Techmeme News Headlines Scraper

Export techmeme news headlines from Techmeme's official current RSS feed. Each dataset row pairs a story's title and publication time with its Techmeme permalink and the primary publisher article URL when Techmeme attributes one. This is a lightweight feed export for daily technology-news monitoring, not a full-site crawl or an article-body extractor.

Who is it for?

• Editorial teams compile a morning scan of technology stories with original reporting links.
• Researchers compare fresh headline snapshots in their own spreadsheet or warehouse.
• Communications analysts filter the current feed for a topic before routing matches to their own alerts.

Why use this Actor?

The output exposes both the Techmeme story permalink and its credited primary publisher URL in separate fields. It uses the official RSS feed instead of rendering pages, so there is no browser, login, or proxy configuration. A scheduled Actor run gives you a fresh snapshot; compare successive datasets in your own workflow for additions.

What data comes back?

Field	Meaning
title	Headline as supplied in the RSS item.
techmemeUrl	Canonical Techmeme story permalink from RSS.
publisherUrl	Primary publisher article URL from the item description's lead-image link; null if absent.
publishedAt	RSS pubDate converted to UTC ISO 8601.
fetchedAt	UTC timestamp of this retrieval.

Only current RSS items are returned. Related story clusters, article text, images, and historical archive search are outside scope.

Get started

1. Open the Actor and accept the default maxItems: 20 for a current snapshot.
2. Optionally set keyword to a substring of the headline (case-insensitive).
3. Optionally supply publishedAfter as a UTC ISO timestamp to discard older current-feed entries.
4. Run, then download the default dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel. Schedule repeated runs in Apify if you need periodic snapshots.

Input parameters

Parameter	Default	Description
maxItems	20	Maximum matching rows from the feed, between 1 and 100. The feed itself may contain fewer.
keyword	none	Case-insensitive headline substring; no match returns an empty dataset.
publishedAfter	none	Inclusive UTC ISO cutoff (e.g. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z). This is not an archive query.

Example input for topical monitoring:

{"keyword":"AI","maxItems":10}

Output example

A representative shape of a current-feed record (URLs and headline shortened for illustration):

{
  "title": "PitchBook: VCs have invested $4B+ in quantum computing companies YTD (Financial Times)",
  "techmemeUrl": "https://www.techmeme.com/260926/p7#a260926p7",
  "publisherUrl": "https://www.ft.com/content/ae9eedd2-4530-47e4-be4b-242d0e2a6253",
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-26T10:20:01.000Z",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-09-26T14:04:19.891Z"
}

The live publisher link may contain query parameters supplied by the feed. Some articles require a separate publisher subscription; this Actor does not bypass it.

How much does it cost to export Techmeme headlines?

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing: one $0.005 start event per run and one item event for each emitted record. The item unit price depends on your Apify Store monthly spend tier, not the number of records in this run:

Spend tier	Item price
FREE	$0.010497
BRONZE	$0.0091276
SILVER	$0.0071195
GOLD	$0.0054766
PLATINUM	$0.0054766
DIAMOND	$0.0054766

At BRONZE the estimated charge is $0.050638 for 5 headlines, $0.096276 for 10, or $0.187552 for 20 (start fee included); at GOLD the same examples cost $0.032383, $0.059766, or $0.114532. The current Pricing tab is authoritative. Empty filtered runs do not charge for items, but the start event still applies. These are usage estimates, not guaranteed invoices: refunds, fraud, disputes, taxes, corrections and clawbacks can change final payout or billing. Apify platform execution costs are separate from the event count.

Integrations and scheduled workflows

Use an Apify Schedule for a daily snapshot, then connect the default dataset to Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, or your own ETL. Store techmemeUrl as a stable story key to deduplicate across scheduled runs. Compare publishedAt rather than fetchedAt when ordering stories; the latter identifies the snapshot retrieval time. The Actor does not maintain an internal history, send notifications, or deliver an alert itself.

API access

Start an Actor run with your Apify token (replace the token securely, do not embed it in shared files):

curl -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~techmeme-news-headlines-source-links/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"maxItems":20}'

JavaScript:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/techmeme-news-headlines-source-links').call({ maxItems: 20 });
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient
import os
client = ApifyClient(os.environ['APIFY_TOKEN'])
run = client.actor('automation-lab/techmeme-news-headlines-source-links').call(run_input={'maxItems': 20})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

MCP usage

To expose this Actor to Claude Code via Apify MCP:

claude mcp add --transport http apify \
  'https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/techmeme-news-headlines-source-links'

For Claude Desktop, Cursor, and VS Code MCP setup, configure the equivalent remote server (each client's remote HTTP-server configuration UI may differ):

{"mcpServers":{"apify":{"url":"https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/techmeme-news-headlines-source-links"}}}

Example prompt: “Export the current Techmeme headlines and publisher URLs; show only headlines containing AI.” The assistant still sees only the current RSS window.

Limits and reliability

The feed is controlled by Techmeme and may contain fewer than your maxItems. Feed entries can change or disappear between runs. The headline substring filter is literal, not semantic or full-text search; a no-match filter succeeds with zero records. Malformed upstream RSS, HTTP failures after bounded retries, and non-XML responses fail visibly rather than returning a misleading empty success. The Actor does not crawl linked publisher sites.

Legality and responsible use

This Actor does not use AI or send feed entries to an AI provider. It fetches only public RSS and writes the selected metadata into the run's default dataset; Apify controls dataset retention and deletion through your account settings. No user-provided credentials are accepted or logged. For questions about a run, open the Actor's Issues tab with a run link (do not paste private tokens).

Techmeme and the publishers own their content. Check their terms and your use case before redistributing headlines or links. This Actor exports public RSS metadata, not paywalled article bodies or personal account information. Publisher links may be gated by subscriptions or expire if they include share tokens.

Data quality checks

Confirm techmemeUrl is a Techmeme permalink and use it for deduplication. A missing publisher link is an explicit null, not the Techmeme permalink copied into the publisher column. Filtered feeds may contain fewer rows than the requested cap; inspect your input cutoff before treating a small dataset as a failure.

Frequently asked questions

Why did I get no records?

Remove keyword and publishedAfter to see the full current feed, then retry with a narrower cutoff. This feed does not provide historical search.

Why is a publisher URL null or inaccessible?

A feed item may omit the lead publisher link. A non-null link can still be behind a publisher paywall, expire, or change independently of this Actor.

Can I get all related stories in a Techmeme cluster?

No. This product deliberately exports the primary attributed article URL from each headline item, not cluster coverage or article bodies.

Related automation-lab Actors

For other news sources, see Reuters Latest News Feed Scraper and Ground News Bias & Coverage Scraper. Those are separate source workflows, not extensions of Techmeme's RSS feed.