Podcast Directory Scraper — Apple Podcasts Search & Episodes

Podcast Directory Scraper extracts podcast listings from podcasts.apple.com: search any keyword, paste Apple Podcasts IDs or URLs, or read the Top Podcasts chart of any country and genre, and get one flat record per show with its name, author, RSS feed URL, artwork, genres, episode count and latest release date. Switch on the episodes add-on and the Actor opens each show's RSS feed to add the description, language, website and categories, and saves the newest episodes with title, date, duration, audio URL, show notes and season / episode numbers. It uses Apple's public directory endpoints and the public feeds, so there is no API key, no login and no browser, and you pay per podcast and per episode saved.

It is the podcast sibling of our App Store Apps Scraper, which reads app listings from the same Apple directory service.

What data does it return?

Podcast records (recordType: "podcast"):

Field	Example	Notes
podcastId, name, url	1200361736, The Daily, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736	Apple show ID and page
author, authorId, authorUrl	The New York Times, 121664449	author / producer as listed in the directory
feedUrl	https://feeds.simplecast.com/Sl5CSM3S	the show's RSS feed
artworkUrl, artworkUrlSmall	600 px and 100 px artwork
primaryGenre, primaryGenreId, genres, genreIds	Daily News, 1526, ["Daily News", "News"]	Apple's genre tree
episodeCount, latestEpisodeDate	2754, 2026-10-19T09:45:00.000Z	as reported by Apple
explicit, contentRating	false, Clean
description, language, website, copyright, feedType, feedCategories, feedEpisodeCount, feedLatestEpisodeDate, feedImageUrl	from the RSS feed	filled when episodes are included
ownerName, ownerEmail	The New York Times, thedaily@nytimes.com	only with includeOwnerContact; role or brand mailboxes on company domains only
feedError	feed not found (HTTP 404)	why a feed could not be read
country, source, sourceInput, position, chartRank, chartGenre	us, chart, Top Business podcasts, 4, 4, Business	where the record came from and its rank there

Episode records (recordType: "episode"): podcastId, podcastName, title, guid, publishedAt (ISO 8601), durationSecs, audioUrl, audioType, audioBytes, description (show notes as plain text, first 1,000 characters), link, season, episodeNumber, episodeType (full / trailer / bonus), explicit, imageUrl, author, feedUrl, position (1 = newest).

E-mail addresses and phone numbers are removed from descriptions and show notes.

Use cases

• Podcast discovery and market research — every show Apple lists for a keyword, with genre, episode count and how recently it published; compare countries by changing country.
• Charts tracking — the Top Podcasts chart of a country, overall or per genre (Business, True Crime, Technology, ...), with chartRank on each record; schedule it weekly to follow movements.
• RSS feed finder — the feedUrl of thousands of shows in one run, ready for your own player, transcription pipeline or monitoring tool.
• Episode monitoring — the newest episodes of a watch list of shows (audio URLs, durations, publication dates) for alerts, newsletters or content analysis.
• Sponsorship and outreach lists — shows, producers and websites in a genre (company and product data; owner mailboxes only when they are generic role addresses).
• AI agents and datasets — flat JSON with ISO dates and numeric fields for LLM pipelines, dashboards and spreadsheets.

How to use it

1. Type one or more search terms, and/or paste podcast IDs / URLs / show names, and/or tick Top chart (optionally with a genre).
2. Choose the directory country (us, gb, de, br, jp, ...).
3. Optionally switch on Include episodes and set how many of the newest episodes to keep per show.
4. Set Maximum podcasts and run. Download JSON, CSV or Excel, or read the dataset through the API.

