Article Extractor: Clean Text or Markdown + Metadata for LLMs

Turn news, blog and docs URLs into clean main content (Markdown, text or HTML) without menus and ads, plus title, author, date, site name, description, image, tags, word count and reading time.

Why this actor

• Markdown output tuned for LLM/RAG at $1/1k; precision-first extraction (trafilatura).
• Pay only for results: $1.00 per 1,000 articles, no start fee, failed lookups are free.
• Robust: automatic retries with exponential backoff, respects Retry-After, per-item error rows instead of crashed runs.
• Clean, flat JSON/CSV/Excel output ready for Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, n8n, Clay, or the Apify API.

Use cases

• RAG/LLM ingestion of articles
• Media monitoring archives
• Summarization and translation pipelines
• Content audits

Input

Field	Type	Description
urls	array	News, blog or docs pages.
format	string	Markdown is ideal for LLM/RAG.
includeLinks	boolean	Keep hyperlinks in the content.
minWords	integer	Skip pages with less content (not charged).
maxItems	integer	0 = no limit. Caps cost.

Example input:

{
  "urls": [
    "https://blog.apify.com/what-is-web-scraping/",
    "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping",
    "https://www.python.org/about/"
  ]
}

Output

Each dataset item looks like this (real sample from a test run, long fields trimmed):

{
  "url": "https://blog.apify.com/what-is-web-scraping/",
  "finalUrl": "https://blog.apify.com/what-is-web-scraping/",
  "title": "What is web scraping? Complete guide to how it works.",
  "author": "David Barton",
  "publishedDate": "2024-10-15",
  "siteName": "Apify Blog",
  "description": "Web scraping is the process of extracting data from websites. Find out how web scrapers work and how scraped data is used in the real world.",
  "language": null,
  "image": "https://storage.ghost.io/c/f2/6e/f26ec999-9a90-4aee-a0d4-9b3ca2bb668f/content/images/2024/04/what-is-web-scraping-complete-guide.png",
  "tags": [
    "Programming"
  ],
  "wordCount": 1466,
  "readingTimeMinutes": 6,
  "format": "markdown",
  "content": "Web scraping is the process of automatically extracting data from a website. You use a program called a web scraper to access a web page, interpret the data, and extract what you need. The data is saved in a structured format such as an Exc\u2026",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-14T16:24:25+00:00"
}

Rows that could not be processed contain an error field and are not charged.

Pricing

Pay-per-event: $0.001 per article (= $1.00 / 1,000). Use Max results to cap spend. Apify's free plan credit covers thousands of results per month.

Integrations & API

Run on a schedule in Apify Console, call via the Apify API / Python & JS clients, or connect to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, Slack and webhooks. Works as a tool for AI agents via Apify MCP.

FAQ

Is this an official tool? No. It is an independent actor and is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by the data source or any trademark owner named here.

Is it legal? The actor only reads publicly available data from public endpoints, without logins, and does not bypass paywalls or access controls. You are responsible for using the data in line with applicable laws (e.g. GDPR) and the source sites' terms.

Something broke? Open an issue in the Issues tab; we typically respond within 24 hours and ship fixes fast.