# RSS & Atom Feed Reader — Auto-Discover Feeds to JSON (`scarlet_harrier/rss-feed-reader`) Actor

Give it feed URLs or plain website URLs; get clean JSON for every item. Reads RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0/RDF and Atom, finds feeds automatically, normalises dates to ISO 8601, supports podcasts, date and keyword filters. Fast, cheap, no browser.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/scarlet_harrier/rss-feed-reader.md
- **Developed by:** [Upton & Partners](https://apify.com/scarlet_harrier) (community)
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $0.80 / 1,000 feed items

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?

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

## RSS & Atom Feed Reader — Auto-Discover Feeds to JSON

Give it feed URLs or plain website URLs. Get back one clean row per item — title, link, ISO 8601 dates, author, categories, plain-text summary and podcast enclosures — ready to export to CSV, JSON or Excel, or pull via API.

### What it does

- **Reads every common feed format**: RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0 / RDF and Atom
- **Finds feeds automatically** from a website URL: reads the `<link rel="alternate">` tags in the page head, then falls back to `/feed`, `/rss`, `/rss.xml`, `/atom.xml`, `/feed.xml` and similar paths
- **Normalises dates** to ISO 8601 (UTC), whatever format the feed uses
- **Plain-text summaries** (and optional full content): HTML, entities and tracking images are stripped
- **Podcast-ready**: returns the enclosure URL and MIME type for each episode
- **Filters**: only items newer than a date or age (`2026-01-31` or `7 days`), and an optional keyword filter
- **Tolerates malformed XML**: bare ampersands, control characters and broken items are cleaned up or skipped, and the rest of the feed is still returned
- **No browser, no proxies** — plain HTTP, so it's fast and cheap

### Use cases

- News and competitor monitoring
- Feeding fresh articles into a RAG or LLM pipeline
- Content curation, newsletters and social scheduling
- Podcast episode lists and software release tracking (release Atom feeds work too)
- Building a searchable archive of blog posts

### Input

| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| `urls` | Feed URLs and/or website URLs. Feeds are discovered automatically for websites. |
| `maxItemsPerFeed` | Cap per feed. Default 50. |
| `newerThan` | Optional. A date (`2026-01-31`) or relative age (`7 days`, `12 hours`). Items with no date are skipped when set. |
| `keywords` | Optional. Keep items whose title, summary, categories or content contain any of these (case-insensitive). |
| `includeContent` | Add the full body as plain text, where the feed provides it. Default off. |
| `discoverFeeds` | Look for feeds when a URL is a web page. Default on. |
| `maxFeedsPerWebsite` | Feeds to read per website when several are advertised. Default 3; comment feeds rank last. |

```json
{
  "urls": ["https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml", "https://techcrunch.com"],
  "maxItemsPerFeed": 20,
  "newerThan": "7 days",
  "keywords": ["AI"]
}
```

### Output

```json
{
  "feedTitle": "TechCrunch",
  "feedUrl": "https://techcrunch.com/feed/",
  "feedType": "rss",
  "title": "Startups don’t need to go viral to win customers",
  "link": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/23/startups-dont-need-to-go-viral-to-win-customers/",
  "published": "2026-10-23T23:07:45.000Z",
  "updated": null,
  "author": "Lucas Ropek",
  "categories": ["Startups", "Google"],
  "summary": "At TechCrunch Disrupt last week, two founders and a VC discussed how to not just gain an early following but keep one.",
  "guid": "https://techcrunch.com/?p=3181279",
  "enclosureUrl": null,
  "enclosureType": null
}
```

With `includeContent` on, a `content` field (plain text) is added. A short `SUMMARY` record in the key-value store lists feeds read and any URLs that failed, with the reason.

### Pricing

Pay per item fetched. You only pay for results — feeds that fail or return nothing cost nothing.

### Notes

- Reads only public feeds that sites publish for syndication. It does not crawl pages or log in anywhere.
- `author` is the name exactly as published in the feed. Email-only author fields are ignored, and nothing is looked up or enriched.
- Atom feeds that carry only an `updated` timestamp (common on software release feeds) return that in `updated`; `published` stays `null`. The date filter uses whichever is present.
- A feed's own item order is kept. Some feeds list only their latest handful of items; that is a limit of the feed, not the Actor.
- This Actor was built and is maintained with AI assistance, with human review. Issues are answered within a few days.

# Actor input Schema

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

Feed URLs (RSS, Atom, RDF) and/or website URLs. For a website, feeds are discovered automatically from the page's <link> tags and common paths such as /feed and /rss.xml.

## `maxItemsPerFeed` (type: `integer`):

Stop after this many matching items per feed.

## `newerThan` (type: `string`):

Optional. A date such as 2026-01-31 or 2026-01-31T09:00:00Z, or a relative age such as 7 days or 12 hours. Items with no date are skipped when this is set.

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

Optional. Keep only items whose title, summary, categories or content contain at least one of these words or phrases (case-insensitive).

## `includeContent` (type: `boolean`):

Adds the full article body (where the feed provides it) as plain text. Off by default to keep output small.

## `discoverFeeds` (type: `boolean`):

If a URL is a normal web page, look for its feeds. Turn off to read only URLs that are feeds already.

## `maxFeedsPerWebsite` (type: `integer`):

When a website advertises several feeds, read at most this many (comment feeds are ranked last).

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "urls": [
    "https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml"
  ],
  "maxItemsPerFeed": 50,
  "includeContent": false,
  "discoverFeeds": true,
  "maxFeedsPerWebsite": 3
}
```

# 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 = {
    "urls": [
        "https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("scarlet_harrier/rss-feed-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 = { "urls": ["https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("scarlet_harrier/rss-feed-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 '{
  "urls": [
    "https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml"
  ]
}' |
apify call scarlet_harrier/rss-feed-reader --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,scarlet_harrier/rss-feed-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/tnrhswa9aMT6BDhgh/builds/uyPjUJEM6moqAl7rj/openapi.json