RSS Feed Reader & Finder (RSS, Atom, JSON Feed)

What does RSS Feed Reader & Finder do?

RSS Feed Reader & Finder reads RSS, Atom and JSON Feed items into clean, consistent JSON, and finds the feeds behind any website. Give it feed URLs, or just websites and domains like theverge.com, and it returns one row per article, post, release or podcast episode: title, link, author, publication date, plain-text summary, full content, categories, images and podcast enclosures.

It runs on the Apify platform, so you get API access, scheduling, webhooks, integrations (Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, Slack) and run monitoring. Schedule it with Only new items turned on and you get a clean news, blog or podcast monitor that never saves (or charges for) the same item twice.

You are never charged for a failed or empty result

Every result says what it is, and only real results cost anything.

status	Meaning	Charged
ok	A real result	Yes
empty	Worked, but there was nothing to report	No
failed	Could not be done — the error field says why	No
truncated / partial	Cut short by a limit you set; what was delivered is kept	Only the delivered part
skipped	Not attempted, for example after the maximum cost per run was reached	No

If every input fails, the run itself fails with an explanation instead of reporting success with no data.

Why use RSS Feed Reader & Finder?

• Paste websites, not just feeds. Feeds are found automatically from the page's feed links and the usual locations (WordPress /feed/, Substack, Medium, Blogger, /rss.xml, /atom.xml, /index.xml and more).
• Every feed format in one schema. RSS 0.9x, 1.0 (RDF) and 2.0, Atom and JSON Feed 1.x, including podcast feeds with iTunes fields and enclosures.
• Only new items on scheduled runs. Remembers what earlier runs saved and uses conditional requests, so unchanged feeds cost almost nothing.
• Filters that save money. Keep items matching keywords or published within a period; duplicates across feeds are removed. Filtered and duplicate items are never charged.
• Tolerant parsing. Handles broken XML, invalid characters, HTML entities, gzip files and dozens of malformed date formats; dates come out as ISO 8601 UTC.

Typical uses: news and competitor monitoring, content curation and newsletters, feeding articles to AI agents and RAG pipelines, podcast catalogues, release tracking (GitHub releases feeds), research alerts (arXiv) and Slack or email alerts through integrations.

How to read RSS feeds or find a website's feed

1. Click Try for free.
2. In Feed URLs or websites, paste feed URLs or websites, one per line.
3. Optionally add Keywords or Published after (for example 7 days).
4. Click Start. Most runs finish in seconds.
5. Open the Output tab: Items shows the newest items, Details shows everything else.

To only list the feeds a website offers, set Mode to Find feeds only. Both modes save (and charge for) at most Feeds per website feeds per URL, so raise that field if a site publishes several feeds you want to see.

Input

Field	Description	Default
Feed URLs or websites	Feed URLs, website URLs or bare domains. Up to 1,000 per run.	–
Mode	Read feed items, or find feeds only	Read feed items
Maximum items per feed	Items saved per feed, counted after filters	100
Feeds per website	How many feeds to use per URL when a site offers several (both modes)	1
Keywords	Comma-separated; an item matches when all words of one keyword appear	–
Published after	A date (2026-09-01) or a period (24 hours, 7 days, 2 weeks)	–
Only new items	Skip items saved by earlier runs	off
Remove duplicates across feeds	Same story in several feeds is saved once	on
Include full content / Content format	Full article body as plain text or HTML	off / text
Summary length	Characters of the plain-text summary (0 = full)	500

Example input:

{
  "urls": ["https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml", "theverge.com", "https://hnrss.org/newest?q=AI"],
  "keywords": "ai, electric cars",
  "publishedAfter": "7 days",
  "onlyNewItems": true
}

Output

A real item from a run on 15 September 2026 (enclosure URL shortened):

