Apple Podcasts Scraper

Apple Podcasts Scraper returns podcast rows from the Apple Podcasts directory (search results, top charts or shows you list) and, when you ask for them, episode rows from each show's RSS feed with the audio URL, duration and show notes. Type a search term such as history and click Start, or add chart countries and genres. Ratings come as the average and the count from each show's page; individual listener reviews are not collected. It costs $1.00 per 1,000 podcasts on the Free plan ($0.50 on Business), and the $5 of monthly credit in Apify's Free plan covers about 5,000 podcasts.

What data does it return?

Every row has a type: podcast for a show, episode for an episode. Podcast rows contain:

Field	Description
name, author	Show name and publisher as the directory lists them, for example Crime Junkie by Audiochuck.
appleId, appleUrl, feedUrl	Apple Podcasts ID, the show's page and its RSS feed.
genres, primaryGenre	Apple genres of the show, such as True Crime.
episodeCount, latestEpisodeAt	Number of episodes and the release time of the newest one, ISO 8601 UTC.
ratingAverage, ratingCount	Average star rating and number of ratings from the show's page, with Include ratings on; null otherwise.
chartRank, chartCountry, chartKind, chartGenre	Place in the chart, its country, top or top-subscriber, and the genre you asked for. With a genre, the place counts only that genre's shows. Filled on chart rows only.
source, matchedQuery	How the show was found (search, chart or input) and the search term that found it.
website, language, podcastType, description	Taken from the show's feed: website, language code such as en, episodic or serial, and the description. Empty unless the feed was read, which happens with Include episodes on or for shows given as a feed URL.
explicit	true when Apple or the feed marks the show as explicit.
country	Storefront the directory data comes from.

With Include episodes on, each show also gets episode rows:

Field	Description
title, publishedAt	Episode title and release time, ISO 8601 UTC.
durationSeconds	Length in seconds, whatever format the feed used, for example 2283.
episodeNumber, seasonNumber, episodeType	Numbers and full, trailer or bonus, when the feed declares them.
audioUrl, audioType, audioBytes	Link to the audio file, its type such as audio/mpeg, and its size in bytes.
summary, content	Show notes as plain text. summary stops at 300 characters unless Full show notes is on, which also fills content with the complete notes.
podcastKey, podcastName, podcastAppleId	The show the episode belongs to; podcastKey equals the key of its podcast row.
episodeSource	rss for an episode from the show's own feed, apple for one taken from the Apple directory.

How to scrape Apple Podcasts

1. Choose where shows come from: Search terms, Chart countries with optional Chart genres, or Podcasts (Apple Podcasts links, numeric IDs such as 1200361736, or RSS feed URLs). One run can use all three.
2. For charts, pick the Chart, top shows or top subscriber shows, and set the Chart size.
3. Turn on Include ratings for the average rating and rating count.
4. Turn on Include episodes for episode rows, and set Maximum episodes per podcast (newest first, 50 by default), Episodes published after or Episode keywords (any of) to narrow them.
5. Click Start. Podcast and episode rows share one dataset, and the Output tab has a view for each. Export them as CSV, Excel or JSON, or read them through the API.

An API input for the True Crime shows in the charts of two countries, with ratings and the 5 newest episodes of each show:

{
  "chartCountries": ["us", "gb"],
  "chartGenres": ["True Crime"],
  "chartLimit": 100,
  "includeRatings": true,
  "includeEpisodes": true,
  "maxEpisodesPerPodcast": 5
}

Example output

One chart row from a run on 30 September 2026 with Include ratings and Include episodes on; reading the feed for the episodes is what filled website, language, podcastType and description. The description is cut after its first sentence here.

