# Article Extractor - Clean Text, Author, Date & Image (`scrapesage/article-extractor`) Actor

Extract clean article content from any list of URLs: title, author, publish date, excerpt, lead image, tags, reading time and the full article text - stripped of nav, ads and clutter with Mozilla Readability. No browser.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/scrapesage/article-extractor.md
- **Developed by:** [Scrape Sage](https://apify.com/scrapesage) (community)
- **Categories:** Agents, Integrations, Other
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $2.20 / 1,000 article extracteds

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/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

## Article Extractor - Clean Text, Author, Date & Image

Give it a list of article, blog or news URLs and get the **clean article** back for each - stripped of
nav, ads, cookie banners and related-links clutter with Mozilla's Readability engine (the same
algorithm behind Firefox Reader View). For every URL you get the title, author/byline, publish date,
excerpt, lead image, tags, site name, language, word count, reading time and the full article text.

Pure HTTP + parsing, no browser - fast and cents per article. Perfect for feeding clean content to an
LLM (RAG), archiving, content analysis or building a reading list.

### What you get per URL

`title` · `byline` (author) · `publishedTime` · `modifiedTime` · `excerpt` · `leadImageUrl` ·
`siteName` · `lang` · `section` · `tags[]` · `canonical` · `textContent` (clean full text) ·
`wordCount` · `readingTimeMinutes` · `charCount` · `isArticle` · optional `contentHtml`.

A URL that is unreachable or has no extractable article body is reported (`status: "failed"` or
`isArticle: false`) and is **not charged**.

### Input

```json
{
  "urls": [
    "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping",
    "https://blog.example.com/some-post"
  ],
  "includeHtml": false
}
```

- **URLs** - one per line; a bare domain gets `https://`. Leave empty for a small free sample.
- **Import URLs from a file** - paste a list, or link a public `.txt`/`.csv`, a Google Sheet/Drive
  link, or an Apify key-value-store record.
- **Include cleaned content HTML** - add the article body as HTML on top of the plain text.
- **Output fields** - tick only the columns you need for a lean export.

### Notes

- Reads the server-rendered HTML. Pages that render their article entirely client-side (rare for
  articles, which want to be crawlable) may return little text - use a proxy or a browser-based scraper
  for those.
- `readingTimeMinutes` assumes ~220 words per minute.

### Use with AI assistants (MCP)

Available through the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp) - an agent
can pull clean article text for retrieval-augmented generation, summarisation, or a research pipeline
without the surrounding page noise.

### Agent-ready: autonomous payments (x402 & Skyfire)

This actor is **agent-ready** - AI agents can discover it, run it, and **pay for it autonomously**, with no Apify account and no human in the loop. It uses [pay-per-event](https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/publishing/monetize/pay-per-event) pricing and [limited permissions](https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/development/permissions), so it qualifies for Apify's agentic-payment standards:

- **[x402](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/x402)** - an open, HTTP-native payment protocol. Agents pay per run in USDC on the Base network directly through the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp) - no account, no API key.
- **[Skyfire](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/skyfire)** - agent-to-service payments for fully autonomous AI-agent workflows.

Building an AI agent, MCP tool, or autonomous data pipeline? This scraper is ready to plug in and pay as it goes.

# Actor input Schema

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

Article / blog / news URLs to extract, one per line. A bare domain gets <code>https://</code>. Duplicates are collapsed. <b>Leave empty and the run returns a small free sample.</b>

## `urlsFromFile` (type: `string`):

Bulk-load URLs. Either <b>paste the whole list</b> (one per line), or give <b>a single link</b> to a public <code>.txt</code>/<code>.csv</code>, a Google Sheet/Drive share link, or an Apify key-value-store record. A file that cannot be read says so and charges nothing.

## `includeHtml` (type: `boolean`):

Also return the article body as cleaned HTML (<code>contentHtml</code>) on top of the plain <code>textContent</code>. Off by default keeps records lean.

## `concurrency` (type: `integer`):

How many URLs to fetch and parse in parallel.

## `outputFields` (type: `array`):

Pick the fields you want and every record is trimmed to exactly those - handy for lean CSV/Sheets exports. Open the dropdown and tick, or type to filter (<code>title</code>, <code>text</code>, <code>author</code>).

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of URLs to process in one run (after de-duplication).

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Optional. Most article pages serve their HTML to a plain request, so no proxy is needed by default. Enable a proxy only if a site blocks the fetch.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "urls": [
    "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping"
  ],
  "includeHtml": false,
  "concurrency": 8,
  "maxItems": 100
}
```

# Actor output Schema

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

Each scraped record - articles with clean text and metadata - as a JSON item in the default dataset.

# 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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping"
    ],
    "urlsFromFile": ""
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("scrapesage/article-extractor").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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping"],
    "urlsFromFile": "",
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("scrapesage/article-extractor").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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping"
  ],
  "urlsFromFile": ""
}' |
apify call scrapesage/article-extractor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,scrapesage/article-extractor"
        }
    }
}

```

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/UQo1n7bhrlB82QPgJ/builds/6uhqBUzX3NgReg1p7/openapi.json