News & RSS Monitor — Google Alerts Alternative

What is News & RSS Monitor — Google Alerts Alternative?

News & RSS Monitor watches topics, brands and competitors across a public news index and the RSS, Atom or JSON feeds you choose, and returns a dataset of deduplicated article alerts. Each row is one article with its title, URL, snippet, publish time, matched watch query, publisher, the sources that supplied it and an isNew flag that remembers what earlier runs already delivered. Communications teams, founders, analysts and AI agents use it as a scheduled, structured alternative to alert emails, with every item ready for a spreadsheet, a webhook or a review queue.

Why teams use it

• Only new articles on a schedule. A stable alertId plus dedupeAcrossRuns returns each article once, with isNew: true for fresh items.
• Your own feeds alongside news search. Add publisher or trade feeds in trustedSources and choose sourceMode to combine or isolate them.
• Clear provenance. sourceTypes, sourceNames and a sources array name every feed or index that contributed an article.
• Focused results. excludeKeywords trims noisy matches, and lookbackHours sets the news window from 1 hour to 7 days.
• Structured, not email. Rows land in an Apify dataset you can export, query by API or hand to an agent.

Best fit for this Actor

• Designed for recurring news monitoring of an explicit watchlist: a brand, a few competitors, a product name or a topic.
• Best fit for daily or hourly saved tasks that push new articles to a spreadsheet, chat channel or dashboard.
• When you also want mentions from community sources such as Hacker News and Reddit, continue with Brand Mention Monitor for the same watch terms.
• For a one-off deep article search on a keyword, use Google News Scraper instead of a recurring alert.
• When you want sentiment scored on the coverage, then pass the brand to Brand Sentiment Analyzer.

Example workflow: a daily competitor news brief

A communications lead starts with her company name and two competitors in watchQueries, an alertId of competitor-news, lookbackHours set to 24 and maxItems at 25. She adds an industry trade feed in trustedSources and keeps sourceMode on gdeltAndFeeds. She saves the input as an Apify task and schedules it every morning. Each run returns only articles with isNew: true; a webhook feeds them into the team's chat channel, and at the end of the month she exports the dataset to compare how often each competitor appeared in the news.

Input

{
  "alertId": "daily-nasa-news",
  "watchQueries": ["NASA"],
  "sourceMode": "gdeltAndFeeds",
  "trustedSources": [
    { "url": "https://www.nasa.gov/rss/dyn/breaking_news.rss", "name": "NASA News", "tags": ["science"] }
  ],
  "lookbackHours": 24,
  "maxItems": 25,
  "excludeKeywords": ["sponsored"],
  "dedupeAcrossRuns": true,
  "includePreviouslySeen": false,
  "resetAlertState": false,
  "stateRetentionDays": 30
}

Field	Type	What it controls
watchQueries	array	Required. One to five focused topics, brands or competitor names.
alertId	string	Stable name for a recurring alert. The same ID shares deduplication state across runs.
sourceMode	string	gdeltAndFeeds (public news index plus your feeds, default), gdeltOnly or feedsOnly.
trustedSources	array	Up to twenty public feeds or pages that advertise a feed, each with url and optional name and tags.
lookbackHours	integer	News window from 1 to 168 hours. Default 24.
maxItems	integer	Alert items for the whole run, 1 to 100. Default 25.
excludeKeywords	array	Literal terms that remove matching titles and snippets.
dedupeAcrossRuns	boolean	Remember delivered articles for this alertId. Default true.
includePreviouslySeen	boolean	Also return already-delivered items, still flagged by isNew. Default false.
resetAlertState	boolean	Start a fresh alert history for one run. Default false.
stateRetentionDays	integer	Days to remember article identities, 1 to 90. Default 30.

Output

One dataset row per deduplicated article.

Field	What it contains
id, alertId	Stable article identity and the alert it belongs to
title, url, snippet, publishedAt	Article headline, link, summary text and publish time
matchedQueries	Watch queries that matched the article
publisherName, publisherUrl	Publisher name and site when available
sourceTypes, sourceNames, sourceTags, sources	Every source that supplied the article, with feed URLs and your tags
language, sourceCountry, attributions	Language, country and attribution records when the source provides them
isNew, collectedAt	First-seen flag for this alert and collection time