{
  "type": "podcast",
  "key": "chart:us:top:1488:1322200189",
  "source": "chart",
  "appleId": "1322200189",
  "name": "Crime Junkie",
  "author": "Audiochuck",
  "appleUrl": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crime-junkie/id1322200189",
  "feedUrl": "https://feeds.simplecast.com/qm_9xx0g",
  "website": "https://audiochuck.com",
  "artwork": "https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts126/v4/8c/35/04/8c350430-2fbf-98d0-0a25-00b76550ffeb/mza_13445204151221888086.jpg/600x600bb.jpg",
  "genres": [
    "True Crime"
  ],
  "primaryGenre": "True Crime",
  "language": "en",
  "episodeCount": 531,
  "latestEpisodeAt": "2026-09-28T07:00:00.000Z",
  "explicit": false,
  "podcastType": "episodic",
  "description": "Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? ...",
  "ratingAverage": 4.7,
  "ratingCount": 365253,
  "chartRank": 1,
  "chartCountry": "us",
  "chartKind": "top",
  "chartGenre": "True Crime",
  "matchedQuery": null,
  "country": "us"
}

How much does it cost to scrape Apple Podcasts?

	Free plan	Starter	Scale	Business
1,000 podcasts	$1.00	$0.80	$0.65	$0.50
Episode, per 1,000	$0.50	$0.40	$0.325	$0.25

You pay only for the events in the table. There is no start fee, and compute time and proxies are included.

The top 100 shows of one country with their 5 newest episodes make 100 podcast rows and 500 episode rows: $0.10 plus $0.25 on the Free plan, or $0.05 plus $0.125 on Business. Ratings add nothing to the price. Episodes dropped by the date or keyword filters, and rows the new-only mode has returned before, are not charged.

Limits

• Search returns at most 200 shows per term.
• Charts come from Apple's official chart feed: top shows and top subscriber shows, up to 100 places each. A larger Chart size returns 100.
• The feed has no genre charts. A genre returns the shows of that genre found in the country's top 100, numbered in chart order. In October 2026 the US chart held 22 True Crime shows and 5 Daily News shows, and the UK chart no Entrepreneurship show.
• About half of the requests to Apple's chart feed failed in October 2026. The actor sends each chart request to both feed addresses together and repeats it up to 8 times, so a slow day can add about 90 seconds.
• For a show without a public feed, or with a feed that cannot be read, the actor takes episodes from the Apple directory instead: at most the latest 200, without episode numbers, seasons or file sizes, marked episodeSource: "apple".
• latestEpisodeAt comes from the Apple directory and can lie in the future: a row read on 29 September 2026 showed 7 October.
• Apple allows its search interface about 20 requests a minute from one address, and the actor keeps to that pace. When Apple limits the requests (HTTP 429), the actor waits and slows down. If Apple keeps limiting them or refuses access (HTTP 403), the actor stops asking Apple and returns what it collected, with a note in the log and the status message.
• The cap in Maximum podcasts, 500 by default, covers the shows taken from search, charts and your list together. Shows you list are collected first.
• Owner email addresses that some feeds include are not extracted.

Following a chart from day to day

Give the run a Watch name such as true-crime-us, or save it as a task, turn on Return only rows new since the last run and schedule it. Each run then returns only the shows that entered the chart and the episodes it has not returned before, and charges only those. Rows left over when a run reaches Maximum rows or its spending limit come in the next run. The CHANGES record also lists the shows that left the chart and every change of rank.

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape Apple Podcasts?

Apple publishes the directory so that podcast apps can list shows, and podcasters publish RSS feeds so that any app can play their episodes. The actor reads both and returns show and episode metadata with links; it does not download audio or collect anything about listeners. You are responsible for how you use the data.

Which countries and genres work?

Any Apple storefront code, such as us, gb, de, au or jp, and all 110 Apple Podcasts genres (19 main genres and 91 subgenres), by name such as True Crime or Entrepreneurship, or by Apple genre ID such as 1489. A subgenre also counts toward its main genre, so a Daily News show appears under News. A genre name the actor does not know is reported in the run summary and skipped.

Can I start from an RSS feed that is not on Apple Podcasts?

Yes. A feed URL in Podcasts, such as https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml, gives a podcast row filled from the feed and, with Include episodes, its episodes. Such rows have no Apple ID and no rating.

Related scrapers

• Substack Scraper
• Google News Scraper

Support

This actor is built and maintained by deriverge s.r.o., a software company based in the Czech Republic. If a run fails or a field you need is missing, please open an issue in the Issues tab or write to us at info@deriverge.com. We respond in English and Czech. Runs can be scheduled in Apify Console or started from the API tab, which has examples for Python, JavaScript and cURL and works with Make, Zapier, n8n and the Apify MCP server. If the actor saves you time, a short review helps other people find it.