Podcast/RSS Feed Preflight

Bulk QA for public podcast RSS feeds.

This Actor does not reproduce Apple Podcasts Connect, Spotify, or any directory validator and does not guarantee submission, approval, listing, delivery, playback, ranking, analytics, or platform decisions. It lists machine-readable RSS, podcast channel, episode enclosure, GUID, date, and duplicate signals across public feeds.

What it checks

• Input from feedUrls
• RSS 2.0 root and channel shape
• Required channel fields such as title, link, description, and podcast artwork via itunes:image
• Recommended channel fields such as language, itunes:category, itunes:explicit, and lastBuildDate
• Episode item presence
• Episode guid, title/description, enclosure url, length, and type
• Episode pubDate RFC 822 format
• Duplicate episode GUID values
• Duplicate enclosure URLs
• URL and media type format signals

Findings

Each finding includes:

• severity
• confidence
• evidence
• caveat
• source feed URL with query strings redacted
• documentation references where applicable

Primary finding IDs include:

• feed.missing_required.<field>
• feed.missing_recommended.<field>
• feed.invalid_format.<field>
• episode.duplicate.guid
• episode.duplicate.enclosure_url

Boundaries

This is an informational diagnostic tool for public RSS feeds. It does not certify a feed, submit a feed, reproduce platform validation, promise directory listing, promise playback, promise distribution, or represent Apple, Spotify, or any podcast directory.

The scanner inspects static RSS/XML. It does not log in, render websites, download media files, measure artwork dimensions, or evaluate private, login-gated, CAPTCHA-gated, or non-public feeds.

Billing note

Pay-per-event billing is based on reachable feeds only. Unreachable feeds are reported as findings, but they are not counted as checked feeds.

References

• Apple Podcasts RSS requirements: https://podcasters.apple.com/support/823-podcast-requirements
• Apple Podcasts RSS validation overview: https://podcasters.apple.com/support/829-validate-your-podcast
• RSS 2.0 specification: https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification

Related tools

• Social Card / Open Graph Bulk QA - Use when episode pages also need Open Graph and social-preview metadata checks.
• Canonical / Hreflang Bulk QA - Use when feed entries point to pages with canonical or language-signal risk.
• Agency Evidence Pack - Use when podcast feed checks are one part of a recurring multi-site record.

Minimal input

{
  "feedUrls": [
    "https://podcast.example.com/feed-valid.xml"
  ],
  "sampleLimit": 10,
  "maxEpisodes": 50
}

API and scheduled use

Run the same validated input from Apify Console, the Actor API, CLI, schedules, or integrations. The run writes machine-readable findings to the default dataset and the complete report to the run storage.

Common input errors

Start with the published example and keep feedUrls, sampleLimit, maxEpisodes in the documented JSON shape. Malformed JSON, unsupported URL schemes, missing required values, and inputs above the stated limits are rejected rather than repaired silently.