Apple Podcasts Lookup & Episodes Scraper

What is Apple Podcasts Lookup & Episodes Scraper?

Apple Podcasts Lookup & Episodes Scraper is an Apify Actor that reads podcast metadata and full episode lists straight from Apple's public iTunes Search API and each show's own RSS feed — no scraping of podcasts.apple.com, no API key. Give it an Apple Podcasts id (1200361736), an Apple Podcasts URL, an RSS feed URL, or a search: term, and it returns one clean row per podcast or, in episodes mode, one row per episode with the audio URL, duration, episode/season number and description. Runs on Apify's schedule, webhook and API infrastructure, so a daily "new episode" check across a podcast list is a five-minute setup.

Why use Apple Podcasts Lookup & Episodes Scraper?

• Podcast marketing and PR teams track every episode of their own show or a competitor's — new releases, cadence, duration trends — without opening a podcast app.
• Media monitoring and research teams turn a search: term into a list of every matching show and its RSS feed in one run, then feed the audio URLs to a transcription pipeline.
• Podcast directories and aggregators resolve a mixed batch of Apple ids, URLs and raw RSS feeds into one consistent row shape.
• Advertisers and sponsorship buyers pull episodeCount, releaseDate and genre to gauge a show's activity before reaching out.

How to use Apple Podcasts Lookup & Episodes Scraper

1. Fill Podcasts with any mix of Apple Podcasts ids, Apple Podcasts URLs, RSS feed URLs and search: terms — one per line.
2. Set Storefront country (us, gb, de, …) — this only affects the iTunes id/search lookup; an RSS feed URL entry is read as-is.
3. Leave Output mode on episodes to get one row per episode (with Max episodes per podcast capping how many recent episodes are read), or switch to podcasts for one summary row per show.
4. Click Start and export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML from the Output tab.

Example input

{
    "podcasts": ["1200361736", "search:true crime"],
    "country": "us",
    "outputMode": "episodes",
    "maxEpisodes": 20
}

Example output

{
    "podcastId": "1200361736",
    "name": "The Daily",
    "artist": "The New York Times",
    "feedUrl": "https://feeds.simplecast.com/Sl5CSM3S",
    "appleUrl": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736",
    "genres": ["Daily News", "Podcasts", "News"],
    "primaryGenre": "Daily News",
    "episodeCount": 2716,
    "language": "en",
    "websiteUrl": "https://www.nytimes.com/the-daily",
    "episodeTitle": "Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor Say the End of the World is Now on the Table",
    "audioUrl": "https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/.../audio/128/default.mp3",
    "audioType": "audio/mpeg",
    "audioSizeBytes": 36253523,
    "publishedAt": "2026-09-12T10:00:00.000Z",
    "durationSeconds": 2265,
    "explicitEpisode": false,
    "query": "1200361736",
    "error": null,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-09-13T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Data table

Apple Podcasts Lookup & Episodes Scraper extracts up to 29 fields per row:

Field	Type	Description
podcastId, name, artist	string	Apple Podcasts collection id, show title and publisher/host name
feedUrl, appleUrl, artworkUrl	string	The show's own RSS feed, its public Apple Podcasts page and cover art
genres, primaryGenre	array, string	All genre names and Apple's primary genre
episodeCount, releaseDate	number, string	Total indexed episodes and the most recently released episode's date
country, explicit, language	string, boolean	Storefront read, explicit flag and the RSS <language> tag
description, websiteUrl	string	Full show description (2000 chars) and the show's own website, both from RSS
episodeGuid, episodeTitle, episodeUrl	string	Episode identifier, title and its own web page (episodes mode)
audioUrl, audioType, audioSizeBytes	string, number	Direct MP3/audio file, its MIME type and size in bytes
publishedAt, durationSeconds	string, number	Episode publish date and duration, parsed from HH:MM:SS or plain seconds
episodeNumber, seasonNumber	number	itunes:episode / itunes:season, when the feed publishes them
episodeDescription, explicitEpisode	string, boolean	Plain-text episode summary (2000 chars) and its own explicit flag
query, error, scrapedAt	string	The input entry that produced the row, any failure reason and the run timestamp

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
podcasts	array	["1200361736"]	Apple Podcasts ids, Apple Podcasts URLs, RSS feed URLs or search: terms
country	string	us	Two-letter Apple Podcasts storefront code
searchLimit	integer	25	Max results per search: term (1-200)
includeEpisodes	boolean	true	Fetch each podcast's RSS feed for language, description, website (and episodes)
maxEpisodes	integer	20	Max recent episodes read per podcast (1-1000), episodes output mode
outputMode	string	episodes	podcasts (one row per show) or episodes (one row per episode)
maxConcurrency	integer	3	Parallel Apple API / RSS requests (1-20)

Pricing

Apple Podcasts Lookup & Episodes Scraper uses pay-per-event pricing: $0.001 per result row, plus a negligible actor-start fee. Looking up one podcast's last 20 episodes costs about two cents; a search: term returning 25 shows in podcasts mode costs about 2.5 cents. Set Maximum cost per run and the Actor trims the work to what the budget covers instead of overspending.

Apple Podcasts Lookup & Episodes Scraper vs. manual Apple Podcasts browsing

Apple Podcasts and podcasts.apple.com show one episode list at a time in a UI built for listening, not exporting. This Actor takes a whole watchlist of shows — by id, URL, raw feed or search term — and returns one flat, typed row per episode, ready to schedule, join with other data or feed into a transcription or content pipeline.

Using Apple Podcasts Lookup & Episodes Scraper with AI agents and MCP

Apple Podcasts Lookup & Episodes Scraper is pay-per-event with limited permissions — the two requirements for an Actor to be callable through the Apify MCP server at mcp.apify.com. An agent passes a podcasts list or a search: term and gets structured podcast and episode rows back, ready to summarise a show's recent output or find every audio URL for a topic.

FAQ

Does this need an Apple Developer account or API key? No. It uses Apple's public iTunes Search API (itunes.apple.com) and the podcast's own publicly published RSS feed — the same feed any podcast app reads, with no authentication.

Why are language, description and websiteUrl sometimes null? Those three fields come from the podcast's RSS feed, not the iTunes API. They stay null when includeEpisodes is off, or when a podcast's feed could not be fetched (the error field says why).

What happens if I paste a raw RSS feed URL? It is read directly with no iTunes lookup at all, so podcastId, appleUrl, episodeCount and explicit stay null — everything else is filled in from the feed itself.

Why did my search: term return fewer podcasts than searchLimit? Apple's Search API returns whatever matches, capped at 200; a narrow term can simply have fewer real hits.

What are the limitations? itunes:episode and itunes:season are only present when a show's feed publishes them — many shows do not use season/episode numbering, and those columns stay null. The iTunes API throttles by IP; if error mentions HTTP 403 or 429, lower Max concurrency. A failing item still produces a row, with the reason in error.

Is this legal to run? Yes. Both the iTunes Search API and podcast RSS feeds are public, unauthenticated endpoints intended for third-party use (RSS feeds are how every podcast app works), and no personal data is collected.

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Browse the whole suite at webdatatools, or call ten of these Actors straight from Claude, Cursor or Cline with the webdatatools MCP server.

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Support and feedback

Found a feed shape, storefront or search edge case it should handle better? Open an issue on the Issues tab.