Apple Podcasts Scraper — Episodes, Audio (MP3) URLs, Show Metadata & RSS Feed Data (No API Key)

Extract podcast shows and full episode lists from Apple Podcasts (iTunes) — episode titles, descriptions, direct audio (MP3) URLs, durations, release dates, artwork, genres, episode numbers, season numbers, transcript URLs, chapter markers and HTML show notes. Search by keyword, drop in podcast IDs, or paste RSS feed URLs directly. Combines Apple's official iTunes Search & Lookup API with optional RSS enrichment for full episode archives — clean structured JSON, no browser, no proxy, no login, no API key.

🏆 Why this Apple Podcasts scraper?

30+ fields per episode · thousands of episodes per run · direct audio (MP3) URLs · full archives via RSS (beyond Apple's ~200-episode cap) · export to JSON / CSV / Excel. The unofficial Apple Podcasts / iTunes API alternative for podcast intelligence, RAG / AI training data, and ad & sponsorship research.

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✨ What this Actor does / Key features

• 🎙️ 3 input modes — discover shows by search term, pull exact shows by iTunes podcast ID, or parse any RSS feed URL directly. Mix all three in one run.
• 🔗 Direct audio (MP3) URLs — every episode carries an audioUrl field pointing at the raw MP3/M4A file, ready to feed into Whisper, a download queue or a transcription pipeline.
• 📚 Full archives beyond Apple's ~200-episode cap — enable useRssForFullArchive (or paste the feed URL) and the Actor merges the complete episode history from the show's RSS 2.0 / Podcast 2.0 feed.
• 🏷️ Rich episode metadata — episode & season numbers, episodeType (full/trailer/bonus), HTML show notes, keywords, explicit flags, artwork and durations in both ms and seconds.
• 📝 Podcast 2.0 fields — pulls transcriptUrl (podcast:transcript) and chapters (podcast:chapters) when the publisher supports them.
• 🌍 30 iTunes storefronts — query us, gb, de, fr, jp, tr and more to surface region-restricted shows and country-specific rankings.
• 🎚️ Powerful filters — filter by release-date window, minimum duration (skip trailers/ads) and explicit-content rating.
• 🧬 Show enrichment — every episode is optionally enriched with parent-show fields (genres, primary genre, country, total track count, show description).
• ⚡ No anti-bot fight — Apple's iTunes catalog endpoints are published for third-party clients, so there is no proxy, browser or token to manage.
• 🔁 Smart dedup — episodes are keyed by podcastId::(guid|trackId|audioUrl|title), so combining iTunes + RSS for the same show never double-saves.

🚀 Quick start (3 steps)

1. Configure — paste one or more search terms, podcast IDs or RSS feed URLs. Optionally set a country, date window or duration filter.
2. Run — click Start. The Actor queries iTunes (and optionally each show's RSS feed) and streams episodes into your dataset.
3. Get your data — open the Output tab and export to JSON, CSV, Excel or XML, or pull it via the Apify API.

📥 Input

Supply at least one of searchTerms, podcastIds or rssFeeds. Everything else is optional.

Example — discover & pull all AI podcasts in the US

{
  "searchTerms": ["artificial intelligence", "machine learning", "LLM"],
  "country": "us",
  "maxPodcastsPerSearch": 50,
  "maxEpisodesPerPodcast": 100
}

Example — full archive of a single show (beyond Apple's 200-episode cap)

{
  "podcastIds": ["1434243584"],
  "useRssForFullArchive": true,
  "fetchShowMetadata": true
}

Example — direct RSS feeds only (no iTunes lookup, fastest)

{
  "rssFeeds": [
    "https://feeds.simplecast.com/54nAGcIl",
    "https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/",
    "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/hubermanlab"
  ]
}

Example — recent long-form episodes only (skip trailers, drop old)

{
  "searchTerms": ["startup interview"],
  "country": "us",
  "minReleaseDate": "2025-01-01",
  "minDurationSeconds": 1200,
  "maxEpisodesPerPodcast": 50
}

