RSS to JSON API: read any RSS, Atom or JSON Feed, or find a website's feed automatically

RSS Feed Reader turns RSS, Atom, RDF and JSON Feed feeds into clean JSON. Paste feed URLs, or ordinary website URLs, and the Actor finds the site's feed for you (from the page's <link rel="alternate"> tag or common paths such as /feed and /rss.xml). Every item comes back with the same fields whatever the feed format: title, link, author, publish date, summary, categories, image, media and, optionally, full content as text or HTML. Filter by keyword and date, and turn on monitoring mode to get only items you haven't seen before. You pay $0.0008 per item written to the dataset.

Who it's for

• Developers who need an RSS to JSON converter they can call over HTTP or from Python and JavaScript.
• Newsletter writers and content teams building a digest from many blogs and news sites.
• Marketing and PR teams watching competitors' blogs and press pages for new posts.
• No-code builders sending new items from feeds to Slack, Notion, Airtable or Google Sheets with n8n, Make or Zapier.
• AI and data teams collecting fresh articles for summarization or a retrieval index.

What data you get

One dataset item per feed entry:

Field	What it holds
feedUrl, feedTitle, siteUrl	The feed that was read, its title and the site it belongs to.
id	The entry's GUID or ID (falls back to the link).
title, link, author	Entry title, URL and author when given.
publishedAt, updatedAt	ISO 8601 timestamps.
summary	The entry summary as plain text (up to 1,000 characters).
categories	Categories or tags.
media, imageUrl	Enclosures (podcast audio, images) and the main image when there is one.
commentsUrl	Comments link when the feed has one.
contentText / contentHtml	Full content when the feed includes it and includeContent is on.
scrapedAt	When the run read the item.

Sample item (real output from theverge.com; long text shortened):

{
  "feedUrl": "https://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml",
  "feedTitle": "The Verge",
  "siteUrl": "https://www.theverge.com",
  "id": "https://www.theverge.com/?p=1021644",
  "title": "Adam Mosseri says negativity around AI is ‘going to get worse’",
  "link": "https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1021644/adam-mosseri-instagram-ai-negativity",
  "author": "Stevie Bonifield",
  "publishedAt": "2026-10-28T23:05:39+00:00",
  "updatedAt": "2026-10-28T23:05:39+00:00",
  "summary": "Asked about AI and the trend of college students booing tech CEOs at graduation ceremonies, Instagram head Adam Mosseri acknowledged in an interview that a lot of people really don't like AI, and it's not just young peop…",
  "categories": [
    "AI",
    "Instagram",
    "Meta",
    "News",
    "Social Media",
    "Tech"
  ],
  "media": [],
  "imageUrl": null,
  "commentsUrl": null,
  "contentText": "Asked about AI and the trend of college students booing tech CEOs at graduation ceremonies, Instagram head Adam Mosseri acknowledged in an interview that a lot of people really don't like AI, and it's not just young peop…",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-29T01:01:18.587993+00:00"
}

How to use it

1. Add URLs to Feed or website URLs, one per line. Feed URLs and normal website URLs both work.
2. Optional: set limits and filters.
3. Click Start, then export from the Output tab as JSON, CSV, Excel or XML.

Default mode: if you leave Feed or website URLs empty, or keep only the sample feed https://www.nasa.gov/feed/ that the form starts with, the run reads that NASA news feed and returns at most 10 items, charged at the normal per-item price (so at most $0.008). The log says Default mode: no feed URLs given (or only the sample default), reading up to 10 sample items from https://www.nasa.gov/feed/. Replace the sample with your own feeds for a normal run.

Input field	Label	Notes
feedUrls	Feed or website URLs	Defaults to the sample NASA feed (default mode, at most 10 items). Add your own feeds for a normal run.
maxItemsPerFeed	Max items per feed	Default 100, newest first. 0 = all items in the feed.
maxTotalItems	Max items in total	0 = no limit.
keywords	Keywords (any)	Keep items whose title, summary or categories contain any of these.
excludeKeywords	Exclude keywords	Drop items containing any of these.
postedWithinDays	Published within (days)	Only items from the last N days. Items without a date are kept (see the next row).
keepUndatedItems	Keep items without a date	Default true: with postedWithinDays set, items that have no date are kept and the log says how many. Set false to drop them.
includeContent	Include full content	Default true. Only adds content when the feed provides it.
contentFormat	Content format	text (default), html or both.
onlyNewItems	Only new items (monitoring)	Default false. Seen items are remembered for 90 days.
stateStoreName	State store name	Default rss-feed-reader-state. Use one name per monitor.

Example input:

{
  "feedUrls": [
    "https://www.theverge.com",
    "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
  ],
  "maxItemsPerFeed": 50,
  "keywords": [
    "AI"
  ],
  "onlyNewItems": true
}

Up to 8 feeds are read in parallel. Duplicate entries within a run (same feed and ID) are skipped and not charged. RUN_SUMMARY in the default key-value store lists each feed with its status and item counts.

