# RSS Feed Reader & Monitor: New Items, Atom, Feed Finder (`tudorlane/rss-feed-watch`) Actor

RSS feed reader and monitor: read any RSS or Atom feed as clean JSON, find the feed from a site URL, filter by keywords, and in monitor mode return only items new since the last run. Ideal for scheduled alerts.

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

## Pricing

$0.50 / 1,000 feed reads

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 Feed Reader & Monitor: New Items, Atom, Feed Finder

### Use when…

- You need to read or monitor one or more RSS/Atom feeds for new items.
- An agent should find a site’s feed URL and return only new posts since last check.
- You want structured feed items (title, link, date) without a full page scrape.

### Try this input

Copy-paste this JSON as the Actor input (it matches a successful run / the default schema):

```json
{
  "requests": [
    {
      "url": "https://hnrss.org/frontpage",
      "max_items": 5
    },
    {
      "url": "https://www.theverge.com",
      "max_items": 3
    }
  ]
}
```

### Sample output (real run 2026-10-25)

One dataset item, shortened:

```json
{
  "url": "https://www.theverge.com",
  "feed_url": "https://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml",
  "feed_title": "The Verge",
  "feed_link": "https://www.theverge.com",
  "discovered_feeds": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml",
      "title": "The Verge"
    }
  ],
  "item_count": 3,
  "new_count": null,
  "result": "ok",
  "items": [
    {
      "id": "https://www.theverge.com/?p=1017983",
      "title": "Google’s AI search changes upended online publishing",
      "link": "https://www.theverge.com/column/1017983/google-ai-search-online-publishing",
      "published": "2026-10-25T12:00:00Z",
      "author": "Emma Roth",
      "summary": "This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more about AI's impact on the web, follow Emma Roth. The Stepback arrives in ou…",
      "categories": [
        "AI",
        "Column",
        "… +1 more"
      ],
      "enclosure": null
    },
    {
      "id": "https://www.theverge.com/?p=1018205",
      "title": "Blue Planet III is keeping the rough edges in the age of AI",
      "link": "https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1018205/blue-planet-iii-authentic-organic-ai",
      "published": "2026-10-24T21:29:12Z",
      "author": "Terrence O’Brien",
      "summary": "BBC's Blue Planet III is looking to prove its authenticity by leaving in the less-than-perfect shots. Previous incarnations of the nature series were defined by their gorgeous, cry…",
      "categories": [
        "AI",
        "Entertainment",
        "… +3 more"
      ],
      "enclosure": null
    },
    "… +1 more"
  ],
  "error": null
}
```

One cheap call turns any blog, news site or podcast feed into clean JSON. Schedule it with `monitor: true` and you only get what's new.

- RSS 0.9x/1.0/2.0, Atom and JSON-ish feeds via feedparser; title, link, published (UTC ISO), author, summary, categories, enclosure
- Give a normal website URL and it finds the feed (link tags, then /feed, /rss, /atom.xml...)
- `discover_only: true` just lists the feeds a site offers
- `keywords` filter on title + summary
- Monitor mode: first run saves a baseline, later runs return only new items (state kept in your account's key-value store `rss-feed-watch-state`; use `watch_id` to keep separate watches)
- Pair with an Apify schedule + webhook / email integration for alerts

### Input

```json
{"requests": [{"url": "https://hnrss.org/frontpage", "max_items": 10}, {"url": "https://www.theverge.com", "monitor": true, "keywords": ["AI"]}]}
```

Send many items in `requests` per run (cheaper and faster than one run each). Settings outside `requests` apply to every item.

### Pricing

Pay per event: **$0.0005 per feed read** (one feed read (any number of items)). Rows with errors are not charged. No subscription.

### Output

One dataset row per request. Errors come back as a row with `error` set, so a batch never fails because of one bad item.

### Use from AI agents (MCP)

Add it to any MCP client via `https://mcp.apify.com?actors=tudorlane/rss-feed-watch`, or call the Apify API / run-sync endpoint.

### Sources and licences

Only the feeds you supply. Feed content belongs to its publishers; respect their terms when republishing.

### Sample output (real run with the default input, 25 Oct 2026)

| Input | Feed found | Items | Latest item |
|---|---|---|---|
| https://www.theverge.com | The Verge (theverge.com/rss/index.xml) | 3 | Blue Planet III is keeping the rough edges in the age of AI |
| https://hnrss.org/frontpage | Hacker News: Front Page | 5 | Samsung running a TensorFlow lite model on 960x540 image to ... |

### Use cases

1. Monitor blogs and news for new posts
2. Find a site's RSS feed
3. Feed new items to Slack/email via Zapier, Make or n8n
4. AI agents: what's new on a site

### Limits & failure modes

- Only sites that publish RSS/Atom feeds
- First run is a baseline; later runs show new items
- Feed discovery can fail on sites without standard RSS/Atom links.
- Broken or non-XML feeds return an error for that URL.
- “New items” require the same watch identity across runs; first run may return the current window only.

# Actor input Schema

## `requests` (type: `array`):

Each item: a feed or website URL, or {"url": "...", "max_items": 50, "keywords": \["..."], "monitor": true, "watch_id": "optional", "discover_only": false}. Max 2000. Errors are not charged.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "requests": [
    {
      "url": "https://hnrss.org/frontpage",
      "max_items": 5
    },
    {
      "url": "https://www.theverge.com",
      "max_items": 3
    }
  ]
}
```

# Actor output Schema

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

One item per request.

## `dataset` (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 = {
    "requests": [
        {
            "url": "https://hnrss.org/frontpage",
            "max_items": 5
        },
        {
            "url": "https://www.theverge.com",
            "max_items": 3
        }
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("tudorlane/rss-feed-watch").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 = { "requests": [
        {
            "url": "https://hnrss.org/frontpage",
            "max_items": 5,
        },
        {
            "url": "https://www.theverge.com",
            "max_items": 3,
        },
    ] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("tudorlane/rss-feed-watch").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 '{
  "requests": [
    {
      "url": "https://hnrss.org/frontpage",
      "max_items": 5
    },
    {
      "url": "https://www.theverge.com",
      "max_items": 3
    }
  ]
}' |
apify call tudorlane/rss-feed-watch --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,tudorlane/rss-feed-watch"
        }
    }
}
```

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/oU02isuyHSAh7k7Qc/builds/eVAzdrrGG4zo3z0oF/openapi.json