Smart Article Extractor

Extract readable article content and normalized metadata from public web pages. Use it for research pipelines, search indexing, content migration, summarization, retrieval-augmented generation, and AI-agent workflows that need one clean record per URL.

What it returns

Field	Description
text	Clean article text with common navigation, ads, scripts, and boilerplate removed
title, description, excerpt	Page title and short summaries
author, publishedAt, modifiedAt	Metadata when declared by the source page
canonicalUrl, siteName, language, articleType	Page identity and content metadata
headings, images	Structured article elements
wordCount, readingTimeMinutes	Content size estimates
extractionMethod, warnings	Transparent diagnostics about selection and missing metadata

When to use it

Use this actor when you already have public article URLs and need readable text plus metadata. It is not a search engine, sitemap crawler, PDF parser, browser automation tool, or authenticated/paywall bypass. JavaScript-only pages, login walls, and pages that expose no article content produce a successful diagnostic record with extractionMethod: "no-content" when the page can be fetched.

Input

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://example.com/news/article" },
    { "url": "https://example.org/blog/post" }
  ],
  "maxResults": 10,
  "includeHtml": false,
  "responseFormat": "detailed"
}

startUrls is required and accepts public http or https URLs. maxResults is capped at 100. Set includeHtml to true to include cleaned article markup; it is false by default to keep agent responses compact. responseFormat: "concise" limits headings and image arrays but does not truncate text.

Output example

{
  "sourceUrl": "https://example.com/news/article",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://example.com/news/article",
  "title": "A practical article title",
  "description": "A short page summary",
  "excerpt": "The first part of the cleaned article...",
  "author": "Jane Doe",
  "publishedAt": "2026-01-15T09:30:00Z",
  "modifiedAt": null,
  "siteName": "Example News",
  "language": "en",
  "articleType": "NewsArticle",
  "text": "The cleaned article body...",
  "html": null,
  "headings": ["Introduction", "Conclusion"],
  "images": ["https://example.com/image.jpg"],
  "wordCount": 842,
  "readingTimeMinutes": 5,
  "extractionMethod": "article-element",
  "warnings": [],
  "extractedAt": "2026-08-13T10:00:00.000Z"
}

Pricing

Event	Price
Actor start	$0.00005
Article record returned	$0.003

You are charged only after an article record is stored. A 10-URL run costs at most $0.030 in record events plus the actor-start event. Invalid URL strings are ignored without a record charge; fetch failures are reported in OUTPUT.

Reliability and limits

The actor uses public HTML requests with bounded retries and concurrency. It prefers an article or main container, then scores content-like blocks, and finally uses a body fallback. It does not execute page JavaScript or defeat bot challenges. Respect each website's terms, robots directives, copyright, and applicable privacy laws; only process content you are allowed to access and use.

AI-agent description

Extract clean article text and metadata from public web URLs for research, indexing, summarization, and retrieval workflows. Do not use for search, PDFs, authenticated pages, or paywall bypass. Returns one record per URL with title, author, dates, canonical URL, text, headings, images, word count, reading time, and warnings. Charged $0.003 per article returned plus a $0.00005 start fee.

Run Smart Article Extractor with the Apify API

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('muhammadafzal/smart-article-extractor').call({
  "startUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://example.com/"
    }
  ],
  "maxResults": 10,
  "includeHtml": false,
  "responseFormat": "detailed"
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

You can also run the Actor from Apify Console, schedules, webhooks, the REST API, Make, Zapier, n8n, or the hosted Apify MCP server.

Support

When reporting a problem, include the Actor run ID, a redacted input, the expected result, and a small public example URL when applicable. Do not post API tokens, cookies, credentials, or personal data in an issue.

Frequently asked questions

Can I schedule Smart Article Extractor?

Yes. Use an Apify schedule to run the same saved input at a chosen interval, then connect a webhook or integration to process the dataset when the run finishes.

How should I test a new input?

Begin with the prefilled example or a small limit. Confirm that the output fields, source coverage, runtime, and live charges match your workflow before increasing the scope.

How do I export the results?

Open the run's default dataset in Apify Console and export JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS. Applications can retrieve the same records through the Apify API client or REST dataset endpoint.

Can an AI agent call this Actor?

Yes. Add muhammadafzal/smart-article-extractor through the hosted Apify MCP server or call it through the API. The Actor's input and dataset schemas help agents construct valid requests and interpret returned records.