Pricing

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing: $0.0008 per item written to the dataset. That is $0.80 per 1,000 items. There is no separate start fee in this Actor's pricing (as listed on October 28, 2026; the Pricing tab on the Store page is the source of truth).

You are charged only for items that end up in your dataset. Items removed by your filters and items skipped in monitoring mode are not charged.

Example	Items	Cost
One blog, latest 20 posts	20	$0.016
50 feeds, 20 items each	1,000	$0.80
Daily monitoring of 50 feeds, ~100 new items a day for a month	3,000	$2.40

Rows are illustrations; real counts depend on how often your feeds publish.

Worked example: 1,000 items × $0.0008 = $0.80.

To cap spend, set Maximum cost per run in the run options (or maxTotalChargeUsd via the API). The Actor stops cleanly when the next item would go over the limit and records stoppedByCostLimit: true in the run summary.

How it compares

Prices are from the public Apify Store listings on October 28, 2026.

Option	Pricing model	What it is good at
This Actor	$0.0008 per item	Feed discovery from a website URL, one schema for RSS/Atom/RDF/JSON Feed, keyword and date filters, only-new-items mode.
RSS readers on the Store that charge per feed rather than per item	Per feed or per run	Can be cheaper for feeds with hundreds of items, since you don't pay per entry.
Free online RSS-to-JSON converters	Free or subscription	Good for one-off conversions. Usually no monitoring state or no-code integrations.
A library such as feedparser (Python)	Free	Best if you want to host your own code and scheduling.

Integrations and API

The actor ID is fecklesspleb/rss-feed-reader (in API URLs: fecklesspleb~rss-feed-reader).

n8n, Make and Zapier. Each has an Apify integration with a "run Actor" action. Pick fecklesspleb/rss-feed-reader, paste the input JSON shown below, then read the results from the run's default dataset in the next step. To process only new items on a schedule, turn on the monitoring option and run it from a schedule (Apify Schedules or a trigger in your automation tool).

Webhooks and schedules. Apify Schedules can run the Actor on a cron, and a webhook on "run succeeded" can call your own endpoint with the run ID.

HTTP API. Run the Actor and get the items back in one call. This waits for the run to finish, so use it for small runs:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fecklesspleb~rss-feed-reader/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"feedUrls": ["https://www.theverge.com", "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"], "maxItemsPerFeed": 50, "keywords": ["AI"], "onlyNewItems": true}'

Python (pip install apify-client):

from decimal import Decimal
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("fecklesspleb/rss-feed-reader").call(
    run_input={
        "feedUrls": [
            "https://www.theverge.com",
            "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
        ],
        "maxItemsPerFeed": 50,
        "keywords": [
            "AI"
        ],
        "onlyNewItems": True
    },
    max_total_charge_usd=Decimal("5"),  # optional spend cap
)
# apify-client 3.x returns a Run object; on 1.x/2.x use run["defaultDatasetId"]
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

JavaScript / Node.js (npm install apify-client):

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('fecklesspleb/rss-feed-reader').call(
    {
        "feedUrls": [
            "https://www.theverge.com",
            "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
        ],
        "maxItemsPerFeed": 50,
        "keywords": [
            "AI"
        ],
        "onlyNewItems": true
    },
    { maxTotalChargeUsd: 5 }, // optional spend cap
);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Results can also be exported from the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or RSS from the Apify Console or the dataset API.

FAQ

How do I convert an RSS feed to JSON? Paste the feed URL in feedUrls and run the Actor, or call the run-sync endpoint above. Each entry becomes one JSON object with the fields listed in "What data you get".

What if I don't know the feed URL? Paste the website's home page. The Actor looks for the site's <link rel="alternate"> feed tag, then tries common paths (/feed, /rss, /rss.xml, /feed.xml, /atom.xml, /index.xml, /feeds/posts/default, /feed.json). If none is found, the URL is reported in RUN_SUMMARY and skipped.

Which formats are supported? RSS 0.9x/2.0, RSS 1.0 (RDF), Atom and JSON Feed 1.0/1.1. JSON Feed items come back with the same fields as RSS items (authors are joined into author, tags become categories, attachments become media). When the Actor looks for a site's feed it also uses application/feed+json links.

How do I get only new posts? Turn on onlyNewItems and schedule the Actor. Items returned before are skipped and not charged. Use a separate stateStoreName for each independent monitor.

Does it get the full article text? It returns the full content the feed itself includes (content:encoded or Atom content). It doesn't open article pages, so feeds that only publish a summary give you a summary.

Can I read RSS to JSON from Python? Yes, use the Python snippet above. You get a list of dictionaries, ready for pandas or a database.

Do I need an API key or login? No. The Actor reads public endpoints and needs no account on the source site. You only need an Apify account to run it. It obeys robots.txt and rate-limits requests per host. robots.txt is checked again on every redirect, so a URL that redirects to a disallowed path or another host is not followed. If a host's robots.txt can't be read (a server error, a network failure or a page that isn't a robots file), that host is skipped for the run and RUN_SUMMARY says why. A missing robots.txt means no rules.

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