Brave News Scraper

Extract normalized articles from Brave News. Version 3.3 reads the structured SvelteKit news response embedded in Brave's validated HTML document and retains current DOM extraction as a fallback.

Output

Available source-backed values are preserved and unavailable optional values are omitted. Common fields include:

• stable article-URL SHA-256 ID and global/query/request positions;
• canonical article URL, title, description/snippet, source/publisher, source domain, and favicon;
• displayed publication age plus an ISO timestamp derived from the one stable scrape timestamp;
• thumbnail/article image when Brave provides one;
• live-story status and optional source/profile/image metadata;
• query, locale, Safe Search, time filter, search URL, provenance, retrieval method, and scrape metadata.

Brave serializes its SvelteKit hydration payload with one immediately invoked function per entry — (function(a,b){return {…}})(<lit>,<lit>) — to hoist repeated long strings into parameters. The decoder resolves that shape statically (parameters bound to their decoded literal arguments, then the single returned expression decoded); no page code is ever evaluated and any other callee/body shape still fails closed. The structured response is the primary source and the rendered card supplements the fields it does not carry (title/snippet HTML, image dimensions), so switching sources never empties a field the live page exposes.

Opaque debugging, click/tracking actions, cookies, proxy credentials, and hydration request state are excluded. Ad, sponsored, and breaking flags are only emitted when Brave exposes a positive or explicit value; missing markers are not fabricated as false.

Search modes

• Single query: set query.
• Multiple queries: set queries, optionally together with query. Duplicates are removed case-insensitively.
• One article: set maxItems to 1.
• Fair batch: concurrent query results are interleaved until the total maxItems limit is reached.
• Time filter: any, day, week, month, or year maps to Brave's current News filter.
• Safe Search: strict, moderate, or off is applied through Brave's preference cookie and verified after navigation.

Brave currently returns one bounded result set per News query (observed from roughly 20 to 50 records depending on the query/filter) and exposes no usable continuation cursor. Multi-query mode is the supported way to collect a larger, fairly distributed dataset.

Input

The complete input contract is in .actor/input_schema.json.

Field	Type	Default	Description
query	string	—	One Brave News query.
queries	array of strings	—	Optional batch of up to 50 queries, interleaved fairly.
maxItems	integer	50	Maximum articles across all queries; set to 1 for one-item mode.
maxConcurrency	integer	2	Browser pages processed concurrently within one session.
country	string	us	Brave country code, such as us, gb, or in.
language	string	en	Brave language, optionally with a region.
safeSearch	string	moderate	strict, moderate, or off.
timeRange	string	any	any, day, week, month, or year.
maxRequestRetries	integer	1	Retries temporary network errors, HTTP 429, and HTTP 5xx responses.
navigationTimeoutSecs	integer	60	Maximum time for each Brave News navigation.
headless	boolean	true	Disable only for local visual inspection.
proxyConfiguration	object	—	Direct access, Apify Residential, or authorized custom proxy.

Example

{
  "queries": ["artificial intelligence", "climate change"],
  "maxItems": 20,
  "maxConcurrency": 2,
  "country": "us",
  "language": "en",
  "safeSearch": "moderate",
  "timeRange": "week",
  "maxRequestRetries": 1,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"],
    "apifyProxyCountry": "US"
  }
}

Reliability and performance

The primary path parses the structured response without downloading images. Image, media, and font requests are blocked after verifying that this does not affect the embedded results. Queries share one consistent Chromium session and use bounded page concurrency. Dataset writes are all-or-nothing, so a failed query cannot leave a misleading partial batch.

Temporary network failures, HTTP 429, and HTTP 5xx responses use bounded progressive retry. Invalid input, unexpected payloads, response/query mismatches, and challenge pages fail clearly. CAPTCHA or access-control pages are never solved or stored.

Direct, Apify Residential, and authorized custom proxy access are supported. Google SERP Proxy is not applicable to Brave.

The full dataset field schema, including types and requiredness, is in .actor/dataset_schema.json.

How to use

Enter one query or a batch in the Apify Input tab, select the time range and safety preference, and start the Actor. Review article records in the Output dataset. The Actor returns one bounded result set per query and interleaves batches fairly.