Apple Podcasts Search, Top Charts and Episodes

Find podcasts and pull clean data on them from Apple Podcasts. Search by keyword, look up shows by id or link, or read Apple's top podcasts chart for any country and genre. Each show comes with its publisher, genre, episode count, latest episode date, RSS feed URL, artwork and Apple Podcasts link. Turn on episodes to also get each show's recent episodes with title, release date, duration, description and the direct audio URL.

The actor reads Apple's own public iTunes Search and Lookup API and Apple's public podcast chart feed. No login, no API key, no browser, no proxies.

What you can use it for

• Podcast guest booking and PR: build a list of active shows in your niche, with their RSS feeds, sorted by chart rank.
• Sponsorship and ad sales: track the top 200 Business or Technology podcasts every week and spot new entries.
• Content research: pull the latest episodes of a list of shows, with descriptions, for summaries or AI pipelines.
• Transcription workflows: get direct audio URLs to feed into your own speech to text tool.
• AI agents: one clear job with simple inputs, so an agent can answer "what are the top true crime podcasts in the UK right now?"

Input

Field	What it does	Default
Search terms	Keywords to search, one per line. Results keep Apple's order, so position is the search rank	none
Podcast ids or Apple Podcasts links	Shows to look up directly: 1200361736 or https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736	none
Include the top podcasts chart	Adds Apple's top podcasts chart for the country, with rank	off
Chart genre id	Narrow the chart, for example 1321 Business, 1318 Technology, 1488 True Crime	all podcasts
Country	Two letter country code	us
Results per search term	Up to 200	50
Shows in the chart	Up to 200	100
Add recent episodes	Save each show's recent episodes as extra rows	off
Episodes per show	Up to 200	20
Maximum rows	Stop after this many rows (shows plus episodes)	1,000

Example input:

{
  "searchTerms": ["marketing"],
  "podcastIds": ["https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736"],
  "topChart": true,
  "chartGenreId": "1321",
  "country": "us",
  "includeEpisodes": true,
  "maxEpisodesPerPodcast": 5
}

Output

Show rows have type: "podcast":

{
  "type": "podcast",
  "source": "chart",
  "query": "top-podcasts-genre-1321",
  "rank": 1,
  "country": "us",
  "podcastId": 1200361736,
  "name": "The Daily",
  "publisher": "The New York Times",
  "primaryGenre": "Daily News",
  "genres": ["Daily News", "News"],
  "episodeCount": 2731,
  "latestEpisodeDate": "2026-09-26T10:00:00Z",
  "explicit": false,
  "contentRating": "Clean",
  "feedUrl": "https://feeds.simplecast.com/Sl5CSM3S",
  "artworkUrl": "https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/.../600x600bb.jpg",
  "applePodcastsUrl": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-27T08:10:00.000Z"
}

Episode rows have type: "episode":

{
  "type": "episode",
  "podcastId": 1588397602,
  "podcastName": "Marketing Happy Hour",
  "episodeId": 1000791425853,
  "title": "Why Your Personal Brand Is Your Most Important Career Asset",
  "releaseDate": "2026-09-24T08:00:00Z",
  "durationSeconds": 2234,
  "description": "In this solo episode...",
  "audioUrl": "https://anchor.fm/s/50d9d294/podcast/play/...m4a",
  "episodeGuid": "1931528d-30b5-4eeb-9c21-2c8af35463e4",
  "applePodcastsUrl": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/.../id1588397602?i=1000791425853"
}

The dataset has two views, Podcasts and Episodes. Inputs that return nothing are listed in RUN_SUMMARY in the run's key value store and cost nothing.

Pricing

Pay per event, no subscription, no charge for platform usage on top.

Event	Price
Podcast row saved	$0.001 (one dollar per 1,000 shows)
Episode row saved	$0.0005 (50 cents per 1,000 episodes)

Examples: the top 200 podcasts in a genre cost $0.20. The top 100 with their last 10 episodes each cost $0.60. Set a maximum charge per run in Apify and the actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

Limits

• Apple returns at most 200 shows per search and 200 per chart, and at most 200 recent episodes per show. For a full back catalog, read the show's feedUrl with any RSS reader.
• Apple allows about 20 requests a minute from one address, so calls are spaced about 3 seconds apart. Each search, each batch of 100 shows and each show's episode list is one call.
• Apple does not publish listener numbers, downloads or ratings through these endpoints, so they are not in the output.
• Spotify and other directories are not covered.

FAQ

Do I need an Apple account or an API key? No. The actor uses Apple's public endpoints that need no sign in.

Is the publisher a person's name? It is the show's public byline as the publisher lists it on Apple Podcasts, often a company or network. No listener, contact or personal data is collected.

Which genres can I use for the chart? Common ids: 1301 Arts, 1303 Comedy, 1304 Education, 1309 TV and Film, 1310 Music, 1314 Religion and Spirituality, 1318 Technology, 1321 Business, 1324 Society and Culture, 1487 History, 1488 True Crime, 1489 News, 1512 Health and Fitness, 1533 Science, 1545 Sports.

Can I monitor new episodes? Yes. Schedule the actor with your show list and episodes on, and compare episodeId across runs.

Is this affiliated with Apple? No. It is an independent tool that reads Apple's public podcast data.