Field	Type	Description
searchTerms	array	Keyword queries to discover podcasts via the iTunes Search API. Each term returns up to maxPodcastsPerSearch shows; every show is expanded into episodes.
podcastIds	array	iTunes collection IDs. From https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/.../id1434243584 → 1434243584. Faster and deterministic.
rssFeeds	array	Direct podcast RSS feed URLs. Bypasses Apple entirely — best for full archives beyond the ~200-episode lookup cap.
country	string	iTunes storefront (30 supported). Affects ranking and country-restricted shows. Default us (largest catalog).
maxPodcastsPerSearch	integer	Max podcasts per search term. iTunes hard cap = 200. Default 50.
maxEpisodesPerPodcast	integer	Max episodes per iTunes lookup. iTunes hard cap ≈ 200 most recent. Default 100.
useRssForFullArchive	boolean	After each iTunes lookup, also fetch the show's RSS to unlock the full archive + Podcast 2.0 fields. Default false.
minReleaseDate / maxReleaseDate	string	Drop episodes outside this ISO date window (YYYY-MM-DD).
explicit	string	all / clean / explicit content filter. Default all.
minDurationSeconds	integer	Drop episodes shorter than this (filters trailers/ads). Default 0.
fetchShowMetadata	boolean	Enrich each episode with parent-show fields (genres, total track count, show description). Default true.

Finding a podcast's iTunes collection ID: it's the numeric segment in an Apple Podcasts URL, e.g. .../id1434243584 means the ID is 1434243584. Paste it into podcastIds for fast, deterministic pulls.

📤 Output

One row per episode — 30+ fields, exportable to JSON, CSV, Excel or XML. Here is a trimmed sample record:

{
  "podcastId": "1434243584",
  "podcastName": "Lex Fridman Podcast",
  "author": "Lex Fridman",
  "episodeId": "1000766518218",
  "episodeGuid": "abc-123-uuid",
  "episodeTitle": "#496 – FFmpeg, VLC and the future of open source video",
  "episodeNumber": 496,
  "season": 1,
  "episodeType": "full",
  "description": "Jean-Baptiste Kempf is the president of VideoLAN...",
  "showNotesHtml": "<p>...</p>",
  "releaseDate": "2026-05-06T22:06:47Z",
  "durationMs": 15821000,
  "durationSec": 15821,
  "audioUrl": "https://media.transistor.fm/abc/episode.mp3",
  "audioExtension": "mp3",
  "audioFileSize": 253984210,
  "artworkUrl600": "https://.../600x600bb.jpg",
  "episodeAppleUrl": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/.../id1000766518218",
  "feedUrl": "https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/",
  "transcriptUrl": "https://.../transcript.srt",
  "chapters": [],
  "keywords": "ai, technology, vlc, open source",
  "explicitness": "cleaned",
  "genres": ["Technology", "Science"],
  "primaryGenre": "Technology",
  "country": "USA",
  "trackCountTotal": 497,
  "source": "rss",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-06T12:00:00Z"
}

💡 Use cases

• Podcast intelligence / analytics SaaS — feed every episode of every show in a niche into your dashboard as a Listen Notes / Podscan / Chartable alternative data layer.
• RAG & LLM training data — episode title + description + HTML show notes are high-quality, semi-structured natural language; audioUrl feeds Whisper / Distil-Whisper for transcript generation.
• Ad & sponsorship targeting — find every fitness / B2B SaaS / parenting show in a country, then enrich with show metadata before outreach.
• Podcast SEO & discovery — build category landing pages, sitemaps and episode aggregators from a clean episode index.
• Trend & topic monitoring — pull weekly snapshots of "AI" podcasts to track how the conversation evolves by releaseDate.
• Transcription pipelines — feed audioUrl into a transcription queue at scale.
• Competitive intel for media companies — track release cadence, episode-length distribution and topical drift of competitor shows.
• Cross-platform migration tools — Apple is the canonical podcast index (Spotify, Pocket Casts and Overcast all sync from the same RSS feeds).

👥 Who uses it

Podcast intelligence & analytics platforms · AI / ML teams building RAG & training datasets · ad-tech & sponsorship networks · media companies & radio groups · podcast SEO & discovery tools · growth marketers · researchers & data journalists.

💰 Pricing

This Actor runs on a simple pay-per-result model — you pay for the episodes you extract, with no separate Apify platform fees to calculate. The iTunes API and most RSS feeds are free. Try it on the free tier first, then scale up. See the Pricing tab on this page for the current rate.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Is it legal to scrape Apple Podcasts / iTunes? The Actor only collects publicly available podcast catalog data via Apple's own published iTunes Search & Lookup APIs and public RSS feeds. You are responsible for using the data in compliance with Apple's terms, each individual publisher's terms and applicable laws.

Does Apple Podcasts / iTunes have a public API? Apple publishes the iTunes Search & Lookup APIs for third-party clients (its search affiliate program), and podcast RSS feeds are public by design. This Actor wraps both into a single tool, so you get structured episode data with no key, login or quota signup.

Do I need an API key or a login? No. There is no Apple account, login or API key required — only an Apify account. The iTunes catalog endpoints and RSS feeds work with zero credentials.

