# MSN News API (`romy/msn-news-api`) Actor

Unofficial wrapper around MSN's own public content API for real-time news feed, categories, full articles, topics, and comments. No login or API key needed.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/romy/msn-news-api.md
- **Developed by:** [Romy](https://apify.com/romy) (community)
- **Categories:** News
- **Stats:** 1 total users, 0 monthly users, 0.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.17 / 1,000 news feed requests

This Actor is paid per event and usage. You are charged both the fixed price for specific events and for Apify platform usage.
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?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
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.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## 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.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## MSN News API

Unofficial, reverse-engineered wrapper around MSN's own public content API. Returns real-time news as structured JSON — no scraping, no HTML parsing, no login required.

### What

A Standby REST API that proxies MSN's own backend for news only:

- Personalized/general feed by market
- Feed filtered by one of ~16 categories
- Full article detail, including the complete article body text (not just a teaser)
- The category list itself
- Article comments — full text, not just counts

### Why

MSN aggregates licensed news from thousands of publishers through one consistent API. This wrapper exposes that data as clean JSON for anyone who wants real-time headlines, full article text, or real reader comments without building a scraper against MSN's web frontend.

### How

This is a Standby Actor — it runs as a long-lived HTTP server, not a one-shot crawl. Send `GET` requests to its Standby URL with the query parameters documented below; each call returns JSON immediately.

### Input

All parameters are passed as query string parameters on the request URL — there is no JSON input needed to start the Actor.

| Route | Params | Description |
|---|---|---|
| `GET /feed` | `market` (e.g. `en-us`, `id-id`, `de-de`), `nextPageUrl` (optional, from a previous response, for pagination) | General/personalized news feed for a market. |
| `GET /category` | `market`, `categoryId` (the `id` field of a topic from `/topics`, e.g. `Y_bced654c-...`), `nextPageUrl` (optional) | News feed filtered to one category. |
| `GET /article` | `market`, `id` (an article id, e.g. `AA2edOWm`) | Full article detail, including the complete article body (HTML). |
| `GET /topics` | `market` | The list of available news categories and their ids. |
| `GET /comments` | `market`, `id` (article id), `top` (default 20), `skip` (default 0) | Real reader comments on an article (text, score, author, timestamp). |

Market codes follow MSN's own locale format (`language-COUNTRY`, e.g. `en-us`, `en-gb`, `id-id`, `de-de`, `ja-jp`).

### Output

Each route returns MSN's own response JSON largely as-is — field names and shapes follow MSN's API directly, so the response is richer and more detailed than any fixed Apify Dataset schema could usefully flatten. See the Input table above for what each route's response contains.

### Pricing

Pay-per-event:

- `apify-actor-start` — flat fee per Actor Standby run.
- `news-feed`, `news-article`, `news-topics`, `news-comments` — one charge per call.

### Known limitations

- Article full-text and comments are only as complete as MSN's own backend serves them; some publishers' articles may have shorter bodies than others, and very new articles may have zero comments yet.
- `/comments` does not support posting — it is read-only, matching this Actor's read-only scope.
- This Actor covers news only — weather, finance, and sports are out of scope here by design.

# Actor input Schema

## Actor input object example

```json
{}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (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("romy/msn-news-api").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("romy/msn-news-api").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 romy/msn-news-api --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,romy/msn-news-api"
        }
    }
}
```

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/0uSEAus74bJhdCgF7/builds/5ang4xKmpvpgkGa3L/openapi.json