Podcast RSS Feed Scraper — Episodes & Transcripts

What it does

Podcast RSS Feed Scraper turns any podcast feed into clean, structured JSON. Give it RSS/Atom feed URLs, Apple Podcasts show URLs or plain search terms (search:the daily), and it returns one show record per feed (title, description, author, owner email when published, artwork, categories, explicit flag, episode count, website, Podcasting 2.0 podcast:guid, funding links, locked flag) and one episode record per item (GUID, title, show notes as plain text, ISO publish date, duration in seconds, season/episode numbers, episode type, audio URL/type/size, artwork, link, chapters URL, <podcast:transcript> links, person count).

It parses the RSS 2.0, iTunes and Podcasting 2.0 namespaces with a fast XML parser (no browser, no proxies), handles the odd feed (non-standard namespace prefixes, missing GUIDs, MM:SS vs HH:MM:SS vs seconds durations, HTML show notes) and resolves Apple Podcasts links and search terms through Apple's public iTunes Lookup/Search API, so you never need to hunt for the feed URL yourself.

Turn on Fetch transcripts to download each episode's transcript file (plain text, WebVTT, SRT, JSON or HTML, max 2 MB) and get transcriptText with cue timestamps stripped and speakers labelled, plus a transcriptWords count — ready for search, summarization, RAG pipelines or LLM analysis. Turn on Only new episodes since the last run to use it as a monitor: the Actor remembers which episode GUIDs it has seen per feed and returns only new ones, optionally POSTing them to a webhook.

Built for podcast analytics and discovery tools, newsrooms and research teams tracking shows, marketers monitoring competitor and sponsor mentions, and AI agents that need episode metadata and transcripts on demand. Results are available as JSON, CSV, Excel, through the API, webhooks and the Apify MCP server.

How to use

1. Enter your Feeds (one per line): feed URLs, Apple Podcasts URLs (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/…/id1200361736), bare Apple IDs or search:<show name>.
2. Optionally set Max episodes per feed, turn on Fetch transcripts or Only new episodes since the last run, and add a Webhook URL.
3. Click Start. Show and episode records appear in the dataset as each feed is parsed; download them or connect via API/MCP. For monitoring, schedule the Actor and keep onlyNewSinceLastRun on.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
feeds	string[]	yes	Feed URLs, Apple Podcasts URLs, Apple IDs or search:<term> entries, one per line. A show web page with an RSS autodiscovery link also works
maxEpisodesPerFeed	integer	no	Newest-first cap on episode records per feed (default 100)
includeShowRecord	boolean	no	Write one recordType: "show" item per feed (default true)
fetchTranscripts	boolean	no	Download the best available <podcast:transcript> per episode and attach transcriptText/transcriptWords (default false)
onlyNewSinceLastRun	boolean	no	Return only episodes not seen in earlier runs; the first run is a baseline (default false)
stateStoreName	string	no	Key-value store holding the seen-episode GUIDs per feed (default podcast-rss-scraper-state)
maxConcurrency	integer	no	Parallel transcript downloads, 1–10 (default 5); same-host requests are spaced ≥ 500 ms
webhookUrl	string	no	POST target for the run summary and, with onlyNewSinceLastRun, the list of new episodes

Output example

A show record:

{
  "recordType": "show",
  "feedUrl": "https://podnews.net/rss",
  "title": "Podnews Daily - podcast industry and podcasting news",
  "description": "Daily news for people in podcasting - from Apple Podcasts to Spotify and YouTube; …",
  "language": "en-gb",
  "author": "Podnews LLC",
  "ownerEmail": "editor+dailyrss@podnews.net",
  "imageUrl": "https://podnews.net/static/podnews-2000x2000.png",
  "categories": ["News > Daily News", "Technology", "podcasting", "radio"],
  "explicit": false,
  "episodeCount": 151,
  "episodesReturned": 10,
  "lastBuildDate": "2026-10-16T11:00:15.000Z",
  "latestEpisodeAt": "2026-10-16T10:09:41.000Z",
  "websiteUrl": "https://podnews.net",
  "podcastGuid": "9b024349-ccf0-5f69-a609-6b82873eab3c",
  "funding": [{ "url": "https://podnews.net/donate", "message": "Support us" }],
  "showType": "episodic",
  "copyright": "2026 Podnews LLC",
  "generator": "Podnews LLC",
  "feedFormat": "rss",
  "input": "https://podnews.net/rss",
  "resolvedVia": "direct",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-10-16T13:13:06.512Z"
}

