Podcast Scraper

Scrape Apple Podcasts for show details and recent episodes: name, author, genres, artwork, explicit rating and RSS feed, plus each episode's date, duration in seconds, description and direct audio link.

What does Podcast Scraper do?

Podcast Scraper searches Apple Podcasts by keyword, pulls a country's top podcast charts, or looks up exact shows by their Apple ID. For each podcast you get the name, author, genres, artwork, episode count, explicit rating, the date of the newest episode, and links to both its Apple page and its RSS feed.

Switch on Include episodes and every show also carries its most recent episodes: title, publication date, duration (as written and in seconds), description, direct audio link and file size.

It needs no account, no API key and no proxy. Running it on Apify adds an API, scheduling, integrations (Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Make, S3) and run monitoring.

Why use Podcast Scraper?

• Podcast discovery and directories: build a searchable list of shows in a niche.
• Advertising and sponsorship research: find active shows in a category and see how often they publish.
• Competitive analysis: track what rival shows release and how often.
• Media monitoring: watch for new episodes on topics you care about.
• AI and transcription pipelines: the audio links are direct and durations come in seconds, so the output feeds speech-to-text and recommendation systems as-is.

How to use Podcast Scraper to get Apple Podcasts data

1. Choose What to get: Search, Top charts, or Look up by ID.
2. Enter Search terms (or Podcast IDs) and a two-letter Country code.
3. Turn on Include episodes if you want each show's recent episodes.
4. Click Start, then open the Output tab. Results appear as they arrive.

Input

Set everything on the Input tab. The same input as JSON, for the API:

{
  "mode": "search",
  "search_terms": ["true crime"],
  "country": "us",
  "max_podcasts": 10,
  "include_episodes": true,
  "max_episodes_per_podcast": 5
}

Field	Description
mode	search, top_charts or lookup (Look up by ID).
search_terms	Keywords or show names, one per line. Results from several terms are merged without duplicates.
podcast_ids	Apple Podcasts show IDs (1379959217 or id1379959217) or show links (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/morbid/id1379959217). Publisher (/artist/) links are not show IDs.
country	Two-letter code such as us, gb (United Kingdom, not uk) or de. Charts and availability differ by country.
max_podcasts	Stops after this many shows in the whole run, not per search term or ID, so with several terms the later ones may add nothing. Apple returns at most 200 per search term or chart.
include_episodes, max_episodes_per_podcast	Adds each show's most recent episodes.

Output

One row per podcast. Here is a real row, trimmed to one episode with a shortened description and audio link:

{
  "podcast_id": 1379959217,
  "name": "Morbid",
  "author": "Ash Kelley & Alaina Urquhart",
  "url": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/morbid/id1379959217",
  "feed_url": "https://feeds.simplecast.com/ohmVlJZQ",
  "primary_genre": "True Crime",
  "genres": ["True Crime", "Comedy"],
  "episode_count": 907,
  "country": "US",
  "latest_episode_date": "2026-10-01T07:00:00Z",
  "explicit": true,
  "content_rating": "Explicit",
  "artwork": "https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts211/v4/78/e9/0e/78e90ee0-567d-1ad8-17a0-17d7c988c4bd/mza_8425901783365617933.jpg/600x600bb.jpg",
  "episodes": [
    {
      "title": "The Eddy Brothers and the High Life Ski Club",
      "published_at": "2026-10-01T07:00:00+00:00",
      "duration": "00:46:12",
      "duration_seconds": 2772,
      "episode_number": 832,
      "season": null,
      "description": "In the early-to-mid 1870s, as interest in Spiritualism swept the United States...",
      "audio_url": "https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/stitcher.simplecastaudio.com/d4d5c1a0-121c-450d-8aed-1ebd2f4dddf0/episodes/0041f647-b86a-43c0-a688-77def7eb5afd/audio/128/default.mp3",
      "audio_bytes": 44368261,
      "explicit": true,
      "guid": "4ef3b66f-52f8-4552-8d88-6536bb461c59"
    }
  ]
}

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

Data fields

Field	Description
podcast_id, name, author	The show's Apple ID, title and publisher.
url, feed_url	The show's Apple Podcasts page and its RSS feed.
artwork	Cover art, 600×600.
primary_genre, genres	How Apple categorises the show.
episode_count	How many episodes Apple lists.
latest_episode_date	Apple's date for the newest episode.
explicit, content_rating	true / Explicit when Apple rates the show explicit. content_rating is empty when Apple gives the show no rating.
country	The two-letter store the data came from, as you entered it.
episodes	With Include episodes on: title, published_at, duration, duration_seconds, description, audio_url, audio_bytes, explicit and guid for each recent episode.

Episodes also carry episode_number and season when the publisher's feed numbers them; many feeds don't, and then they are null. In Top charts mode every row also has chart_rank (1 = top), and rows arrive in chart order.

How much does it cost to scrape Apple Podcasts?

The Actor uses pay-per-event pricing, and you pay only for podcasts it delivers:

• $0.002 per podcast in the dataset, so about $2.00 per 1,000 results.
• $0.00005 per run for starting the Actor. That is one charge per GB of memory, and the default is 1 GB.

Episodes ride inside their show's row, so turning them on costs nothing extra. A search term or ID that finds nothing is never billed as a row.

Run	Podcasts	Approximate cost
1 search × 25 shows	25	$0.05
Top 200 chart, with episodes	200	$0.40
10 searches × 100 shows	1,000	$2.00

Apify's free plan includes $5 of monthly credit, which covers roughly 2,500 podcasts.

Tips

• Search terms match show names and authors, so a network's name pulls its whole slate.
• Charts are per country. Run several countries to compare markets.
• episode_count next to latest_episode_date tells an active show from a dormant one, which helps when picking sponsorship targets.
• Episodes add one request per show, because they come from each show's own feed. Leave them off when you only need show details; the run then finishes in seconds.
• Keep max_episodes_per_podcast small for monitoring; you rarely need more than the latest few.

FAQ, disclaimers and support

Does it need an account or API key? No. It reads Apple's public podcast directory and the publishers' public RSS feeds.

Why did a show come back without episodes? Episodes are not in Apple's data. They live in each show's RSS feed on the publisher's host, and some feeds are offline, moved or malformed. Those shows still come through, with an episodes_error field that says what went wrong.

Why only recent episodes? Many feeds carry only a rolling window of recent episodes. max_episodes_per_podcast caps what is kept; the feed decides how far back it goes.

Why is latest_episode_date sometimes empty or a few days old? It is Apple's index date. Apple occasionally lists a date that hasn't happened yet, which matches no real episode, so the Actor leaves it empty. Apple's index can also lag the feed by a few days; with episodes on, published_at comes straight from the feed.

What if a search or ID finds nothing? It isn't billed. It is listed with the reason in the FAILED_INPUTS record of the run's key-value store, and the run's status message gives the counts. That covers searches with no matches, IDs that aren't podcasts (a publisher, episode or song ID), entries that are neither an ID nor a link, and country codes Apple has no store for. The run fails only when Apple could not be reached for any input.

Is it legal to scrape Apple Podcasts? The Actor collects only publicly available directory data and public RSS feeds, and no personal data beyond the publisher names shown on each show. Episode audio, artwork and descriptions remain the publishers' copyright, so indexing and analysing them is normal, but redistributing them may not be. You are responsible for complying with Apple's terms and applicable law. Consult a lawyer if you are unsure.

Found a bug or need a field that's missing? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab. Custom podcast-data solutions are available on request.