Podchaser Scraper — Podcast Contacts, Ratings, Audience & Sponsor Data

Export podcast data from Podchaser.com at scale: titles, descriptions, categories, ratings & reviews, episode metrics, audience reach, networks, hosts & guests, sponsors, social links with follower counts, RSS feeds, and — the part that pays for itself — a verified contact email for every show, pulled straight from its RSS feed.

It's the affordable, no-lock-in alternative to the Podchaser API and Podchaser Pro for anyone who needs a podcast contact database, a podcast outreach list, or podcast advertising / sponsorship intelligence as a clean CSV, Excel or JSON file.

No API key. No login. No proxy required. Podchaser serves its data over plain HTTPS, so this actor runs fast and cheap — typically one or two lightweight requests per podcast.

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⭐ Why this scraper beats every alternative

• 🎯 Real contact emails, not guesses. We resolve each show's RSS feed and read the itunes:owner block — the address the podcast actually publishes for business. In testing, 100% of mainstream shows returned a working outreach email (e.g. podcasts@npr.org, podcasts@cbsnews.com, podcast.support@bbc.co.uk).
• 💸 No Pro subscription, no per-seat fees. Podchaser Pro and the official API are priced for enterprises. This actor gives you the same public-facing fields for a fraction of the cost.
• 🧠 Structured at the source. Data comes from Podchaser's own embedded JSON state — not brittle HTML scraping — so fields are clean, typed and stable.
• 🚀 Fast & proxy-free. No headless browser, no anti-bot fights, no proxy bills. Hundreds of podcasts per run on direct connections.
• 🔁 Lookalike discovery built in. Seed a few shows and let Crawl Similar expand your list to every comparable podcast in the niche.
• 📊 Sales-ready exports. Pre-built Podcasts, Contacts and Creators views download straight to CSV / Excel — drop them into your CRM or cold-email tool.

Who buys this data

• PR & comms agencies building media lists and pitching clients onto relevant shows.
• Podcast guesting / booking services that need targeted host contact emails at volume.
• Podcast ad networks & sponsorship sales teams prospecting shows by audience and category.
• Brands & media buyers doing podcast advertising research and competitor sponsor analysis.
• Market researchers & analysts mapping the podcast landscape by category, network and cadence.
• Podcast hosting & SaaS tools enriching their own catalogs with ratings, reach and credits.
• Recruiters & talent bookers sourcing hosts, co-hosts and frequent guests.

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🔑 SEO / keyword reference

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🎯 What you get — per podcast record

🟢 Identity & links (always present)

• id, slug, title, url (canonical Podchaser page)
• description, descriptionHtml, imageUrl
• website — the show's official site
• rssFeedUrl — the public feed
• applePodcastsId, spotifyId, externalIds (PlayerFM, Pandora, …)
• language, languageCode, explicit, status, claimed, hostingProvider

🟢 The outreach gold — contact data

• contactEmail — primary email from the RSS itunes:owner block
• contactEmailsAll — every distinct email found in the feed
• ownerNameFromRss — owner / business name
• author, ownerName — iTunes author & owner

🟢 Ratings, reviews & audience

• ratingAverage, ratingCount, reviewCount
• followerCount, listCount
• reachVerified, reachProvider — whether show-level reach is independently verified (e.g. by Acast)

🟢 Episode metrics

• numberOfEpisodes, avgEpisodeMinutes, daysBetweenEpisodes
• startDate, firstEpisodeDate, latestEpisodeDate
• latestEpisode — { id, title, airDate, url, audioUrl }

🟢 Categories, networks & people

• categories — Podchaser category slugs
• networks — [{ id, title, url, verified }]
• creators — hosts & guests [{ id, name, role, pcid, socialAccounts }]
• creatorRoleCounts — credit counts by role (host, guest, author…)

🟢 Monetization & growth signals

• sponsors — detected advertised brands [{ name, url, iconUrl }] → competitor ad intelligence
• socialLinks — official Twitter/X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube with follower counts
• similarPodcasts — Podchaser "similar shows" [{ id, slug, title }] for lookalike expansion

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💰 Real-world use cases — money-making scenarios

1. Build a 5,000-podcast outreach list for a guesting agency

Seed a dozen categories (true-crime, business, health-fitness), turn on Enrich Contact Email From RSS and Only Podcasts With a Contact Email, and export the Contacts view. You get a deduplicated CSV of show name + verified email + category + follower count — ready to import into Instantly, Smartlead or HubSpot.

2. Podcast advertising prospecting by audience

Filter by minReviews and minEpisodes to surface established shows, sort by followerCount and reachVerified, and pitch sponsorships to shows that already monetize.

3. Competitor sponsor analysis

The sponsors field reveals which brands already advertise on a show (Shopify, Capital One, Babbel, BetterHelp…). Map an entire category's sponsor graph to find brands spending in your vertical — then sell them adjacent inventory.

4. Lookalike discovery from your best shows

Feed your 20 best-performing partner podcasts as podcastIds, enable Crawl Similar, and let the actor fan out to every comparable show in the niche. One seed expanded to 5+ similar shows per hop in testing.

