RSS & Atom Feed Reader / Monitor

Read public RSS and Atom feeds and save clean items as JSON or CSV. This RSS feed reader accepts the feed URLs you provide. It does not crawl article pages.

What you get

• RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0/RDF and Atom 1.0 items;
• feed title and type;
• item title, link, authors, categories and dates;
• feed summary and optional feed-provided content;
• enclosure details without downloading the file;
• stable item IDs and clear change values;
• a final run summary with feed results and errors.

Snapshot and monitor modes

Snapshot mode reads the current items in each feed.

Monitor mode keeps a small current window for each feed. The first run creates a baseline. Later runs can show NEW, UPDATED, UNCHANGED and NO_LONGER_IN_CURRENT_FEED. A missing item is not called deleted.

Use stateKey to keep monitor jobs separate. Use resetState to start a new baseline. The Actor keeps monitor state only in its current Apify storage context.

How to use it

1. Add one or more direct public RSS or Atom feed URLs.
2. Choose snapshot or monitor.
3. Set the item limits and optional filters.
4. Start the run and download the dataset as JSON, CSV or another Apify format.

For a repeating RSS feed monitor, create an Apify schedule yourself. This Actor does not create schedules, webhooks or notifications.

Input limits

• 1–100 feed URLs per run;
• up to 1,000 items from one feed;
• up to 5,000 item rows in one run;
• the default uses one feed, Snapshot mode and no feed content.

Use maxItemsPerFeed and maxItemsTotal to keep a run small. Date and keyword filters can reduce the result count.

Safe direct-feed reading

The Actor reads public HTTP(S) feed documents only. It rejects credentials, unsafe ports and private network destinations. Redirects and XML external entities are checked. Item links, image links and enclosure links are data only and are never fetched.

Pricing

The price is USD 0.00075 for each saved ITEM or requested monitor status row. There is no run-start fee. The run summary, empty feeds, 304 responses, suppressed duplicate rows, blocked URLs and failed feeds do not create an item charge. If you turn on emitUnchanged, the unchanged rows you ask the Actor to save are charged like other saved item rows.

Output fields

The main item fields are feedUrl, feedType, feedTitle, itemKey, title, link, authors, categories, publishedAt, updatedAt, summary, content, enclosures and changeType. The final RUN_SUMMARY explains the feed outcomes, limits, errors and monitor state.

Important limits

This Actor does not discover feeds from a website. It does not fetch full web pages, download media, use login cookies, bypass access controls or claim that a missing item was deleted. Feed content can change after a run, so use the observation time in each row.

Examples

Examples are in examples/:

• examples/input-snapshot.json — a small snapshot;
• examples/input-monitor.json — a separate monitor.

Runtime and output details are in docs/SPEC.md, docs/OUTPUT-CONTRACT.md, docs/STATE-CONTRACT.md and docs/TEST-PLAN.md.