# RSS & Atom Feed Health Auditor (`quanmatrix/rss-feed-health-auditor`) Actor

Publishers, podcasts and monitoring teams need deterministic checks for public RSS or Atom feeds, item counts, duplicate links and date metadata.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/quanmatrix/rss-feed-health-auditor.md
- **Developed by:** [Rafael Barreto Haddad](https://apify.com/quanmatrix) (community)
- **Categories:** Developer tools, SEO tools, Automation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.01 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## RSS & Atom Feed Health Auditor

Publishers, podcasts and monitoring teams need deterministic checks for public RSS or Atom feeds, item counts, duplicate links and date metadata.

RSS & Atom Feed Health Auditor is a focused QuanMatrix Actor designed for teams that need repeatable evidence rather than screenshots, vague summaries, or manual spot checks. It accepts public HTTP/HTTPS targets, performs a narrowly scoped inspection, and writes structured records to the default Apify dataset. The product is intentionally specialized so that its runtime, permissions, pricing, and limitations remain easy to understand.

### Why use this Actor

Many web-quality checks are simple in isolation but expensive when repeated manually across dozens or hundreds of targets. This Actor turns that recurring problem into a deterministic workflow. It can be used interactively, scheduled, connected to another Actor, or integrated into a QA pipeline. Results contain explicit status, score, issue codes, and product-specific evidence so downstream automation can decide what to do next without parsing prose.

The design favors low runtime cost and transparent behavior. It does not require an account on the target website, a paid third-party API, a browser session, or an external AI service. Network access is limited to public HTTP/HTTPS destinations and private, loopback, link-local, reserved, or otherwise unsafe targets are rejected.

### Key features

- Supports common RSS and Atom structures in one lightweight audit.
- Reports item count, duplicate links and publication-date coverage.
- Uses structured XML parsing rather than browser screenshots or prose.
- Requires no feed-management account, paid API or external AI service.
- Produces one structured dataset record for every submitted target, including explicit failure records.
- Uses bounded downloads and conservative runtime settings to keep resource usage predictable.
- Works with Apify scheduling, API calls, Tasks, datasets, webhooks, and downstream automation.

### Input

Provide a JSON object with a `urls` array containing up to 100 public targets.

```json
{"urls":["https://example.com","https://www.python.org"]}
```

Only public HTTP and HTTPS destinations are supported. Inputs that resolve to private or local network ranges are rejected deliberately.

### Output

Each target produces a dataset item with `input`, final `url`, `ok`, HTTP `status`, numeric `score`, an `issues` array, and additional evidence relevant to this Actor. Successful and failed targets remain visible, which makes batch processing easier to audit.

### Example

```json
{"input":"https://example.com","url":"https://example.com","ok":true,"status":200,"score":100,"issues":[]}
```

The exact evidence fields depend on the product-specific check, while the common fields remain stable for automation.

### Use cases

- Publishers
- Podcast operations
- Content monitoring
- News intelligence
- Scheduled regression checks after deployments or content changes.
- Agency and consultancy audits that need reusable JSON evidence.
- Data pipelines that need a narrow quality gate before subsequent processing.

### Pricing

Planned pricing is **$0.0013 USD per qualified result**. The price is tied to the result written to the dataset, not to hidden subscriptions or external API charges. QuanMatrix reviews pricing against runtime cost, adoption, competition, conversion, and observed margin. Keywords used for market tracking include: rss feed, atom feed, feed health, podcast rss.

### Limitations

This Actor evaluates evidence visible through ordinary public HTTP, XML, JSON, or server-delivered HTML. It does not replace authenticated testing, full browser rendering, penetration testing, legal review, or platform-specific administrative tools. JavaScript-generated state may not be visible when the server response does not include it. Some websites intentionally block automated requests, rate-limit traffic, or vary content by geography and client characteristics. Those conditions are reported rather than silently discarded.

### Privacy and permissions

The Actor uses limited permissions and does not request credentials. It does not intentionally access private networks, internal services, or local addresses. Submitted URLs and resulting evidence are processed through standard Apify storage according to the user's Apify configuration. No paid external AI model or third-party enrichment API is required.

### Differentiation

This is not a generic scraper wearing a different title. Its scoring, issue codes, evidence fields, and test cases are built around one concrete recurring problem. That narrower scope reduces maintenance risk, improves interpretability, and makes the output easier to combine with automated actions.

### Feed intelligence and regression gate

The Gen2 feed audit keeps RSS/Atom item, link and date checks and adds freshness SLA, date-coverage scoring, duplicate ID detection, feed fingerprints, previous-run comparison, regression detection and **GO / WARN / BLOCK** decisions for publishing automation.

# Actor input Schema

## `urls` (type: `array`):

Up to 100 public HTTP(S) URLs to audit.

## `previous_results` (type: `object`):

Optional map of URL to prior Actor result for drift and regression detection.

## `max_stale_hours` (type: `number`):

Maximum freshness age (hours). Configure this optional control for the current audit when needed.

## `min_date_coverage_pct` (type: `number`):

Minimum publication-date coverage (%). Configure this optional control for the current audit when needed.

## `failRunOnRegression` (type: `boolean`):

Fail run on regression. Configure this optional control for the current audit when needed.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "urls": [
    "https://example.com"
  ],
  "previous_results": {},
  "max_stale_hours": 168,
  "min_date_coverage_pct": 70,
  "failRunOnRegression": false
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `dataset` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("quanmatrix/rss-feed-health-auditor").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("quanmatrix/rss-feed-health-auditor").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{}' |
apify call quanmatrix/rss-feed-health-auditor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,quanmatrix/rss-feed-health-auditor"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/H6MmfPIoZqb789sma/builds/pXlHm0TBFfyBjthBg/openapi.json