Is this an Apple Podcasts / iTunes API alternative? Yes. It combines the public iTunes Search & Lookup endpoints with RSS parsing, so it works as an unofficial Apple Podcasts API alternative that returns clean, structured episode data — no key, no login, no quota.

How do I export Apple Podcasts episodes to CSV or JSON? Every run writes to an Apify dataset you can download as CSV, JSON, XML or Excel from the console, or pull via the Apify API — a clean Apple Podcasts data export of episodes, audio MP3 URLs and show metadata.

How much data can I get? You can pull thousands of episodes per run. The iTunes Lookup API returns roughly the 200 most recent episodes per show and iTunes Search returns max 200 podcasts per query — so split broad topics into specific sub-queries, and enable useRssForFullArchive to reach the complete back catalog.

How do I get the direct MP3 audio URL of an episode? Every episode record includes an audioUrl field with the direct MP3/M4A file link, so you can feed it straight into a Whisper transcription or download pipeline.

Can I scrape a full podcast archive beyond the 200-episode iTunes limit? Yes. Enable useRssForFullArchive or pass the show's RSS feed URL directly, and the scraper merges the complete episode history well beyond Apple's ~200-episode cap. Tested: The Daily returned 2,800+ episodes from a single feed pull.

Does it scrape Spotify? Not directly, but Spotify's catalog is largely sourced from the same RSS feeds. Paste a show's RSS URL and you get the same episodes a Spotify scraper would return — for free, no auth, no rate limits.

Does it return audio transcripts? Only when the publisher adopts Podcast 2.0 <podcast:transcript> (currently a minority). For full transcript coverage, take the returned audioUrl and feed it into Whisper or Distil-Whisper in a downstream Actor.

Why not the Apple Podcasts Connect API? The Connect API is for show owners only and requires authentication. This Actor works on the entire public catalog with zero credentials.

🔗 More social, media & content scrapers by logiover

Building a media or content-discovery dataset? Pair this with the rest of the suite:

Actor	What it does
YouTube Channel Scraper	Videos, stats & metadata for any YouTube channel
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YouTube Search Scraper	Search results across the YouTube catalog
YouTube Comments Scraper	Comment threads at scale
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Twitch Scraper	Streams, channels & VOD metadata
IMDb Scraper	Titles, ratings & cast from IMDb
TVmaze Scraper	TV show, episode & schedule data
Discogs Scraper	Music releases, artists & label data
Product Hunt Daily Launches	New product launches every day
Reddit Subreddit Scraper	Posts & discussion from any subreddit
MyAnimeList (MAL) Scraper	Anime titles, scores & metadata

👉 Browse all logiover scrapers on Apify Store — 180+ actors across real estate, jobs, crypto, social media & B2B data.

⏰ Scheduling & integration

Schedule this Actor on Apify to snapshot a niche's podcasts weekly and track new episodes and release cadence over time. Export results to JSON, CSV or Excel, sync to Google Sheets, or push to your database, BI tools and webhooks through the Apify API. Connect it to Make, n8n or Zapier to feed a transcription queue, a content dashboard or a sponsorship-outreach pipeline automatically.

⭐ Support & feedback

Found a publisher whose RSS feed isn't parsing correctly, or need an extra field? Open an issue on the Issues tab — response is usually fast. If this Actor saves you time, a ★★★★★ review on the Store page genuinely helps and is hugely appreciated. 🙏

⚖️ Legal

This Actor extracts only publicly available podcast catalog data via Apple's published iTunes Search & Lookup APIs and public RSS feeds, and is intended for legitimate research, analytics and content-discovery use. You are responsible for complying with Apple's terms of service, each publisher's terms, GDPR and any applicable local laws.

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📝 Changelog

2026-07-06

• ✨ README overhaul: richer output sample, ready-to-run example scenarios, cross-promo links, and clearer quick-start.

2026-07-01

• Maintenance pass: re-verified end-to-end on live data and confirmed successful runs within the 5-minute quality window on the default input.
• Sharpened Store metadata (SEO title & description) and expanded the FAQ with high-intent, long-tail questions for easier discovery in Google and Apify Store search.
• Added ready-to-run example tasks that cover common real-world use cases.

2026-06-15

• Reliability pass: re-verified end-to-end on live data with real-world inputs. Routine maintenance build.

2026-06-07

• Docs: added coverage for iTunes API alternative usage, exporting Apple Podcasts episodes to CSV/JSON, and RSS feed scraping without an API key.

2026-06-05

• 🛡️ Reliability fix: results are no longer dropped by strict output validation — runs now complete cleanly even at high volume (thousands of results).
• ⚡ Stability & performance hardening; fresh rebuild.

2026-06-04

• Verified live & refreshed build — reliability/maintenance pass.