDepth": 1,
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("arqlabs/website-to-markdown-polite").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 '{
  "startUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://docs.apify.com/academy"
    }
  ],
  "maxPages": 3,
  "maxDepth": 1
}' |
apify call arqlabs/website-to-markdown-polite --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,arqlabs/website-to-markdown-polite"
        }
    }
}
```

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/3u87ZbBYSc0hIgJYH/builds/7T6IToIfMQ62FUweB/openapi.json