Apple Podcasts Charts & Reviews Scraper

Scrape Apple Podcasts top charts by category and country, enrich every show with rich metadata, and pull listener reviews — all without an API key. Track podcast rankings, benchmark competitors, mine review sentiment, and discover the fastest-growing shows in any market.

Built for podcast advertisers, PR and media agencies, podcast networks, hosting platforms, and creators who need reliable Apple Podcasts market-intelligence data on demand.

What does the Apple Podcasts Charts & Reviews Scraper do?

This actor connects directly to Apple's public iTunes RSS and Lookup endpoints — the same data that powers the Apple Podcasts charts — and turns it into clean, structured, export-ready rows. In a single run it:

• Pulls the Top Podcasts charts for up to 19 categories (Arts, Business, Comedy, News, True Crime, Technology, Sports, and more) across 35 storefronts, up to 100 ranked shows per category. Ranks are preserved as real numbers.
• Enriches every charted show with metadata from the iTunes Lookup API: all genres, primary genre, episode/track count, RSS feed URL, cover artwork, content advisory (Clean/Explicit), and latest release date.
• Scrapes listener reviews (1-5 star rating, headline, full review text, author nickname, post date, and helpful-vote counts) from the customer-reviews feed, with resilient multi-page probing that survives Apple's habit of returning empty pages.

Run it with empty input and you get 1,000+ top-chart entries across every category for the US, each enriched with metadata. No account, no token, no scraping headaches.

Who is it for?

• Podcast advertisers & media buyers sizing the market, finding brand-safe shows, and spotting which podcasts are climbing the charts before rates rise.
• PR & media agencies building pitch lists of the top shows per category and country for client placements.
• Podcast networks & studios monitoring their own catalog's rank, tracking competitors, and scouting shows to acquire or represent.
• Hosting & analytics platforms enriching their product with chart position, category, and review data.
• Creators & producers benchmarking against category leaders and reading listener feedback at scale.
• Data & growth teams building dashboards on chart movement and review sentiment over time.

Use cases

• Podcast advertising research — export the top 100 shows in Business across the US, UK, and Germany, complete with publisher, episode count, and content rating, to build a media plan.
• Chart tracking — run daily and diff chartRank per podcastId to see who is rising or falling in any category or country.
• Competitor analysis — compare episode counts, release cadence, categories, and review ratings between your show and the category leaders.
• Review sentiment mining — pull thousands of reviews for a set of shows and score them for sentiment, themes, complaints, and feature requests.
• Podcast discovery — sweep all categories in a niche market to surface fast-growing shows before they hit the mainstream charts.
• Lead generation for podcast tools — build a list of active shows (with RSS feed URLs and publishers) to prospect networks, hosts, and agencies.

Why use this scraper?

• No API key required — Apple's chart, lookup, and review feeds are public; there is nothing to register or authenticate.
• Charts + metadata + reviews in one run — three data types combined, deduped, and normalized into a single dataset.
• Ranks and ratings as real numbers — chartRank, rating, trackCount, and vote counts are numeric, ready for sorting and math.
• 35 storefronts, 19 categories — cover any major market or focus on a single niche.
• Resilient by design — automatic proxy with direct-connection fallback, a ~4-minute time budget with graceful early exit, and multi-page review probing so you never lose data to Apple's empty-page quirk.
• Zero-input friendly — empty input returns 1,000+ enriched chart entries; raise maxResults to pull far more.
• Export to CSV / JSON / Excel — one-click export from the Apify dataset, or pull via the API.

Input

Every field is optional. Run with empty input {} to get 1,000+ top-chart entries across all categories for the US.

