Apple Podcasts Scraper

What does Apple Podcasts Scraper do?

Apple Podcasts Scraper reads the Apple Podcasts directory and each show's own RSS feed, and returns both as clean rows:

• Search the directory for any term, up to 200 podcasts per term, in any storefront.
• Charts: the top shows of any country in any of 110 genres, up to 200 entries per chart, plus the top subscriber chart.
• Details for any podcast you name by Apple Podcasts link, numeric Apple ID or feed URL, with the average rating and the number of ratings when you ask for them.
• Episodes from each show's feed: title, date, duration in seconds, episode and season numbers, episode type, audio URL and type, and the show notes as plain text. The whole archive, newest first.

No browser, no proxies, no API key. Apple publishes the directory through a public interface and every podcast publishes its feed; this actor reads both the way a podcast app does.

You pay only for podcasts returned, from $0.50 per 1,000, with no start fee. The $5 of monthly credit in Apify's Free plan covers about 5,000 podcasts, so you can try it for free.

Two kinds of rows

Every row has a type. Podcast rows and episode rows can be told apart in one column and joined on podcastKey.

Podcast row	What you get
name, author, appleId, appleUrl, feedUrl, website, artwork	Identity and links from the directory and the feed.
genres, primaryGenre, language, podcastType, explicit	Classification, episodic or serial, the explicit flag.
episodeCount, latestEpisodeAt	How much there is and how fresh it is.
ratingAverage, ratingCount	Average rating and number of ratings from the show page, with includeRatings.
chartRank, chartCountry, chartKind, chartGenre	Filled for chart entries, null for search results.
source, matchedQuery	Where the row came from: search, chart or input, and the term it matched.

Episode row	What you get
title, publishedAt, durationSeconds	Date as a real timestamp, duration as a number whatever format the feed used.
episodeNumber, seasonNumber, episodeType	Numbers and full, trailer or bonus, when the feed publishes them.
audioUrl, audioType, audioBytes	The enclosure.
summary, content	Show notes as plain text: the first 300 characters, or the whole text with includeContent.
podcastName, podcastAppleId, podcastKey, feedUrl	The show the episode belongs to.
episodeSource	rss from the show's feed, apple from the directory when a show publishes no public feed.

Nothing is guessed. A field the source did not publish is null.

Charts that report movement

Turn on newOnly, give the run a watch name or save it as a task, and schedule it daily. Each run compares the chart against the previous snapshot: new entrants are returned and charged, shows already in the chart are not. The CHANGES record lists what entered, what dropped out and every rank move, at no charge.

Filters that stop the noise before it is charged

• episodesPublishedAfter cuts the archive off at a date.
• keywords keeps only episodes whose title, show notes or categories mention one of your words.
• maxEpisodesPerPodcast takes the newest N. Feeds carry whole archives, some with thousands of episodes, so this is what keeps a broad run affordable.
• maxPodcasts caps how many shows a search or a set of charts may bring in. Podcasts you named are collected first and never dropped by this cap.

Episodes removed by a filter are never charged.

How much does it cost to scrape Apple Podcasts?

You pay per result. There is no start fee and no charge for compute time or proxies.

	Free plan	Starter	Scale	Business
1,000 podcasts	$1.00	$0.80	$0.65	$0.50
1,000 episodes (optional)	$0.50	$0.40	$0.33	$0.25

For example, a batch of 1,000 podcasts costs $1.00 on the Free plan and $0.50 on the Business plan. The $5 of monthly credit in Apify's Free plan covers about 5,000 podcasts.

How to scrape Apple Podcasts

1. Click Try for free (or Start if you are signed in) to open the actor in Apify Console.
2. Fill in Search terms, Charts or Podcasts (Apple Podcasts links); each works on its own or together.
3. Click Start. Rows appear in the Output tab within seconds.
4. Download the results as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read them through the API.
5. To repeat it, click Save as a task and add a schedule. A scheduled task keeps its own snapshot, so change and new-only modes work without any setup.