{
  "id": "420ec31d089e6561f6be574a44b9f24c62e25f92d4a5a922d0f495f2ec680f32",
  "alertId": "daily-nasa-news",
  "title": "NASA Welcomes San Marino Signing the Artemis Accords",
  "url": "https://www.nasa.gov/organizations/oiir/nasa-welcomes-san-marino-signing-the-artemis-accords/",
  "matchedQueries": ["NASA"],
  "publisherName": "NASA",
  "publisherUrl": null,
  "sourceTypes": ["rss"],
  "sourceNames": ["NASA News"],
  "sourceTags": ["science"],
  "snippet": "The Republic of San Marino became the 76th signatory to the Artemis Accords during a ceremony in the city of Rimini on Friday with NASA and U.S. Department of State officials present.",
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-25T19:53:03.000Z",
  "language": null,
  "sourceCountry": null,
  "collectedAt": "2026-09-26T13:07:41.771Z",
  "isNew": true,
  "sources": [
    {
      "sourceType": "rss",
      "sourceName": "NASA News",
      "sourceUrl": "https://www.nasa.gov/rss/dyn/breaking_news.rss",
      "feedUrl": "https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/feed/",
      "feedType": "rss",
      "provider": "Caller-provided public feed",
      "attributionName": null,
      "attributionUrl": null,
      "tags": ["science"]
    }
  ],
  "attributions": []
}

Every run also writes OUTPUT and RUN_SUMMARY to the default key-value store. The outcome is COMPLETE when sources produced rows, PARTIAL when useful rows were saved alongside source notes, and VALID_EMPTY when the window held no new matching articles, which is a normal quiet day for a deduplicated alert.

Pricing

This Actor uses Pay per event with Apify platform usage included in the event price. You pay for:

• Actor Start, once per run.
• Deduplicated alert item emitted, once for each new article alert saved to the dataset.

Worked example: a daily alert with maxItems set to 25 that finds 9 new articles costs one Actor Start event plus 9 alert item events. A quiet day with no new articles costs only the Actor Start event. Check the live Pricing tab on this page for current event prices.

API example

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/khadinakbar~google-alerts-alternative/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"alertId": "ai-company-news", "watchQueries": ["OpenAI", "Anthropic"], "lookbackHours": 24, "maxItems": 25}'

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("khadinakbar/google-alerts-alternative").call(
    run_input={"alertId": "ai-company-news", "watchQueries": ["OpenAI", "Anthropic"], "maxItems": 25}
)
for article in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    if article["isNew"]:
        print(article["publishedAt"], article["publisherName"], article["title"], article["url"])

Use it with AI agents (MCP)

Connect the Actor to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or another MCP client through Apify MCP and ask:

Monitor news about "OpenAI" and "Anthropic" for the last 24 hours with alert ID ai-company-news. Return the new articles with title, publisher, publish time and URL, and tell me the run outcome.

The agent reads article rows with get-dataset-items, checks OUTPUT.outcome, and can quote url and collectedAt as provenance for each item. Scope is the public news index plus the feeds you list, and maxItems caps both the dataset size and the cost of the run.

Best results

Starting situation	Helpful action	Expected outcome
A brand with a common name	Use a quoted or more specific query, and add excludeKeywords	Fewer off-topic articles
A publisher you always want covered	Add its feed to trustedSources with a name and tags	That publisher's posts on every run
A daily schedule	Keep the same alertId and set lookbackHours to 24	Each article delivered once
A full snapshot for a report	Set includePreviouslySeen to true	Fresh and earlier items together, each flagged by isNew
A changed watchlist	Use a new alertId or set resetAlertState for one run	A clean alert history

Builder's note

I built this around one operational idea: a recurring alert is only useful when every item carries the query that matched it, the source that supplied it and a clear decision on whether it is new. I designed deduplication state to save only articles that were actually stored, so a schedule never quietly skips something. I found that teams trust an alert more when they can add their own publisher feeds, which is why feeds sit beside the public news index rather than behind it.

FAQ

Does it send emails?

The Actor writes a dataset. Pair it with a webhook, an Apify integration or your own notification step to send emails or chat messages.

How do I get only new articles each day?

Keep the same alertId, leave dedupeAcrossRuns on, and schedule the task. Each run returns articles it has not delivered before.

Can I monitor only my chosen feeds?

Yes. Set sourceMode to feedsOnly and list the feeds in trustedSources.

Responsible use

This Actor collects headlines, links and short snippets from public news sources and feeds you select. Monitor sources you are authorized to use, respect publisher rights and site terms, and keep downstream handling within applicable laws. Google Alerts is a trademark of its owner, and this independent Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google or the news index it reads. For questions, open a ticket in the Issues tab.