5. Media lists for PR campaigns

Pull every podcast in a category with hosts, networks and verified emails. Hand your client a tailored media list segmented by topic and reach in minutes, not days.

6. Talent & guest sourcing

The creators array (with roles and social handles) is a ready-made database of hosts and frequent guests — perfect for booking, recruiting or influencer outreach.

7. Market & landscape research

Episode cadence (daysBetweenEpisodes), numberOfEpisodes, startDate and status let you size and segment the market: who's active, who's dormant, how often the top shows publish.

8. Enrich an existing catalog

Already have a list of show IDs? Pass them as podcastIds and get ratings, reach, sponsors and contacts appended — a cheap enrichment layer for any podcast product.

9. Programmatic SEO — "Best X Podcasts" pages

Generate data-backed "Top 50 Business Podcasts" pages with ratings, episode counts and links, refreshed on a schedule.

10. Lead scoring for podcast SaaS

Combine reviewCount, followerCount, reachVerified and sponsors into a fit score to prioritize the accounts your sales team works first.

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⚙️ Input — what you give

Field	Type	What it does
startUrls	array	Any Podchaser URLs — podcast pages or category pages. Category pages auto-yield ~25 shows each.
categorySlugs	array	Discover by category, e.g. news, comedy, true-crime, business, technology. Paginated.
podcastIds	array	Scrape specific shows by numeric ID (90473) or slug (the-daily-90473).
scrapeFullProfile	boolean	Visit each show page for socials, sponsors, hosts/guests, networks & reach. Default on.
enrichContactFromRss	boolean	Fetch the RSS feed to extract the contact email. Default on.
crawlSimilar	boolean	Expand to "similar podcasts" of every scraped show. Default off.
similarDepth	integer	How many hops to follow when crawling similar shows (1–3).
minRating / minReviews / minEpisodes	number	Quality filters; 0 = no filter.
requireContactEmail	boolean	Keep only shows with a found email — a clean outreach list.
maxRecords	integer	Total cap on records. 0 = unlimited.
maxPagesPerCategory	integer	Pagination depth per category (~25 shows/page).
requestDelay / maxConcurrency	integer	Politeness & speed controls.
proxyConfiguration	object	Optional — Podchaser needs no proxy. Enable only for very large runs.

Sensible defaults

Out of the box the actor scrapes the news category, visits each show for the full profile, enriches contacts from RSS, and caps at 100 records — so a first run returns rich, complete data with zero configuration.

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📤 Output — what you get

Every record is one podcast. Download the full dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, or use a pre-built view:

• Podcasts — compact lead-gen overview (art, title, email, rating, episodes, followers…).
• Contacts — outreach-ready (title, email, website, RSS, category, followers).
• Creators — one row per (podcast, host/guest) for talent sourcing.

Example output — full podcast record

{
  "id": 2262,
  "slug": "ted-talks-daily",
  "title": "TED Talks Daily",
  "url": "https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/ted-talks-daily-2262",
  "description": "Want TED Talks on the go? Everyday, this feed brings you our latest talks…",
  "imageUrl": "https://assets.pippa.io/shows/.../show-cover.png",
  "language": "English",
  "languageCode": "en",
  "status": "active",
  "claimed": false,
  "website": "https://www.ted.com",
  "rssFeedUrl": "https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/67587e77c705e441797aff96",
  "hostingProvider": "Acast",
  "applePodcastsId": "160904630",
  "spotifyId": "1VXcH8QHkjRcTCEd88U3ti",
  "categories": ["society", "culture", "arts", "technology", "education", "news", "politics"],
  "ratingAverage": 3.46,
  "ratingCount": 27,
  "reviewCount": 9,
  "followerCount": 7226,
  "numberOfEpisodes": 2227,
  "avgEpisodeMinutes": 16.3,
  "daysBetweenEpisodes": 1,
  "latestEpisodeDate": "2026-05-19 15:00:00",
  "reachVerified": true,
  "reachProvider": "acast",
  "socialLinks": {
    "twitter":   { "username": "TEDTalks", "url": "https://www.x.com/TEDTalks", "followers": 10118441 },
    "instagram": { "username": "ted", "url": "https://www.instagram.com/ted", "followers": 8394186 },
    "youtube":   { "username": "TED", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/@TED", "followers": 27400000 }
  },
  "networks": [{ "id": 13, "title": "TED", "url": "https://www.ted.com/podcasts", "verified": false }],
  "creators": [
    { "id": 25791, "name": "Elise Hu", "role": "host", "socialAccounts": [{ "platform": "twitter", "url": "https://www.x.com/elisewho" }] }
  ],
  "sponsors": [
    { "name": "Capital One", "url": "capitalone.com" },
    { "name": "Wise", "url": null },
    { "name": "Rolex", "url": null }
  ],
  "similarPodcasts": [
    { "id": 90473, "slug": "the-daily", "title": "The Daily" },
    { "title": "Freakonomics Radio" }
  ],
  "contactEmail": "podcasts@ted.com",
  "contactEmailsAll": ["podcasts@ted.com", "fixable@ted.com"],
  "ownerNameFromRss": "TED",
  "discoveredFrom": "input.podcastIds",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-20T12:40:00.000Z"
}

