# RSS Feed Finder & Reader - any site to articles (`sbr35/feed-discovery-reader`) Actor

Input: any website URL. Output: recent articles with title, link, summary, author, publish date and categories. The RSS or Atom feed is located automatically, so no feed URL is needed. Use when you need recent posts from a site without crawling it.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/sbr35/feed-discovery-reader.md
- **Developed by:** [Alexandre de La Fayette](https://apify.com/sbr35) (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 $2.00 / 1,000 articles

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/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 Feed Finder & Reader

Give it **any website**. It finds the RSS or Atom feed itself and returns recent articles in one
clean schema.

You do not need to know the feed URL. Point it at `theverge.com` and it works out the rest — the
same way a feed reader does.

### Why not just crawl the site?

| | Crawling | This actor |
|---|---|---|
| Speed | slow, many page loads | one request per site |
| Cost | high | one row per article |
| Anti-bot | constant fight | none — feeds are meant to be read |
| Breaks on redesign | yes | no |
| Structured output | must be inferred | already structured |

If a site publishes a feed, reading it beats crawling it on every axis.

### What you get

| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| `title` | Article headline |
| `url` | Direct link |
| `summary` | Description or content, HTML stripped, up to 1,200 chars |
| `author` | Author where the feed provides one |
| `publishedAt` | ISO 8601 publish time |
| `categories` | Tags declared in the feed |
| `source` / `sourceDomain` | Publication name and domain |
| `feedUrl` | The feed that was discovered |
| `guid` | Feed-provided unique ID |
| `scrapedAt` | Collection time |

### Input

```json
{
  "sites": ["theverge.com", "arstechnica.com", "https://news.ycombinator.com/rss"],
  "keywords": ["ai", "security"],
  "publishedAfter": "2026-08-01",
  "maxPerSite": 50
}
```

| Option | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| `sites` | required | Website URLs or direct feed URLs — both work |
| `keywords` | empty | Keep only articles matching one of these in title or summary |
| `publishedAfter` | empty | Keep only articles from this date onward (`YYYY-MM-DD`) |
| `maxPerSite` | 50 | Cap per site |

### How discovery works

1. Fetch the URL. If it is already a feed, use it.
2. Look for `<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">` in the HTML — the standard
   declaration nearly every CMS emits.
3. Fall back to conventional paths: `/feed`, `/rss`, `/rss.xml`, `/feed.xml`, `/atom.xml`,
   `/index.xml`, and a few others.

Both RSS 2.0 and Atom are parsed into the same output shape, so you never handle two formats.

### Who this is for

- **Media monitoring** — track many publications from one run
- **Competitive intelligence** — watch competitors' blogs and changelogs
- **Newsletter curation** — filter by keyword and date, publish the result
- **Research datasets** — build a corpus of articles across many sources
- **Alerting** — schedule it and diff against the previous run

### Honest limits

- **A feed only carries recent items** — typically the last 10 to 50. This is a *recent
  articles* tool, not an archive exporter.
- Sites that publish no feed return `no feed found`. That is a real answer, not a failure, and
  it costs you nothing.
- `summary` is whatever the publisher puts in the feed. Some give full text, some two lines.
- `author` is frequently absent; many feeds simply omit it.

### Pricing

Pay per event. Charged per article returned. A site with no feed costs nothing.

### Changelog

**1.0** — First release. Auto-discovery, RSS 2.0 and Atom, keyword and date filters.

# Actor input Schema

## `sites` (type: `array`):

Any website URL (the feed is found automatically) or a direct RSS/Atom feed URL. Examples: theverge.com, https://news.ycombinator.com/rss

## `keywords` (type: `array`):

Keep only articles whose title or summary contains one of these, case-insensitive.

## `publishedAfter` (type: `string`):

Keep only articles published on or after this date. Format YYYY-MM-DD.

## `maxPerSite` (type: `integer`):

Cap on articles returned per site.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "sites": [
    "theverge.com",
    "arstechnica.com",
    "https://news.ycombinator.com/rss"
  ],
  "keywords": [],
  "maxPerSite": 50
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `articles` (type: `string`):

Recent articles from every discovered feed.

## `articlesCsv` (type: `string`):

The same articles as a spreadsheet-ready CSV.

# 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 = {
    "sites": [
        "theverge.com",
        "arstechnica.com",
        "https://news.ycombinator.com/rss"
    ],
    "keywords": []
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("sbr35/feed-discovery-reader").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 = {
    "sites": [
        "theverge.com",
        "arstechnica.com",
        "https://news.ycombinator.com/rss",
    ],
    "keywords": [],
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("sbr35/feed-discovery-reader").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 '{
  "sites": [
    "theverge.com",
    "arstechnica.com",
    "https://news.ycombinator.com/rss"
  ],
  "keywords": []
}' |
apify call sbr35/feed-discovery-reader --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,sbr35/feed-discovery-reader"
        }
    }
}

```

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/G9NJibI25AeT8RoYk/builds/HedX0MHnpI0jKaMa7/openapi.json