Article Text Extractor — Clean Content, Authors & Dates

Extract readable article text, titles, authors, dates and publisher metadata from public URLs. Batch news and blog pages, filter by keyword, and export JSON or CSV.

Quick start

Paste your targets into the input form and run. The example below fetches a small sample:

{
  "targets": [
    "https://blog.apify.com/web-scraping-python/"
  ],
  "maxResults": 10,
  "maxItemsPerTarget": 10,
  "maxPages": 3
}

The dataset supports JSON, CSV and Excel export. Use the API, schedules, Make, n8n or other Apify integrations to repeat the same collection. No external API key, browser cookies or login is required by this Actor.

Input and limits

Field	Meaning
targets	1–50 source URLs. See README for supported URL formats.
maxResults	Stops the run after this many unique matching results. Always set a sensible cap.
maxItemsPerTarget	Maximum delivered results per input target, after filters.
maxPages	Maximum pages per target. Contact extraction follows same-host contact/about/support pages. Shopify, Lever and SmartRecruiters paginate. Ignored for single-page article/product extraction and single-response Ashby/Greenhouse boards.
proxyConfiguration	Optional Apify proxy settings. Default requests connect directly. Proxy costs are included in listed per-result pricing; using expensive custom proxies can reduce run efficiency.
keyword	Optional case-insensitive substring. Matches title/description for jobs and feeds, title/vendor/tags for products, URL for sitemaps. Applied before billing.

Duplicate targets are processed once. Filters apply before result billing. Runs are bounded snapshots; limits can stop collection before the source is exhausted.

Output

Each result includes source, id, title, url and fetchedAt where applicable, plus source-specific fields. The Results view highlights title, publisher, author, publishedAt, wordCount, url, text. JSON export retains every field, including nested arrays. Missing source values are null rather than estimated.

The free SUMMARY record in the default key-value store reports each target's result count and errors, HTTP requests, and whether the overall result or spending limit was reached. Errors are not inserted into the paid dataset. A run in which every source fails is marked failed; mixed success is reported explicitly in the summary.

Pricing

$2 per 1,000 delivered results ($0.002 each). No Actor start fee. Filtered rows, duplicates within the same context and source errors are not charged. Results are deduplicated within each run. Google Search preserves a URL appearing in distinct queries. Source requests and the default proxy costs are included in paid per-result pricing. Set Apify's maximum charge per run as an additional budget control.

Source coverage and limitations

Fetches the supplied URLs only; no link discovery or Google News redirect decoding. Uses Trafilatura heuristic text extraction, not AI. No JavaScript rendering, paywall bypass, login or PDF extraction. Layouts vary and extracted text may retain boilerplate or omit sections. Pages yielding fewer than 40 words are omitted. Metadata dates are heuristic and may be missing or inaccurate; verify against the linked source. Comments are excluded.

Public sources can change, throttle requests or return no matches. The Actor retries transient network failures up to twice, follows a bounded number of redirects, and rejects private-network targets. It does not bypass login or CAPTCHA challenges. Use data within the source's applicable terms and your intended permissions.

Support

Open an issue on this Actor's Issues tab with the failing public target, input, and run link. Never include passwords, tokens or personal account cookies.