# RSS Feed Reader & Parser - RSS, Atom, JSON Feed (`atesen-software/rss-feed-reader`) Actor

Read any RSS, Atom, RDF or JSON feed, or just give a website and the feed is found automatically. Get title, link, date, author, categories, summary, full text, images and podcast enclosures. Keyword and date filters, only-new-items mode for monitoring. $1.50 per 1,000 results.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/atesen-software/rss-feed-reader.md
- **Developed by:** [Atesen Software](https://apify.com/atesen-software) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Automation
- **Security:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$1.50 / 1,000 results

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

### RSS Feed Reader & Parser - RSS, Atom, JSON Feed

Read **any RSS, Atom, RDF or JSON Feed**, or just give a **website URL and the feed is discovered automatically**. Get every item as a clean row: **title, link, publish date, author, categories, summary, full text, image and podcast/video enclosures**. Filter by keyword and date, or switch on **only-new-items mode** to monitor blogs, news sites, YouTube channels and podcasts on a schedule.

- **$1.50 per 1,000 items**, pay per event. Feed info and status rows are free, and unchanged items in monitor mode are free too.
- **Auto-discovery**: use website HTML `<link rel="alternate">` advertisements and common feed paths (/feed, /rss.xml, /atom.xml).
- **All formats**: RSS 0.9x/2.0, RSS 1.0 (RDF), Atom 1.0, JSON Feed 1.x, Media RSS, iTunes podcast tags, YouTube channel feeds.
- **Monitoring**: `onlyNewItems` remembers what each feed already returned (named key-value store) and outputs only new items. Perfect for Slack/Zapier/Make alerts.
- Clean dates (ISO 8601), HTML converted to text, relative links made absolute. No browser, 256 MB. Bad feeds never fail the run; they become free status rows.

Atom feed/entry links, logo/icon, enclosures and images extracted from HTML content respect inherited `xml:base` at feed, entry and relevant element scope. This is URL resolution only; HTML bodies are returned without rewriting their internal links.

### Use cases

- **News and blog monitoring**: new posts from competitors, industry blogs and press rooms.
- **Content aggregation**: build a reading list, newsletter or dashboard from hundreds of feeds.
- **AI / RAG**: fresh article text for summarisation and embeddings.
- **Podcasts and YouTube**: episode lists with audio URLs and durations; new videos from channels (`https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=...`).
- **SEO**: publishing frequency of competitor blogs.

### Input

| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| `feeds` | Feed URLs or website URLs |
| `maxItemsPerFeed` | Default 5, 0 = all |
| `onlyItemsNewerThan` | `2026-01-31` or `24 hours`, `7 days`, `1 month` |
| `keywords` | Keep only items containing one of these words |
| `onlyNewItems`, `monitorKey` | Only items not seen in previous runs |
| `includeContent`, `includeHtml` | Full text / HTML |
| `includeFeedInfo` | One free row per feed |

```json
{
  "feeds": ["https://www.w3.org/blog/feed/"],
  "maxItemsPerFeed": 5,
  "onlyItemsNewerThan": "7 days"
}
```

### Output

Synthetic example (not a customer or a real article):

```json
{
  "type": "result",
  "feedUrl": "https://example.org/feed/",
  "feedTitle": "Fixture Feed",
  "title": "Fixture article",
  "url": "https://example.org/article",
  "published": "2026-10-20T18:36:53.000Z",
  "author": "Fixture Author",
  "categories": ["AI", "Apps"],
  "summary": "Example summary",
  "content": "Full article text when the feed carries it ...",
  "imageUrl": "https://example.org/image.jpg",
  "enclosures": []
}
```

Rows with `type: "feed"` describe each feed; rows with `type: "status"` explain problems (no feed found, HTTP errors). Both are free.

### FAQ

**The site has no feed.** You get a free `no_feed_found` row. For sites without feeds use a website-to-Markdown crawler instead.

**How does only-new-items work?** Item IDs (guid/link) of each feed are stored in the named key-value store `rss-feed-reader-monitor` under your monitor name. The next run with the same feeds outputs only unseen items, and seen items are not charged.

**Can I run it on a schedule?** Yes — that is the normal pattern for monitoring. Schedule it (e.g. hourly or daily), combine with `onlyNewItems` for a change feed, or with `onlyItemsNewerThan` for a rolling window.

**What about copyright and republishing?** The Actor returns exactly what each feed publishes; RSS is designed for sharing item metadata, but full-text reuse is governed by each publisher's terms. Respect licensing and attribution when you republish content or build public products on it.

**Why are some fields empty?** The Actor can only output what the feed itself carries: feeds without full text give null `content`, feeds without `dc:creator` give null `author`, and missing dates, images or enclosures stay empty rather than invented.

### How much does RSS Feed Reader cost?

Pay per event: **$0.0015 per result** ($1.50 per 1,000 saved rows). Each saved data row is one `result` event. Status rows, error rows and empty lookups are not charged. Set `maxTotalChargeUsd` explicitly in API/CLI run options (for example `0.01`); this limits result-event charges, while platform compute/storage may be separate. A partial dataset is normal when the cap is reached. An explicit zero event budget emits no item rows. The run stops when it reaches the maximum cost per run. No Apify proxy and no login.

### Support and disclaimers

Problems, feature requests and questions belong on the **Issues** tab of the Actor's page on Apify. This Actor is an independent tool: it is not affiliated with Apify or with any feed publisher, and it only reads feeds that are published for syndication. Item metadata may include author names as published in the feed; those are public syndication data, and the Actor stores no personal profiles beyond what the feed provides.

# Actor input Schema

## `feeds` (type: `array`):

Feed URLs (RSS, Atom, RDF, JSON Feed) or plain website/blog URLs such as "techcrunch.com": the feed is discovered automatically. YouTube channel feeds and podcasts work too.

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

Newest first as the feed lists them. 0 = everything in the feed.

## `onlyItemsNewerThan` (type: `string`):

A date like "2026-01-31" or a relative time like "24 hours", "7 days", "1 month".

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

Optional. Keep only items whose title, summary, text or categories contain at least one of these words (not case-sensitive). Skipped items are free.

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

Remember the items of each feed between runs (named key-value store) and output only items that were not seen before. Schedule the Actor to get a feed of new posts. Previously seen items are free.

## `monitorKey` (type: `string`):

Optional. Runs with the same name share one memory. Empty = derived from your feed list.

## `includeContent` (type: `boolean`):

Add the full article text when the feed carries it (content:encoded / Atom content), as plain text.

## `includeHtml` (type: `boolean`):

Also add the original HTML content.

## `includeFeedInfo` (type: `boolean`):

One free row per feed: title, link, description, language, image, item count.

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

How many feeds are read at the same time.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "feeds": [
    "https://www.w3.org/blog/feed/"
  ],
  "maxItemsPerFeed": 5,
  "onlyNewItems": false,
  "includeContent": true,
  "includeHtml": false,
  "includeFeedInfo": true,
  "maxConcurrency": 5
}
```

# Actor output Schema

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

No description

## `allFields` (type: `string`):

No description

## `summary` (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 = {
    "feeds": [
        "https://www.w3.org/blog/feed/"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("atesen-software/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 = { "feeds": ["https://www.w3.org/blog/feed/"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("atesen-software/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 '{
  "feeds": [
    "https://www.w3.org/blog/feed/"
  ]
}' |
apify call atesen-software/rss-feed-reader --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,atesen-software/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/QySlt1CGqV3SmYddi/builds/jwJDZedllcCDxC36d/openapi.json