Input example: find marketing podcasts in the US directory

{
  "searchTerms": ["marketing"],
  "country": "us",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Input example: Top 50 Business podcasts in Germany with their 5 newest episodes

{
  "topChart": true,
  "genre": "Business",
  "chartSize": 50,
  "country": "de",
  "includeEpisodes": true,
  "maxEpisodesPerPodcast": 5,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Input example: a watch list of shows

{
  "podcastIds": [
    "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736",
    "1588397602",
    "Marketing Brew Weekly"
  ],
  "includeEpisodes": true,
  "maxEpisodesPerPodcast": 3,
  "maxItems": 10
}

Sources can be mixed: the Actor processes IDs first, then show names, then the chart, then search terms; a show that already appeared is skipped (one record per show and country) and the run stops exactly at maxItems podcasts. When genre is set, the chart is read for that genre and search results outside it are dropped (subgenres count: Marketing belongs to Business).

Output example

A podcast record and one of its episodes from a local run on 20 October 2026 (texts shortened):

{
  "recordType": "podcast",
  "podcastId": 1200361736,
  "name": "The Daily",
  "url": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736",
  "author": "The New York Times",
  "authorId": 121664449,
  "authorUrl": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/artist/the-new-york-times/121664449",
  "feedUrl": "https://feeds.simplecast.com/Sl5CSM3S",
  "artworkUrl": "https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts221/v4/ab/64/66/.../600x600bb.jpg",
  "primaryGenre": "Daily News",
  "primaryGenreId": 1526,
  "genres": ["Daily News", "News"],
  "genreIds": [1526, 1489],
  "episodeCount": 2754,
  "latestEpisodeDate": "2026-10-19T09:45:00.000Z",
  "explicit": false,
  "contentRating": "Clean",
  "description": "This is what the news should sound like. The biggest stories of our time, told by the best journalists in the world. ...",
  "language": "en",
  "website": "https://www.nytimes.com/the-daily",
  "feedType": "episodic",
  "feedCategories": ["News", "Daily News"],
  "feedEpisodeCount": 66,
  "feedLatestEpisodeDate": "2026-10-19T09:45:00.000Z",
  "feedError": null,
  "country": "us",
  "source": "lookup",
  "sourceInput": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736",
  "position": 1,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-20T07:25:44.919Z"
}

{
  "recordType": "episode",
  "podcastId": 1200361736,
  "podcastName": "The Daily",
  "title": "Inside Putin’s Plan to Cripple Ukraine This Winter",
  "guid": "1897475d-9b60-447d-ba9b-79aa09f59551",
  "publishedAt": "2026-10-19T09:45:00.000Z",
  "durationSecs": 1740,
  "audioUrl": "https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/.../default.mp3?aid=rss_feed",
  "audioType": "audio/mpeg",
  "audioBytes": 27851293,
  "description": "President Trump said he was making an energy deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ...",
  "link": "https://www.nytimes.com/the-daily",
  "season": null,
  "episodeNumber": null,
  "episodeType": "full",
  "explicit": false,
  "position": 1,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-20T07:25:44.926Z"
}

A SUMMARY record in the key-value store lists, per source, how many shows Apple returned and how many were saved, the IDs that were not found, feeds that could not be read, the number of requests and the proxy used.

Pricing

Pay per event, proxy and compute included:

• US$2.10 per 1,000 podcasts saved (US$0.0021 each) — podcast-result
• US$0.50 per 1,000 episodes saved (US$0.0005 each) — episode-result, only when includeEpisodes is on

Examples: 1,000 podcasts without episodes = US$2.10; 100 podcasts with their 20 newest episodes (2,000 episodes) = US$0.21 + US$1.00 = US$1.21; the Top 200 chart of a genre = US$0.42. Duplicates, shows Apple does not return and feeds that cannot be read are never charged. With a maximum cost per run set in Apify, the Actor stops cleanly at that limit.