{
  "id": "69c6d43ca753b6933f59",
  "feedUrl": "https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml",
  "feedTitle": "Planet Money",
  "feedType": "rss",
  "siteUrl": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money",
  "title": "The loan at the heart of a new foreclosure crisis",
  "link": "https://www.npr.org/2026/09/11/nx-s1-5966574/baltimore-foreclosure-crisis-dscr-loan",
  "guid": "e4a2224f-f462-445a-9401-ad628eaee491",
  "author": "NPR",
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-11T21:00:00+00:00",
  "updatedAt": null,
  "summary": "There is a new type of loan that is sweeping through the country right now. It’s advertised as a super quick and super easy way to get a mortgage to buy a home. In recent years, Wall Street has been…",
  "categories": [],
  "enclosures": [{ "url": "https://npr.simplecastaudio.com/.../default.mp3", "type": "audio/mpeg", "length": 27996248 }],
  "imageUrl": "https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3377x1900+0+1/resize/1280/...",
  "duration": "1749",
  "language": "en",
  "error": null,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-15T11:50:11+00:00"
}

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel. A per-URL summary (feeds found, items saved, skipped, filtered, duplicates, errors) is saved in the key-value store as FEEDS_REPORT, under inputs, alongside checkedAt and prunedRecords. A URL where no feed could be read gets one row with an error message and suggestions; such rows are not charged.

Output fields

Field	Meaning
title, link, guid	Item title, permalink and the feed's unique ID
author	Byline (email addresses are removed); falls back to the feed's author
publishedAt, updatedAt	ISO 8601 UTC; Atom entries with only an update date use it as the publication date
summary, content	Plain-text summary; full content when Include full content is on
categories, imageUrl	Categories or tags, and the item's image
enclosures, duration	Podcast or media files (url, type, length) and episode duration
feedUrl, feedTitle, feedType, siteUrl, language	Where the item came from (rss, rdf, atom or json)
inputUrl, discoveredVia, itemCount, latestItemAt	In Find feeds only mode: the feeds found on each website

How much does it cost to read RSS feeds?

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing: you pay for each item saved to your dataset (in Find feeds only mode, for each feed found). Filtered items, duplicates, items already saved by earlier runs, and URLs without a readable feed are never charged. See the Pricing tab for the current price per 1,000 results. Platform compute is included, and you can set a maximum cost per run; the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

Tips for monitoring feeds on a schedule

• Turn on Only new items and schedule the Actor (for example hourly). Seen items are remembered in a key-value store named rss-feed-reader-state in your own Apify account; delete that store to start fresh. If you change keywords or limits, feeds are re-read in full once.
• Feeds rarely change more often than every 15–60 minutes. Running more often adds cost without adding items.
• YouTube: enter the channel feed (https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=...); YouTube pages themselves are not read.
• Keyword matching uses whole words, so ai does not match rain; list variants separately.

Related tools

Process what the feeds link to:

• PDF Text Extractor & Document to Markdown: convert PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel files (including scans) to Markdown for AI pipelines.
• Audio & Video Transcriber: turn audio, video and podcast episodes into text and subtitles.
• Sitemap URL Extractor: list every URL of a website from its sitemaps, or only new and removed pages.

FAQ, limitations and support

What is stored between runs? With Only new items on, the Actor keeps one small record per feed in a key-value store named rss-feed-reader-state in your own account, so a scheduled run knows what it already saved. After a run that reads every URL successfully, records for feeds you no longer list are deleted, so changing your feed list leaves nothing behind. A run that is cut short (cost limit, time limit, or a feed that failed) never deletes anything.

Which feeds work? Any public RSS, Atom or JSON Feed that doesn't need a login. Sites that block automated requests (HTTP 403/429) or disallow feed access in robots.txt are reported in FEEDS_REPORT and not charged.

What happens when a site won't let us read its robots.txt? Some sites put their /robots.txt behind bot protection and answer 403 or time out. We then can't tell what the site allows, so we follow one rule everywhere: the address you entered is still read, and addresses we would have worked out ourselves are not. A site with no robots.txt at all (404) is treated as allowing everything. For this Actor that means a feed address you paste is always read, while feed links we discover on a website are skipped at such a site and reported in FEEDS_REPORT.

Does it scrape web pages? No. It reads feeds that publishers provide for syndication, requests each feed once per run with a descriptive user agent, and respects robots.txt. Only a website's home page is read to find its feed links.

Can I republish the content? Feed content belongs to its publishers. Keep the link to the original and follow each publisher's terms.

Missing a field or a feed that doesn't parse? Open an issue in the Issues tab with the feed URL. Custom monitoring pipelines are welcome too.