Media Mention Monitor | Meltwater Alternative

Collect a current, source-linked snapshot of public news coverage for a brand, competitor, or topic. The Actor searches Google News RSS for up to ten watch queries, optionally combines trusted public RSS, Atom, or JSON feeds, removes duplicates, and returns one structured record per retained mention.

This is a focused media-mention monitoring workflow alternative for public-news and selected-feed collection. Meltwater serves teams that need social listening, broadcast or podcast monitoring, licensed media databases, sentiment analysis, influencer workflows, media relations, and team dashboards.

Best fit

Use this Actor when a founder, analyst, or communications team needs a repeatable, API-friendly press-coverage snapshot for a specified watchlist. It is especially useful when the next step is a spreadsheet, alert, report, or internal review that needs article URLs, publishers, dates, source provenance, and the queries that produced each item.

Choose Meltwater or another full media-intelligence suite when you need global licensed coverage, social and broadcast monitoring, sentiment analysis, journalist outreach, collaborative dashboards, historical workspace reporting, or managed enterprise onboarding.

What you get

Each dataset row represents one public article mention with source-linked collection details.

Field	Meaning
title, url, snippet, publishedAt	Feed-supplied coverage details
matchedQueries	Configured Google News searches that yielded the article
publisherName, publisherUrl	Publisher metadata when the feed supplies it
sourceName, sourceTags, feedUrl, sourceUrl, feedType	Source and collection provenance
collectedAt	Timestamp for this collection run

Source-supplied publisher and publication-date fields remain null when unavailable, preserving an honest view of available metadata.

Input

{
  "watchQueries": ["OpenAI", "Anthropic"],
  "trustedSources": [
    {"url": "https://hnrss.org/frontpage", "name": "Hacker News", "tags": ["technology"]}
  ],
  "language": "en-US",
  "country": "US",
  "lookbackDays": 7,
  "maxItems": 100,
  "excludeKeywords": ["sponsored"]
}

maxItems is a whole-run cap. It bounds the persisted rows and therefore the main event charge. Watch queries feed Google News RSS; trusted sources broaden the collection only with public feeds you choose.

Pricing and cost boundary

The intended live configuration is Pay per event + platform usage: $0.00005 for Actor start and $0.01 for each persisted media mention. A 100-mention run has a maximum mention-event cost of $1.00, plus the start event and Apify platform usage. Check the live Pricing tab before relying on a price in production.

Event charges apply to persisted mentions. Rejected duplicates, excluded records, and empty results add no mention event. Equal-workload comparison remains the appropriate basis for any future cost comparison with Meltwater.

Outcome contract

Every terminal path writes both OUTPUT and RUN_SUMMARY.

COMPLETE        all readable sources completed and retained mentions were written
PARTIAL         useful mentions were written with one or more source or write warnings
VALID_EMPTY     readable sources produced zero mentions for the configured window and exclusions
INVALID_INPUT   update the watchlist, source URLs, or numeric bounds
UPSTREAM_FAILED requested sources yielded zero usable public syndication feeds

Example output

{
  "id": "https://example.com/news/story",
  "title": "Example coverage headline",
  "url": "https://example.com/news/story",
  "matchedQueries": ["OpenAI"],
  "publisherName": "Example News",
  "publisherUrl": "https://example.com",
  "sourceName": "Google News RSS",
  "sourceTags": ["google-news"],
  "snippet": "Feed-provided article summary.",
  "publishedAt": "2026-08-31T12:00:00.000Z",
  "feedUrl": "https://news.google.com/rss/search?...",
  "sourceUrl": "https://news.google.com/rss/search?...",
  "feedType": "rss",
  "collectedAt": "2026-08-31T12:05:00.000Z"
}

API

Use the Actor endpoint with your own Apify token:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/khadinakbar~meltwater-alternative/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"watchQueries":["OpenAI"],"lookbackDays":7,"maxItems":25}'

Prompt card

As an AI agent, collect a seven-day public-news coverage snapshot for these brands. Return up to 50 deduplicated mentions with headline, article URL, publisher, publication date, watch query, source provenance, and collection time. Report the terminal outcome and dataset readback path, keep the stated cost cap, and treat the returned sources as the scope of the result.

Workflow scenario: from watchlist to editorial review

A communications lead starts with two brand names and a seven-day window, then adds a trusted trade feed for context. The Actor combines the public-news and trusted-feed results, merges duplicate article URLs, and keeps every watch query that matched the same story. Next, the lead reviews publisher and collection provenance, exports the dataset to an internal brief, and schedules the same bounded input for the next editorial review.

How this workflow compares with Meltwater

Decision point	This Actor	Meltwater
Bounded job	Current public-news and selected-feed mention collection	Broader media-intelligence environment
Input	Up to ten explicit watch queries plus public feeds	Suite-level monitoring configuration
Output	Source-linked JSON records with query and collection provenance	Broader monitoring, reporting, and workflow outputs
Billing and same-job cost	Intended $0.01 per persisted mention plus platform usage; equal-workload cost evidence is pending	Enterprise custom-quote pricing; equal-workload allocation is not recorded
Effective efficiency	Usable-row and elapsed-time evidence will be measured on the final build	No authorized equal-workload timing measurement is recorded
API and automation	Rerunnable structured input through Apify API, schedules, and dataset readback	Suite reporting, alert, and integration workflows
Better fit	A small, inspectable collection run that feeds another system	Enterprise teams needing broad multi-channel coverage and operations

Meltwater documents global media monitoring, social listening, sentiment analysis, broadcast and podcast tracking, influencer tools, reporting, and integrations. Those remain outside this Actor’s contract. Meltwater is a trademark of its owner; this independent Actor is not affiliated with, associated with, or endorsed by Meltwater.

Focused standalone workflow and next step

This Actor is designed as a focused standalone workflow for explicit public-news watchlists. For a one-off keyword search without trusted-feed aggregation or a multi-query monitoring contract, continue with the Google News Scraper and then pass its results into your review or reporting workflow.

Builder's note

I built this around a transparent monitoring boundary: public syndication data is useful when each retained row clearly names its watch query, article URL, collection source, and collection time. My goal was to make the export step inspectable and composable, while keeping broad media-intelligence needs easy to route to a suite designed for them.

Responsible use

Collect only public sources you are authorized to monitor and respect publisher terms, copyright rules, and robots directives. Feed text remains limited to what a public feed supplies; the Actor does not bypass paywalls or scrape private accounts.