How it compares

• Calling Apple's endpoints yourself is free but limited: a search gives at most 100 shows with no paging, the chart feed has only names and IDs, and the episodes are not in the directory at all — they live in each show's RSS feed, in a dozen different flavours. This Actor batches the lookups, validates genres, de-duplicates, parses the feeds into one flat schema (durations in seconds, ISO dates, HTML stripped), respects Apple's per-IP rate limit and gives you scheduling, storage and integrations.
• Other podcast scrapers in Apify Store charge from about US$2.50 to US$50 per 1,000 results, and several focus on host contact details. This one is priced at US$2.10 per 1,000 shows plus US$0.50 per 1,000 episodes, covers search, lookup and genre charts in any country, and keeps personal mailboxes out of the data by design.
• Limits that come from Apple: 100 shows per search term (use several or more specific terms), charts of up to 200 shows, and about 20 directory calls per minute per IP, so a run with many terms advances at roughly one term every 3 seconds. Episode data depends on each feed: some hosts omit the file size, season or episode numbers.

Integrations

Run it from the Apify API, the JavaScript or Python client, or on a schedule in Apify Console, and send the dataset to Google Sheets, Airtable, n8n, Make, Zapier or a webhook. AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and any MCP client) can call it through the Apify MCP server, for example "find the top 20 technology podcasts in Brazil and their latest episode".

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape Apple Podcasts? The Actor reads public directory metadata that Apple serves through its open search and chart endpoints, and public RSS feeds that podcasters publish for every player. Show names, feed URLs, genres and episode data describe products and companies; when the author of a show is a private person their name can be personal data under laws such as GDPR, CCPA or Chile's Ley 21.719, so handle the data accordingly. E-mail addresses and phone numbers are stripped from descriptions and show notes, and the feed owner's mailbox is saved only on request and only when it is a generic role or brand address on a company domain. This Actor is not affiliated with Apple and this is not legal advice.

Do I need a proxy? Normally no. Apify's datacenter proxy is used by default for Apple's endpoints; if Apple answers with its rate limit (HTTP 403 or 429) the Actor waits and retries, and after repeated blocks switches to a residential proxy in the directory country. RSS feeds are fetched over the datacenter connection.

Why do I get fewer than 100 shows for a term? Apple returns only what matches; many terms have fewer results, and the genre filter drops shows outside the chosen genre (SUMMARY.filteredOutByGenre).

Which genres can I use? The 19 Apple Podcasts genres and their subgenres, by name or ID: Arts, Business, Comedy, Education, Fiction, Government, Health & Fitness, History, Kids & Family, Leisure, Music, News, Religion & Spirituality, Science, Society & Culture, Sports, TV & Film, Technology, True Crime, and subgenres such as Marketing, Investing, Self-Improvement, Mental Health or Daily News. An unknown genre fails the run with a clear message instead of silently returning the overall chart.

Can I get all episodes of a show? Yes: set maxEpisodesPerPodcast up to 10,000. The Actor saves what the feed contains (feedEpisodeCount); some publishers keep only the latest episodes in the feed, and Apple's episodeCount may be higher.

Why is a show missing? It is not available in that country's directory, or the ID has a typo. Not-found IDs are listed in SUMMARY.notFound and in the log.

Changelog

• 2026-10-20 — First version: keyword search, lookup by ID / URL / show name, Top Podcasts chart per country and genre, episodes and show details from RSS feeds, exact maxItems, pay per podcast and per episode.

En español

Podcast Directory Scraper extrae fichas de podcasts del directorio de Apple Podcasts sin API key ni login: busca por palabra clave, por ID o URL del programa, o desde el ranking Top Podcasts de cualquier país y género. Por cada programa entrega nombre, autor, URL del feed RSS, portada, géneros, cantidad de episodios y fecha del último episodio; con el complemento de episodios abre el feed RSS para sumar descripción, idioma, sitio web y categorías, y guarda los episodios más recientes (título, fecha, duración en segundos, URL del audio, notas, temporada y número). Cuesta US$2,10 por cada 1.000 podcasts y US$0,50 por cada 1.000 episodios guardados. Si lo que necesitas son fichas de apps de la App Store, usa nuestro App Store Apps Scraper.