An episode record (with fetchTranscripts: true; the transcript* fields are absent otherwise):

{
  "recordType": "episode",
  "feedUrl": "https://podnews.net/rss",
  "showTitle": "Podnews Daily - podcast industry and podcasting news",
  "episodeGuid": "https://podnews.net/update/pave-disney-hulu-clues",
  "title": "PAVE Studios shows head to Disney+ and Hulu",
  "description": "Shows include Clues with Kaelyn Moore.\n\nSponsored by SoundStack. …",
  "pubDate": "2026-10-16T10:09:41.000Z",
  "durationSeconds": 291,
  "episode": 2450,
  "episodeType": "full",
  "explicit": false,
  "audioUrl": "https://op3.dev/e,pg=9b024349-ccf0-5f69-a609-6b82873eab3c/podnews.net/audio/podnews261016.mp3",
  "audioType": "audio/mpeg",
  "audioBytes": 4684006,
  "imageUrl": "https://podnews.net/audio/podnews261016.jpeg",
  "link": "https://podnews.net/update/pave-disney-hulu-clues",
  "transcripts": [{ "url": "https://podnews.net/audio/podnews261016.mp3.vtt", "type": "text/vtt", "rel": "captions" }],
  "personsCount": 0,
  "transcriptUrl": "https://podnews.net/audio/podnews261016.mp3.vtt",
  "transcriptType": "text/vtt",
  "transcriptFormat": "vtt",
  "transcriptText": "James Cridland: From our free daily newsletter, the latest from podnews.net with Soundstack. Another two podcasts are making it to a streaming service: this time from PAVE Studios. …",
  "transcriptWords": 730,
  "fetchedAt": "2026-10-16T13:13:06.512Z"
}

Optional episode fields (season, chaptersUrl, imageUrl, link, durationSeconds, …) are present only when the feed provides them. Shows resolved through Apple carry appleId, appleUrl and, for search: inputs, searchAlternatives (the other top matches with their feed URLs). With onlyNewSinceLastRun each episode carries isNew: true and the show record carries newEpisodes and baseline.

Error items look like { "recordType": "error", "input": "…", "error": "FEED_FAILED", "errorMessage": "HTTP 404 for …" } (codes: FEED_FAILED, APPLE_ID_NOT_FOUND, APPLE_NO_FEED_URL, APPLE_LOOKUP_FAILED, SEARCH_NO_RESULTS, ITUNES_SEARCH_FAILED, GUID_RESOLUTION_UNAVAILABLE, INVALID_INPUT) and are charged at the show rate, because the work to discover the problem was done. A transcript that cannot be downloaded leaves the episode record intact with a transcriptError field.

Pricing

Pay per event. You only pay for what the Actor produces; set a maximum cost per run in the run options to cap spend.

Event	Price	Notes
Episode scraped	$0.0005	Per episode record
Show scraped	$0.001	Per show record, including error items for feeds that could not be resolved or fetched
Transcript fetched	$0.005	Per transcript download attempted (on top of the episode event); unreachable transcripts are recorded with transcriptError and charged too
Actor start	$0.00005	Apify platform event

Example: 1,000 episodes ≈ $0.50; 100 transcripts ≈ $0.50 (plus $0.05 for their 100 episode records). A daily monitor of 20 shows with onlyNewSinceLastRun that finds 5 new episodes a day ≈ $0.0225/day (20 show records + 5 episodes). Episodes without a <podcast:transcript> tag never incur the transcript event.