Field	Type	Description
mode	select	Both (charts + metadata + reviews), Top charts only, or Reviews only. Default Both.
country	select	Storefront to pull from (US, UK, CA, AU, DE, FR, ES, IT, JP, BR, and 25 more), or All top markets to sweep US/UK/CA/AU/DE. Default us.
genres	multi-select	Apple categories to pull top charts for. Leave empty or pick All categories to sweep all 19.
includeReviews	boolean	Force listener reviews on (or off) regardless of mode. Default false.
podcastIds	list	Apple Podcasts collection IDs to fetch reviews & metadata for directly (used instead of chart discovery in Reviews/Both mode).
maxReviewsPerPodcast	integer	Cap on reviews pulled per show (Apple serves ~50/page, up to 10 pages). Default 50.
maxResults	integer	Maximum rows (chart entries + reviews) to return. Default 1000.
proxy	object	Apify Proxy config. Defaults to automatic proxy with direct fallback.

Example inputs

Everything on (default) — 1,000+ enriched chart entries for the US:

{}

Top Business & Technology charts across the biggest markets:

{
  "mode": "charts",
  "country": "all",
  "genres": ["1321", "1318"],
  "maxResults": 1000
}

Reviews for specific shows:

{
  "mode": "reviews",
  "country": "us",
  "podcastIds": ["1200361736", "1434243584"],
  "maxReviewsPerPodcast": 200
}

Output

Each row is either a chart_entry or a review. Chart rows carry rank + metadata; review rows carry the review fields plus a snapshot of the show they belong to. Numeric fields are real numbers.

Field	Type	Description
rowType	string	chart_entry or review.
podcastId	string	Apple Podcasts collection ID.
podcastName	string	Show title.
artistName	string	Show author / creator.
publisher	string	Publisher name.
chartRank	number	Rank within the chart (1 = top). Null on reviews.
chartGenre	string	Category the chart was pulled from (e.g. News).
chartGenreId	number	Apple genre ID of the chart.
country	string	Storefront country code (uppercase).
category	string	Fine-grained Apple sub-genre for the entry (e.g. Daily News).
categoryId	number	Apple sub-genre ID.
summary	string	Show description from the chart feed.
releaseDate	string	Latest episode / release date (ISO 8601).
artworkUrl	string	Cover artwork URL (largest available).
podcastUrl	string	Apple Podcasts page URL.
genres	array	All Apple genres the show is listed under.
primaryGenre	string	Primary Apple genre.
trackCount	number	Episodes Apple has indexed.
episodeCount	number	Alias of trackCount.
feedUrl	string	The show's RSS feed URL.
contentAdvisory	string	Content rating (Clean / Explicit).
reviewId	string	Unique review ID. Null on chart rows.
reviewTitle	string	Review headline. Null on chart rows.
reviewText	string	Full review body. Null on chart rows.
rating	number	Star rating 1-5. Null on chart rows.
reviewAuthor	string	Reviewer nickname. Null on chart rows.
reviewDate	string	When the review was posted (ISO 8601).
reviewVoteSum	number	Net helpful votes on the review.
reviewVoteCount	number	Total votes cast on the review.

Sample output — chart entry

{
  "rowType": "chart_entry",
  "podcastId": "1200361736",
  "podcastName": "The Daily",
  "artistName": "The New York Times",
  "publisher": "The New York Times",
  "chartRank": 1,
  "chartGenre": "News",
  "chartGenreId": 1489,
  "country": "US",
  "category": "Daily News",
  "categoryId": 1526,
  "summary": "This is what the news should sound like...",
  "releaseDate": "2026-07-12T10:00:00.000Z",
  "artworkUrl": "https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/.../600x600bb.jpg",
  "podcastUrl": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736",
  "genres": ["Daily News", "Podcasts", "News"],
  "primaryGenre": "Daily News",
  "trackCount": 2658,
  "episodeCount": 2658,
  "feedUrl": "https://feeds.simplecast.com/Sl5CSM3S",
  "contentAdvisory": "Clean",
  "reviewId": null,
  "reviewTitle": null,
  "reviewText": null,
  "rating": null,
  "reviewAuthor": null,
  "reviewDate": null
}

