RSS, Atom & JSON Feed Reader

Turn any news site, blog or podcast feed into clean, uniform records. Paste feed URLs or simply website URLs: if you give a website, the Actor finds the feed the site advertises (or tries the usual /feed, /rss.xml, /atom.xml paths).

Every item comes out in the same shape whatever the feed format (RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0/RDF, Atom, JSON Feed): title, link, publish and update dates in ISO format, a plain-text summary, the full content when the feed carries it, categories, image, and podcast/media files.

Use it for

• News and competitor monitoring: schedule it hourly or daily with "Only items not returned before" and get just the new posts.
• Content aggregation: feed many blogs into one dataset, Google Sheet or database.
• Keyword alerts: keep only items mentioning your brand, product or topic; drop the noise with exclude words.
• Podcast catalogues: episode titles, dates and audio file URLs.
• AI agents and RAG pipelines: give an agent fresh, structured articles from sources you choose.

Input

Field	What it does
Feed or website URLs (required)	One per line, up to 5,000. Feed URLs are read directly; website URLs are searched for their feed.
Keep items containing	Keep items whose title, summary or categories contain any of these words.
Drop items containing	Drop items containing any of these words.
Published within the last N days	Date filter. Items without a date are dropped when it is set.
Only items not returned before	Monitoring mode: returns only items you have not received in earlier runs (per state key). State lives in your own Apify account.
State key	Separate watch lists, e.g. competitors, press.
Max items per feed	Cap per feed, in the feed's own order (usually newest first).
Full content format	Plain text (default), HTML, both, or none.
Feeds per website	How many advertised feeds to read when you give a website URL (default 1; comment feeds are skipped).
Parallel feeds	Default 5, at most 2 per website.

Output

One item per feed entry. A real example from a test run:

{
  "feedUrl": "https://blog.python.org/feeds/posts/default",
  "feedTitle": "Python Insider",
  "siteUrl": "https://blog.python.org/",
  "itemId": "https://blog.python.org/2026/11/python-3160-alpha-2-is-now-available/",
  "title": "Python 3.16.0 alpha 2 is now available",
  "url": "https://blog.python.org/2026/11/python-3160-alpha-2-is-now-available/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-11-10T00:00:00.000Z",
  "updatedAt": null,
  "summary": "The second developer preview of Python 3.16 is ready for testing.",
  "categories": ["releases"],
  "imageUrl": null,
  "media": [],
  "commentsUrl": null,
  "feedFormat": "rss 2.0",
  "feedLanguage": null,
  "contentText": null,
  "inputUrl": "https://blog.python.org/feeds/posts/default",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-15T06:55:21.202Z"
}

media lists enclosures and Media RSS files (url, type, length), e.g. podcast MP3s. contentText/contentHtml are filled only when the feed itself carries full content; many feeds carry only a summary. A RUN_SUMMARY record in the run's key-value store lists every feed read (items in feed, matching, returned) and every input that failed, with the reason.

Pricing

Pay per result: $0.0005 per item returned ($0.50 per 1,000 items), with lower prices on Apify's Bronze, Silver and Gold plans, plus Apify's small run-start fee. Inputs that fail, items removed by your filters, and items skipped in "only new" mode are not charged. You can set a maximum cost per run; the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

Limits and honest notes

• The Actor reads only what the feed publishes. Most feeds list the latest 10-50 items; older items are not available through the feed.
• Author names are deliberately not included in the output.
• Feed discovery fetches the page you give (one request) and, if needed, a few standard feed paths. It does not crawl the site.
• Feeds behind logins, paywalls or bot challenges cannot be read; such inputs are reported as failed in RUN_SUMMARY and not charged.
• Use the content in line with each publisher's terms; feeds are published for reading, but republishing full articles may need permission.

Use it from the API, a schedule or an AI agent

API. Start a run and get the items in one call (replace YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN):

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fleet261114~rss-feed-reader/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"feeds": ["https://github.blog/", "https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml"], "maxItemsPerFeed": 10}'

This waits up to 5 minutes. For large lists, start a run with POST /v2/acts/fleet261114~rss-feed-reader/runs and read its dataset when it finishes.

Schedules and integrations. Save your input as a task, turn on "Only items not returned before", and attach an Apify schedule. Send new items to Slack, email, Google Sheets, Make, Zapier or n8n with Apify's integrations or a webhook.

AI agents (MCP). Add the Actor as a tool in any MCP client (Claude, Cursor and others) through Apify's hosted MCP server:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fleet261114/rss-feed-reader

The agent sees the input schema and field descriptions and can call the Actor directly. Set a maximum cost per run in the call options to cap spending.

FAQ

Do I need to know the feed URL? No. Paste the website or blog address; the Actor looks for the feed. If it finds none, the run summary says so and you are not charged for that input.

How does "only new items" work? The Actor remembers the IDs of items it returned to you (per feed and per state key) in a key-value store in your account, and returns only items it has not returned before.

Can I get the full article text? When the feed includes it (many WordPress feeds do), yes, as text or HTML. If the feed has only summaries, the Actor does not fetch the article pages.

What does a typical run cost? At $0.0005 per item, 20 feeds × 20 items = 400 items cost about $0.20.

Questions and problems

Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab with the run link.