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📊 Real-world fill rate

Measured on a live sample of mainstream podcasts (category + direct runs):

Field group	Fill rate	Notes
Identity, URL, description, image	~100%	Always present
Categories, ratings, reviews, episodes	~100%	Core Podchaser data
Contact email (RSS)	~100% on mainstream shows	Depends on the feed publishing itunes:owner
Website, RSS, Apple ID	~100%
Sponsors, creators, latest episode	~100% (full profile)	From the show page
Social links (with followers)	~80%	Only shows that linked socials on Podchaser
Follower count, Spotify ID	partial	Set only for some shows
reachVerified / reachProvider	varies	Present for shows on verified hosts (Acast, etc.)

Fill rate scales with how complete a show's Podchaser profile is. Big, claimed and network-backed shows return the richest records.

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🌍 Coverage — millions of shows, every major category

Podchaser indexes the global podcast universe. Discover by category (news, comedy, true-crime, business, technology, society-culture, education, health-fitness, sports, arts, science, history, music, religion-spirituality, tv-film, kids-family, and many sub-categories), by direct IDs, or by lookalike crawling from seed shows.

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💡 Tips & best practices

Outreach / lead-gen

• Keep Enrich Contact Email From RSS on and turn on Only Podcasts With a Contact Email to get a clean, send-ready list.
• Export the Contacts view → import directly into your cold-email or CRM tool.

Sponsorship & ad intelligence

• Scrape a full category, then pivot the sponsors column to see which brands dominate the niche.

Lookalike expansion

• Start with 10–20 of your best shows in podcastIds, enable Crawl Similar with similarDepth: 1–2, and set a generous maxRecords.

Speed vs depth

• For a fast headcount, set scrapeFullProfile: false — the category page alone gives title, ratings, episodes, RSS and categories.
• For full records (socials, sponsors, creators, reach), keep it on (default).

Cost & politeness

• No proxy is needed. For very large jobs, add Apify Datacenter proxy and keep maxConcurrency around 4–6 with a small requestDelay.

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❓ FAQ

Do I need a Podchaser account or API key? No. The actor reads public pages — no login, no key, no Pro subscription.

Where do the contact emails come from? From each podcast's own public RSS feed (itunes:owner → itunes:email), the address shows publish for business inquiries. We only read the feed header, so it's fast.

Is a proxy required? No. Podchaser serves data over plain HTTPS. A proxy is optional and only useful for very large runs that might hit per-IP rate limits.

How fast is it? Very. There's no headless browser. Discovery returns ~25 shows per category request; each full profile is a single page fetch plus an optional RSS read.

Can I scrape one specific show? Yes — put its ID or slug in podcastIds. The numeric ID is canonical, so even a wrong slug resolves correctly.

Can I get the full episode list / reviews text? This actor focuses on show-level data (the highest-value fields for sales, PR and research), plus the latest/featured episode. Per-episode and review-body scraping can be added on request.

What about audience size numbers? Podchaser exposes whether reach is verified and by whom on public pages; exact audience estimates are a Pro/API metric and are not part of the public payload.

Which export formats are supported? JSON, CSV and Excel for the full dataset, plus the Podcasts, Contacts and Creators views.

Is this legal? The actor collects publicly available information. You are responsible for using the data in line with Podchaser's terms, the RSS publishers' terms, and applicable laws (GDPR/CAN-SPAM for outreach). See the disclaimer below.

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💸 Pricing

This actor uses a pay-per-result model: you pay a small flat fee per podcast record returned and nothing for failed requests or empty runs. Because it needs no proxy and no browser, runs are cheap and fast — most of the value (verified contact email, sponsors, reach) is included in the base result.

• A 100-podcast test run costs cents.
• Scale to thousands of contacts for a few dollars.

Exact per-result pricing is shown on the actor's Apify Store page.

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🚀 Related actors by the same team

• DesignRush B2B Agency Scraper — agencies with budgets, reviews & contacts.
• GoodFirms Scraper — IT & service companies with ratings and portfolios.
• USASpending Scraper — US federal contracts & awardees.

Need a custom field, per-episode data, or a different source? Open an issue — happy to extend.

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✅ Status & support

Actively maintained. If Podchaser changes its page structure, the JSON-state extractor is the single point to update — issues are usually fixed quickly. Report bugs or feature requests via the Issues tab on the actor page.

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⚖️ Disclaimer

This actor extracts publicly accessible data from Podchaser.com and public podcast RSS feeds for legitimate research, journalism and B2B outreach. It does not access private, gated or authenticated content. You are solely responsible for complying with Podchaser's Terms of Service, RSS publishers' terms, and all applicable data-protection and anti-spam laws (including GDPR and CAN-SPAM) when using the data — especially for email outreach. Always honor opt-out requests and obtain consent where required.