Input

{
  "queries": ["history"],
  "chartCountries": ["us", "gb"],
  "chartGenres": ["True Crime", "Business"],
  "chartLimit": 100,
  "podcasts": ["https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736", "https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml"],
  "country": "us",
  "includeRatings": true,
  "includeEpisodes": true,
  "maxEpisodesPerPodcast": 20,
  "episodesPublishedAfter": "2026-01-01",
  "newOnly": false
}

Output

A podcast row:

{
  "type": "podcast",
  "key": "podcast:1537788786",
  "source": "search",
  "appleId": "1537788786",
  "name": "The Rest Is History",
  "author": "Goalhanger",
  "appleUrl": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rest-is-history/id1537788786",
  "feedUrl": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/GLT4787413333",
  "website": "http://therestishistory.com",
  "artwork": "https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts211/v4/bf/89/a5/bf89a586-3f77-bf37-7ba3-b75f1bca7bfa/mza_1664785978944494824.jpg/600x600bb.jpg",
  "genres": ["History"],
  "primaryGenre": "History",
  "language": "en",
  "episodeCount": 993,
  "latestEpisodeAt": "2026-10-07T23:00:00.000Z",
  "explicit": false,
  "podcastType": "episodic",
  "description": "Take a deep dive into History's biggest moments with Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook. ...",
  "ratingAverage": 4.7,
  "ratingCount": 14080,
  "chartRank": null,
  "chartCountry": null,
  "chartKind": null,
  "chartGenre": null,
  "matchedQuery": "history",
  "country": "us"
}

An episode row:

{
  "type": "episode",
  "key": "episode:podcast:1537788786:0322655e-b118-11f1-b8eb-f79d9c6ca5d1",
  "podcastKey": "podcast:1537788786",
  "podcastAppleId": "1537788786",
  "podcastName": "The Rest Is History",
  "feedTitle": "The Rest Is History",
  "feedUrl": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/GLT4787413333",
  "title": "707. The Terror: How The French Revolution Collapsed Into Chaos (Part 1)",
  "link": null,
  "appleUrl": null,
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-20T23:05:00.000Z",
  "durationSeconds": 5133,
  "episodeNumber": 707,
  "seasonNumber": null,
  "episodeType": "full",
  "explicit": false,
  "author": "Goalhanger",
  "summary": "How did the infamous murder of Jean-Paul Marat, painted so vividly by Jacques-Louis David, ...",
  "content": null,
  "categories": [],
  "image": "https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/...",
  "audioUrl": "https://pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/GLT6580043397.mp3",
  "audioType": "audio/mpeg",
  "audioBytes": null,
  "guid": "0322655e-b118-11f1-b8eb-f79d9c6ca5d1",
  "episodeSource": "rss"
}

What it does not collect

Nothing about listeners. The author credit, the artwork and the links are what the show itself publishes. Individual reviews are not collected, only the aggregate rating and count shown on the show page. Contact details that some feeds carry in an owner tag are not extracted.

Integrations and API

Connect the actor to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, Slack or any webhook, or call it from your own code. With the Python client:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("deriverge/apple-podcasts-scraper").call(run_input={"queries": ["history"]})
for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(row["type"], row.get("name"))

The API tab on this page has the same call for Node.js and cURL, and AI agents can run the actor through the Apify MCP server.

Is it legal to scrape Apple Podcasts?

The actor reads the public Apple Podcasts directory and the RSS feeds that podcasters publish for distribution. It returns metadata and links, not audio files; the shows themselves remain their creators' work.

FAQ

How many episodes can I get?

The whole archive of each show, because episodes come from the show's own feed. When a show publishes no public feed (some platform exclusives) or the feed cannot be read, the actor falls back to the Apple directory, which carries the latest 200 episodes, and marks those rows episodeSource: "apple".

Which countries and genres?

Any Apple storefront code (us, gb, de, fr, jp, au, br and so on) and any of the 110 Apple Podcasts genres and subgenres, by name or by Apple genre ID. An unknown genre name is reported in the log and the run summary instead of silently returning the overall chart.

Does Apple limit requests?

Apple's search interface allows about twenty requests per minute from one address. A run needs one request per search term, one per chart, one per hundred podcasts for details and one per show for ratings, so most runs never come near it. If Apple answers 403 or 429, the actor repeats the request through a fresh proxy session.

Can I read only charts, or only episodes?

Yes. The same engine is published as Podcast Charts Scraper and Podcast Episodes Scraper with the input reduced to that job, and as RSS Feed Scraper for any RSS or Atom feed.

Support and feedback

Missing a field or found something that does not work? Open an issue in the Issues tab and it will be answered, usually within a day. If the actor saves you time, a short review helps other people find it.