Limits and fair use

• Feeds are fetched with plain HTTP from Apify datacenter IPs, up to 30 MB each (the largest public feeds with 3,000+ episodes are about 20 MB), with a 20 s timeout and at most ~2 requests per second per host. Transcripts are capped at 2 MB each.
• Only <podcast:transcript> files published in the feed are downloaded; the Actor does not transcribe audio. When several formats are offered it picks, in order, plain text, WebVTT, SRT, JSON, HTML.
• Apple Podcasts URLs and search: terms are resolved through Apple's public iTunes Lookup/Search API (no key needed, rate-limited to about 20 requests per minute, so resolving many Apple inputs is slower than passing feed URLs). Shows that Apple lists without a public feedUrl (Apple-exclusive or subscription shows) produce an APPLE_NO_FEED_URL error item. Podcast Index GUIDs cannot be resolved without an API key and produce GUID_RESOLUTION_UNAVAILABLE.
• maxEpisodesPerFeed cuts newest-first. With onlyNewSinceLastRun, the baseline run records the whole feed as seen (it returns the newest episodes up to the cap; older ones are history, not news); on later runs, new episodes beyond the cap are left for the next run rather than silently dropped. The seen-GUID set per feed is capped at 5,000 episodes.
• Only public data is accessed: feeds, transcript files and Apple's public catalogue. No login, no proxies, no personal data beyond what the publisher puts in the feed (ownerEmail is included only when the feed publishes it).

Related Actors

Other pay-per-event Actors from the same account, all limited-permission and agent-friendly:

• PDF & DOCX to Markdown Converter for AI Agents — convert the PDFs and DOCX files linked from show notes into Markdown and RAG chunks.
• Bluesky Posts, Profiles & Followers Scraper — posts, profiles and followers for the shows and hosts you track.
• Website Change Monitor — Sitemap & Page Content Diff — sitemap and content change feed for podcast and network websites.

FAQ

Does this need proxies or an API key? No. Feeds, transcript files and the iTunes Lookup/Search API are public endpoints read over plain HTTP from Apify's standard infrastructure. Nothing to configure.

How is cost controlled? Cost = episodes × $0.0005 + shows × $0.001 + transcripts × $0.005. Limit episodes with maxEpisodesPerFeed, leave fetchTranscripts off unless you need the text, use onlyNewSinceLastRun for recurring runs so you pay only for new episodes, and set the run's maximum total charge; the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

Can I pass an Apple Podcasts link or just the show name? Yes. https://podcasts.apple.com/…/id123456789 (or the bare ID) is resolved with the iTunes Lookup API; search:show name uses the iTunes Search API and takes the top match with a public feed, recording the other matches in searchAlternatives on the show record so you can pick a different one next time.

What formats of transcripts are supported? Plain text, WebVTT (text/vtt), SRT (application/srt, application/x-subrip), Podcasting 2.0 JSON (application/json) and HTML. Timestamps, cue numbers, styling tags and repeated rolling-caption lines are removed; speaker names from <v> tags, Name: prefixes or JSON speaker fields are kept as Name: … labels.

How does monitoring work? With onlyNewSinceLastRun the Actor stores the episode GUIDs of each feed in the key-value store named by stateStoreName. The first run is a baseline that returns the newest episodes up to maxEpisodesPerFeed; later runs return only episodes with GUIDs not seen before and POST them to webhookUrl if set. Use a different stateStoreName to keep independent monitors.

Can I run it on a schedule or call it from an AI agent? Yes — use Apify Schedules, the API, or the Apify MCP server. The Actor is pay-per-event and uses limited permissions (its own dataset and the state store you name), so agents can discover and call it. Example prompts: "Get the last 20 episodes of The Daily with durations and audio URLs", "Download the transcripts of this week's Podnews episodes and summarize them", "Tell me when any of these 10 podcast feeds publishes a new episode".

What happens on errors? A feed that cannot be resolved, fetched or parsed produces an error item with a clear code instead of failing the whole run; other feeds in the same run are unaffected. Transcript problems are recorded per episode in transcriptError.

Legal

Use the data in compliance with each publisher's terms and applicable law. The Actor reads only publicly published podcast feeds, transcript files linked from them and Apple's public catalogue API, keeps request rates polite and does not download audio. It is not a consumer reporting agency and its output must not be used for employment, credit, insurance, or tenant screening decisions.