Charset Checker - Detect Encoding Mismatches & Mojibake

Charset / Encoding Checker — detect mismatches & mojibake risk

Verify a page's character-encoding setup and catch the mismatches that cause mojibake (garbled "é" text). Compares the HTTP Content-Type charset, the <meta charset>, http-equiv, any XML declaration, and BOM presence — and flags inconsistencies. Single URL or bulk. $0.0005 per page. Failed fetches are recorded free.

What you get

• httpCharset, metaCharset, metaHttpEquivCharset, xmlCharset, and bom.
• consistent — whether all declared encodings agree.
• issues — specific mismatches (e.g. HTTP says ISO-8859-1 but meta says UTF-8).
• Fail-soft: an unreachable URL returns {ok:false, error} and is never charged.

Input

{ "url": "https://github.com", "urls": ["https://example.com"], "maxUrls": 25 }

Output (real run, 2026-08-07)

{
  "ok": true, "url": "https://github.com", "status": 200,
  "contentType": "text/html; charset=utf-8",
  "httpCharset": "utf-8", "metaCharset": "utf-8",
  "metaHttpEquivCharset": null, "xmlCharset": null, "bom": null,
  "consistent": true, "issues": []
}

Example

A real run on 2026-10-31 with the input this page's form is prefilled with:

{
  "url": "https://github.com",
  "urls": [
    "https://github.com",
    "https://www.wikipedia.org"
  ]
}

It finished in 2 seconds and returned 2 results. It was charged for 2 page-scanned events ($0.001 on the Free plan). The first result (long text and lists cut for display):

{
  "ok": true,
  "url": "https://github.com",
  "finalUrl": "https://github.com/",
  "status": 200,
  "contentType": "text/html; charset=utf-8",
  "httpCharset": "utf-8",
  "metaCharset": "utf-8",
  "metaHttpEquivCharset": null,
  "xmlCharset": null,
  "bom": null,
  "consistent": true,
  "issues": [],
  "checkedAt": "2026-10-31T23:40:33.821Z"
}

Pricing — $0.0005 per page

Priced at the floor. No directly comparable charset/mojibake actor was found on the Apify Store on 2026-08-07 (the nearest listings are generic metadata/HTTP-status scrapers), so there is no competitor price to quote.

Limits (honest ones)

• Reads the declared encodings and BOM from the served response; it does not statistically sniff the byte stream to guess the true encoding.
• consistent:false flags a declaration mismatch — the actual rendered text may still be fine or broken depending on the browser's resolution order.
• maxUrls capped per run.

FAQ

• What causes mojibake? A page served as one encoding but declared as another; this actor surfaces exactly those mismatches.
• Does it detect a BOM? Yes — UTF-8/UTF-16 byte-order marks are reported.
• Does it guess the real encoding? No — it compares the declared encodings; use it to catch misconfiguration.
• What about a dead URL? You get an {ok:false, error} record, uncharged.

Use from code or AI agents

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/EliAI~webpage-charset-encoding-checker/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{"url":"https://github.com"}'

Callable as an agent tool through the Apify MCP server (mcp.apify.com).

Who uses it

• Developers diagnosing mojibake by comparing the HTTP charset with <meta charset>
• Localization teams checking non-English pages declare UTF-8 consistently
• Scraping engineers detecting encoding mismatches before parsing pages
• SEO auditors flagging pages with conflicting charset declarations
• Migration teams checking legacy pages after moving to a new server

Changelog

• 2026-11-01: Page text only: the prefilled example now uses a real site instead of a placeholder and an Example section from a real run. Code, output and price are unchanged.