# Website Content Crawler & Markdown Extractor (`victor187/website-content-crawler-lite`) Actor

Crawls a website and extracts clean, boilerplate-free text/Markdown from every page -- ready for RAG pipelines, LLM context, or content research. Respects robots.txt.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/victor187/website-content-crawler-lite.md
- **Developed by:** [victor](https://apify.com/victor187) (community)
- **Categories:** Developer tools
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $4.00 / 1,000 results

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

## Website Content Crawler & Markdown Extractor

Crawl a website and get back clean, boilerplate-free text or Markdown from every page — ready to feed into a RAG pipeline, an LLM's context window, or a content audit. No API key needed.

### Features

- **Website to Markdown converter** — strips nav, footers, ads and cookie banners, keeps the actual content
- **RAG data extraction** — the exact clean-text format retrieval pipelines and LLM ingestion need, no HTML noise
- **Respects robots.txt** — checked per URL before fetching, not an afterthought
- **Same-domain crawling** with configurable depth and page limits, so you can't accidentally crawl the entire internet from one start URL
- Works on any public website — no login, no API key, no per-platform setup

### Input

```json
{
  "startUrls": ["https://example.com/"],
  "maxPagesPerDomain": 20,
  "maxDepth": 2,
  "outputFormat": "markdown"
}
```

### Output

```json
{
  "url": "https://example.com/blog/post-1",
  "title": "Post title",
  "content": "# Post title\n\nClean article text in Markdown...",
  "wordCount": 842,
  "depth": 1
}
```

### Who this is for

- Teams building a **RAG knowledge base** from their own docs or a client's website
- Anyone feeding a website into an LLM's context and tired of copy-pasting HTML cruft
- Content researchers and competitive analysts who need many pages of a site as clean text, fast

### Pricing

Pay per use — no subscription:

- $0.01 per run
- $0.004 per page crawled

### More tools from this developer

- [SEO Technical Health Check & Site Auditor](https://apify.com/victor187/seo-technical-health-check)
- [Core Web Vitals Bulk Checker](https://apify.com/victor187/core-web-vitals-bulk-checker)
- [Duplicate & Near-Duplicate Content Checker](https://apify.com/victor187/duplicate-content-similarity-checker)

# Actor input Schema

## `startUrls` (type: `array`):

One or more URLs to start crawling from. Only links on the SAME domain as each start URL are followed.

## `maxPagesPerDomain` (type: `integer`):

Stop crawling a domain after this many pages.

## `maxDepth` (type: `integer`):

How many link-hops away from a start URL to follow. 0 = only the start URLs themselves.

## `outputFormat` (type: `string`):

Format for the extracted content field.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://example.com/"
  ],
  "maxPagesPerDomain": 20,
  "maxDepth": 2,
  "outputFormat": "markdown"
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `pages` (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 = {
    "startUrls": [
        "https://example.com/"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("victor187/website-content-crawler-lite").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 = { "startUrls": ["https://example.com/"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("victor187/website-content-crawler-lite").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 '{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://example.com/"
  ]
}' |
apify call victor187/website-content-crawler-lite --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,victor187/website-content-crawler-lite"
        }
    }
}
```

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/ao7rg01zoc4dTSWJE/builds/TkxgraASRp8mVdFqT/openapi.json