Sample output — review

{
  "rowType": "review",
  "podcastId": "1200361736",
  "podcastName": "The Daily",
  "publisher": "The New York Times",
  "country": "US",
  "primaryGenre": "Daily News",
  "reviewId": "14115441174",
  "reviewTitle": "Another Interesting Report",
  "reviewText": "Today's report on loneliness and AI had me feeling all the feels...",
  "rating": 5,
  "reviewAuthor": "News girl junkie",
  "reviewDate": "2026-05-28T12:27:41.000Z",
  "reviewVoteSum": 0,
  "reviewVoteCount": 0
}

Exporting your data

Every run saves to an Apify dataset. Export with one click as CSV, JSON, Excel, XML, or RSS from the Storage tab, or pull programmatically:

https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/{datasetId}/items?format=csv

You can also fetch results with the Apify API or any of the official Apify client libraries (JavaScript, Python), or wire the actor into Make, Zapier, or n8n to keep a chart-tracking sheet fresh automatically.

Frequently asked questions

How do I scrape Apple Podcast charts?

Just run this actor. Leave the input empty to get the top charts across all 19 categories for the US, or set country and pick specific genres to target a market and niche. Each chart returns up to 100 ranked shows with chartRank as a real number, enriched with publisher, episode count, artwork, and category. No API key or login is needed.

How do I export Apple Podcast reviews?

Set mode to Reviews (or Both) and the actor pulls listener reviews — rating, title, full text, author, and date — for each charted show, or for the exact shows you list in podcastIds. Reviews export to CSV, JSON, or Excel like any other dataset. Apple serves roughly 50 reviews per page and up to 10 pages per show; use maxReviewsPerPodcast to control depth.

How do I get the top podcasts by category?

Use the genres multi-select to choose one or more Apple categories (e.g. Business, Comedy, True Crime), pick a country, and run. The actor pulls that category's Top Podcasts chart for the storefront. Leave genres empty to sweep every category at once — the default behavior that returns 1,000+ entries.

Do I need an Apple Podcasts API key or account?

No. Apple's chart, lookup, and customer-review feeds are public. This actor uses no API key, no login, and no cookies — so there is nothing to register and no account to get rate-limited or banned.

How many results can I get?

Empty input returns 1,000+ rows (100 shows × 19 categories, capped by maxResults). Raising maxResults and enabling reviews or All top markets can push this into the tens of thousands. Each category chart tops out at 100 shows (Apple's limit), so breadth comes from combining categories, countries, and reviews.

How is this different from the Apple Podcasts Episode Scraper?

The Episode Scraper extracts the episode list of specific shows you already know. This Charts & Reviews Scraper is a market-intelligence tool: it discovers the top shows per category and country, enriches them with metadata, and pulls listener reviews — ideal for advertising research, competitor tracking, and sentiment analysis rather than episode-level exports.

Can I track chart rankings over time?

Yes. Schedule the actor (daily or weekly) and each run snapshots the current charts with chartRank and a timestamped releaseDate. Diff chartRank per podcastId between runs to build a rank-movement dataset, or append every run to one dataset for a full historical time series.

Which countries and categories are supported?

Charts are available for 35 storefronts including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, and more — plus an All top markets option. Categories cover all 19 official Apple Podcasts genres: Arts, Business, Comedy, Education, Fiction, Government, Health & Fitness, History, Kids & Family, Leisure, Music, News, Religion & Spirituality, Science, Society & Culture, Sports, TV & Film, Technology, and True Crime.

Related actors

• Apple Podcasts Episode Scraper — extract full episode lists and show notes for specific podcasts.
• App Store Data API — scrape app rankings, metadata, and reviews from the Apple App Store.
• Crossref Scholarly Scraper — DOIs, citations, and journal metadata for research.

Notes & disclaimer

This actor collects publicly available data from Apple's iTunes RSS and Lookup endpoints for research and analytics. Apple's customer-reviews feed is intermittent by nature — individual pages can return empty even when a show has reviews — so the actor probes multiple pages to maximize coverage. Respect Apple's terms of service and applicable laws when using the data.