# RSS Feed Reader: News, Blogs & Podcasts to JSON (`tidelane/rss-feed-reader`) Actor

Read RSS and Atom feeds of news sites, blogs and podcasts, or just enter a website and its feeds are found automatically. Returns title, link, dates, summary, full text, categories, images and podcast audio. Keyword and date filters, and 'only new items' mode for scheduled monitoring.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/tidelane/rss-feed-reader.md
- **Developed by:** [Tidelane Data](https://apify.com/tidelane) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Automation, Developer tools
- **Security:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $0.35 / 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.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

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 Feed Reader: News, Blogs & Podcasts to JSON

Turn any **RSS or Atom feed** into clean JSON, or just enter a **website** and its feeds are found automatically. Get the title, link, publish date, summary, **full text**, categories, image and **podcast audio files** of every item. Run it on a schedule with **Only new items** and you have a news, blog or podcast monitor that sends you only what is new.

- ✅ **Automatic feed discovery**: feeds advertised in the page (`<link rel="alternate">`), then `/feed`, `/rss.xml`, `/atom.xml`, `/index.xml` and more; comment feeds are skipped
- ✅ **All formats**: RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0 (RDF), Atom, podcast feeds (iTunes), Media RSS, gzip
- ✅ **Clean text**: summaries and full articles (`content:encoded`) as plain text, HTML optional
- ✅ **Images and media**: thumbnail or first image, enclosures (MP3, MP4) with type and size, podcast duration
- ✅ **Only new items**: remembers what each feed returned before, so scheduled runs return only fresh items
- ✅ **Filters**: keywords (title, text or categories) and "published on or after"
- ✅ **No duplicates**: the same article in a site's RSS and Atom feed is returned once
- ✅ **Light and cheap**: 140 items from 8 feeds in 10 seconds at 256 MB in our test; you pay per item returned, a site without a feed costs nothing

### Input example

```json
{
    "urls": ["https://www.tagesschau.de/", "https://hnrss.org/frontpage", "https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml"],
    "onlyNew": true,
    "keywords": [],
    "publishedAfter": "",
    "maxItemsPerFeed": 20
}
```

### Output example

Real output from a test run:

```json
{
    "title": "On AI writing",
    "url": "https://www.bolkunov.com/p/on-ai-writing",
    "guid": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50171771",
    "published": "2026-10-20T19:55:11.000Z",
    "updated": "2026-10-20T19:55:11.000Z",
    "summary": "Article URL: https://www.bolkunov.com/p/on-ai-writing\nComments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50171771\nPoints: 58\n# Comments: 19",
    "content": null,
    "categories": [],
    "image": null,
    "enclosures": [],
    "duration": null,
    "feedUrl": "https://hnrss.org/frontpage",
    "feedTitle": "Hacker News: Front Page",
    "feedLink": "https://news.ycombinator.com/",
    "feedLanguage": null,
    "site": "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
}
```

Podcast items come with `enclosures` like `{ "url": "https://…/episode.mp3", "type": "audio/mpeg", "length": 23456789 }` and `duration`. The `OUTPUT` record lists the feeds found for each input, how many items each feed had and how many were returned.

### Monitoring with "Only new items"

1. Turn on **Only new items since the last run**.
2. Create a schedule in Apify (for example every hour).
3. Connect the dataset to email, Slack, Google Sheets, Make or Zapier with an Apify integration.

The first run returns the current items and remembers them; later runs return only items that appear afterwards. The memory lives in the key-value store `rss-feed-reader-state` in your account; delete it to start over.

### Pricing

A small fixed price per item returned. Runs with no new items cost almost nothing.

Paid Apify plans pay less: 10% off on Starter, 20% on Scale and 30% on Business and higher plans.

### FAQ

**The website has no feed.** The run notes "No RSS or Atom feed found" for it in `OUTPUT` and nothing is billed.

**Why is `content` empty for some items?** Many feeds only carry a summary. `content` is filled when the feed contains the full article.

**Does it read JSON Feed?** Not yet; RSS and Atom cover almost all sites.

### More tools from Tidelane Data

- [Hacker News Scraper](https://apify.com/tidelane/hacker-news): search, mentions and Who Is Hiring jobs
- [Website to Markdown](https://apify.com/tidelane/website-to-markdown): clean Markdown of web pages for AI, LLMs and RAG
- [Audio & Video to Text](https://apify.com/tidelane/audio-video-transcriber): speech to text transcription with Whisper
- [Research Papers](https://apify.com/tidelane/research-papers): search PubMed, arXiv and Crossref at once

All our tools: [apify.com/tidelane](https://apify.com/tidelane)

***

#### Impressum

Levi Griesinger, Tidelane Data\
Besigheimer Straße 18\
74369, Löchgau, Deutschland\
E-Mail: LeviGriesinger@gmail.com

# Actor input Schema

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

RSS/Atom feed URLs, or website URLs (their feeds are found from the page or at /feed, /rss.xml, /atom.xml …).

## `onlyNew` (type: `boolean`):

Remembers the items of each feed (in your key-value store 'rss-feed-reader-state') and returns only items that were not returned before. Use with a schedule for monitoring.

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

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

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

Keep only items published on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD).

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

Newest items come first in most feeds.

## `maxFeedsPerSite` (type: `integer`):

When a website advertises several feeds (for example news and podcasts), read up to this many. Comment feeds are skipped.

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

Add the full article text when the feed contains it (content:encoded or Atom content).

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

Also add the full article as HTML.

## `respectRobotsTxt` (type: `boolean`):

Skip feeds that robots.txt forbids.

## `timeoutSecs` (type: `integer`):

How long to wait for one feed or page.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml",
    "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
  ],
  "onlyNew": false,
  "maxItemsPerFeed": 100,
  "maxFeedsPerSite": 3,
  "includeContent": true,
  "includeHtml": false,
  "respectRobotsTxt": true,
  "timeoutSecs": 30
}
```

# Actor output Schema

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

All results of the run as dataset items.

## `summary` (type: `string`):

Summary per input with status (ok, error and the reason).

# 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://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml",
        "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("tidelane/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://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml",
        "https://hnrss.org/frontpage",
    ] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("tidelane/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://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml",
    "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
  ]
}' |
apify call tidelane/rss-feed-reader --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,tidelane/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/hZVtJTcDKLehRBr8s/builds/fXqj41QZmTNts06Lg/openapi.json