VICE Scraper

Extract full article text or the newest headlines from VICE (vice.com), the digital-native journalism outlet known for culture, science, and human-interest coverage — no account or subscription needed.

Why use this actor

• No account or login required — fully free, ad-supported site with no paywall
• Full article text included, not just a summary — headline, description, byline, section, keywords, publish/update dates, lead image
• Ad-slot and video-embed placeholders are automatically excluded from the article body
• Also fetches the newest headlines from the site-wide feed — including full body HTML — without visiting each article individually
• Stable JSON output suitable for pipelines, spreadsheets, or databases
• Automatic retries on temporary network hiccups

How it works

1. Give the actor one or more article URLs, or switch to "latest" mode to get the newest stories automatically.
2. In article mode, the actor opens each URL and pulls out the full text and every publicly available detail about the story.
3. In latest mode, the actor reads the site's RSS feed and returns the newest stories.
4. Results stream into your dataset, ready to download as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

You don't need to manage retries, rate limits, or figure out the site's internal data format — the actor handles all of that.

Input

Article mode (default):

{
  "mode": "article",
  "urls": [
    "https://www.vice.com/en/article/scientists-have-some-bad-news-about-your-favorite-viral-cat-videos/"
  ],
  "maxConcurrency": 4,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Latest headlines mode:

{
  "mode": "latest",
  "limit": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Field	Type	Description
mode	string	"article" (default) — extract one or more article URLs. "latest" — fetch the newest headlines.
url	string	A single article URL. Used in article mode.
urls	array	Multiple article URLs to extract in one run. Used in article mode.
limit	integer	Max headlines returned in latest mode. The feed carries 10 items per fetch.
maxConcurrency	integer	How many articles to fetch in parallel in article mode. Default 4.
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy settings. Residential is on by default.

Output

Article mode — one record per URL (truncated here for readability):

{
  "_input": "https://www.vice.com/en/article/scientists-have-some-bad-news-about-your-favorite-viral-cat-videos/",
  "_source": "S1-jsonld+html",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-08-23T23:54:48Z",
  "headline": "Scientists Have Some Bad News About Your Favorite Viral Cat Videos",
  "description": "Cat content is its own corner of the internet, and the primary rule is that everything is either hilarious or adorable, but scientists disagree.",
  "articleBody": "Cat content is its own corner of the internet, and the primary rule is that everything a cat does is either hilarious or adorable...",
  "articleSection": "Science",
  "datePublished": "2026-08-23T21:56:17Z",
  "dateModified": "2026-08-23T21:56:22Z",
  "author": "Ashley Fike",
  "keywords": ["cats", "pet owners", "scientific study"],
  "image": "https://www.vice.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/..."
}

Latest headlines mode — one record per headline (includes full body HTML):

{
  "_input": "latest",
  "_source": "S2-rss",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-08-23T23:54:45Z",
  "title": "Scientists Have Some Bad News About Your Favorite Viral Cat Videos",
  "link": "https://www.vice.com/en/article/scientists-have-some-bad-news-about-your-favorite-viral-cat-videos/",
  "author": "Ashley Fike",
  "guid": "https://www.vice.com/en/?p=2083997",
  "pubDate": "Sun, 23 Aug 2026 21:56:17 +0000",
  "description": "Cat content is its own corner of the internet, and the primary rule is that everything a cat does is either hilarious or adorable...",
  "contentHtml": "<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cat content is its own corner of the internet...</p>",
  "categories": ["Life", "Science", "cats", "pet owners", "scientific study"]
}

Field	Type	Description
_input	string	The URL you requested, or "latest", for traceability.
_source	string	Which strategy produced this record.
_scrapedAt	string	UTC timestamp of when the record was captured.
headline / title	string	Article headline.
description	string	Teaser/summary, cleaned of markup.
articleBody	string	Full plain-text article content (article mode only).
contentHtml	string	Full article body as HTML (latest mode only).
articleSection	string	Section name (article mode only).
author	string	Byline.
keywords	array	Tag keywords (article mode only).
datePublished / dateModified	string	Publication timestamps (article mode).
image	string	Lead image URL (article mode only).
categories	array	Section/topic tags (latest mode only).

A record with _error instead of article fields means that URL could not be processed (for example, "_error": "not_found" for a removed article).