# AOL News & Lifestyle Article Scraper (`ryyos/aol-articles-scraper`) Actor

\[$0.8/1000] Scrape full AOL.com articles with body text, images, and full threaded comments.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/ryyos/aol-articles-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Rio Dwi Saputra](https://apify.com/ryyos) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Automation, Developer tools
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $0.17 / 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.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#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

Extract complete articles from [AOL.com](https://www.aol.com) across every content section, News, Politics, Entertainment, Finance, Health, Shopping, Style, Travel, and more, with full body text, every image, and full threaded reader comments. Run it on demand, on a schedule, or through the Apify API to keep a feed of fresh AOL content flowing into your own pipeline.

### What does AOL News & Lifestyle Article Scraper do?

This Actor crawls the category listing pages you choose on aol.com, follows every article link it finds, and opens each article to extract its full detail: headline, author, publisher, publish and update timestamps, complete body text, every embedded image, and any embedded video. It also pulls the full **comment thread** for each article, commenter display name and comment text, not just a count, using AOL's own comment platform, so you get real reader discussion, not a summary number.

It runs on plain HTTP requests (no headless browser needed), which keeps runs fast and inexpensive. Schedule it on Apify to get a continuously refreshed dataset, pull results through the Apify API or MCP, or export straight to CSV/JSON/Excel.

### Why use AOL News & Lifestyle Article Scraper?

- **Media monitoring** - track how AOL's syndicated network (USA Today, Reuters, The Independent, and others) covers a topic across categories.
- **Sentiment and community research** - full comment threads with real usernames and text let you study reader reaction, not just engagement counts.
- **Content aggregation** - pull structured article data into your own news app, newsletter, or research dataset.
- **Historical archiving** - keep a searchable, structured record of articles that would otherwise disappear from AOL's own listings over time.

### How to use AOL News & Lifestyle Article Scraper

1. Click **Try for free** (or **Start**) on the Actor page.
2. In the **Input** tab, pick one or more categories (or leave the list empty to crawl all of them).
3. Adjust how many articles per category and in total you want, and whether to include full comment threads.
4. Click **Start** and watch the run progress.
5. When it finishes, open the **Output** tab to browse results as a table, or export as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML.

### Input

| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| `categories` | array | Which AOL.com sections to crawl (e.g. `news-politics`, `entertainment`, `shopping`). Leave empty to crawl every section. |
| `articlesPerCategory` | integer | Max recent article links to collect per category listing page (default `15`, max `50`). |
| `maxTotalArticles` | integer | Overall cap on articles scraped in one run, across all selected categories (default `100`, max `2000`). |
| `includeComments` | boolean | Whether to fetch full comment threads per article (default `true`). |
| `maxCommentsPerArticle` | integer | Max top-level comments (with replies) fetched per article (default `25`, max `200`). |

See the **Input** tab for the full schema and live examples.

### Output

Each dataset item is one article. Example (trimmed):

```json
{
  "url": "https://www.aol.com/articles/example-headline-123456000.html",
  "category": "news-politics",
  "headline": "Example headline",
  "author": "Jane Reporter, USA TODAY",
  "provider": "USA TODAY",
  "publishedAt": "2026-08-17T20:19:56+00:00",
  "bodyText": "Full article text goes here...",
  "images": ["https://hermes.media.static.aol.com/media/.../photo.jpg"],
  "videos": [],
  "commentsCount": 15,
  "messagesCount": 26,
  "comments": [
    {
      "commentId": "sp_IjnMf2Jd_...",
      "parentCommentId": null,
      "depth": 0,
      "authorName": "Jane D.",
      "text": "This is a top-level comment.",
      "publishedAt": 1787006600,
      "upvotes": 8,
      "downvotes": 6,
      "repliesCount": 4
    }
  ]
}
```

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

### Data table

| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| `headline`, `description` | Article title and dek |
| `author`, `provider` | Byline and original publisher (AOL syndicates a lot of content) |
| `publishedAt`, `modifiedAt` | Timestamps |
| `bodyText` | Full article body as plain text |
| `images`, `videos` | Every media URL found in the article, directly downloadable |
| `keywords` | Article tags, when present |
| `comments` | Full threaded comments: author, text, votes, reply depth |

### Pricing / Cost estimation

This Actor is pay-per-result at **$2.5 per 1,000 articles** scraped, priced below comparable general-purpose news scrapers on Apify Store. Because it uses plain HTTP requests instead of a browser, runs are fast and use very little compute, so most runs finish well within the free plan's monthly usage.

### Tips

- Turn off `includeComments` for a large, comments-not-needed run - it roughly doubles the requests per article, so skipping it speeds up large batches.
- The same story often appears in more than one category (e.g. a politics story also linked from the homepage); `maxTotalArticles` dedupes by URL so you never pay for the same article twice in one run.
- Schedule the Actor daily or hourly to build a continuously growing archive, then dedupe downstream by `url` or `postId`.

### FAQ, disclaimers, and support

This Actor only extracts content that AOL already serves publicly to any visitor's browser; it does not bypass any login, paywall, or access control. Use of scraped data is your responsibility, review AOL's Terms of Service for your use case. AOL's own on-site search box forwards to Yahoo's general web search (a separate product, not AOL content search), so no dedicated AOL keyword-search Actor exists, use the `categories` input to scope what this Actor crawls instead.

Found a bug or have a feature request? Use the Issues tab on this Actor's page. Need a custom variant (extra fields, a different site section, deeper comment pagination)? Reach out through the same tab.

# Actor input Schema

## `categories` (type: `array`):

Which AOL.com sections to crawl. Leave empty to crawl every section.

## `articlesPerCategory` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of recent article links to collect from each category's listing page.

## `maxTotalArticles` (type: `integer`):

Overall cap on how many articles this run scrapes across all selected categories combined (the same story often appears in more than one category and is only scraped once).

## `includeComments` (type: `boolean`):

Fetch full comment threads (commenter display name, text, reply structure, and upvotes/downvotes) for each article via AOL's comment platform.

## `maxCommentsPerArticle` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of top-level comments (each with its replies) to fetch per article when Include Comments is on.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "categories": [],
  "articlesPerCategory": 15,
  "maxTotalArticles": 100,
  "includeComments": true,
  "maxCommentsPerArticle": 25
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

No description

## `runInfo` (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("ryyos/aol-articles-scraper").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("ryyos/aol-articles-scraper").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 ryyos/aol-articles-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,ryyos/aol-articles-scraper"
        }
    }
}

```

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/pyGsQDDGhTp2gnDZs/builds/GSgAztrdF8jGbeWeG/openapi.json