# RSS Feed Reader & Full-Text News Article Extractor (`wintersworks/rss-feed-news-article-extractor`) Actor

Input: RSS, Atom or JSON feed URLs (or site URLs to auto-discover feeds). Output: an RSS feed reader that returns feed items and, optionally, full-text articles as clean text and Markdown. $0.80 per 1,000 feed items, $2 per 1,000 articles.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/wintersworks/rss-feed-news-article-extractor.md
- **Developed by:** [Winters Works](https://apify.com/wintersworks) (community)
- **Categories:** News, AI, Developer tools
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

Pay per event

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 & Full-Text News Article Extractor

An **RSS feed scraper and news article extractor** that reads RSS, Atom and JSON feeds, auto-discovers feeds from any website, and returns **full-text articles** as clean text and Markdown. Use it for **content monitoring**, news aggregation, media tracking, newsletter research and **AI / LLM / RAG pipelines**: one dataset row per article with title, URL, ISO publish date, author, categories, summary, full text, Markdown, word count, lead image, language and canonical URL. HTTP only (no headless browser), so it is fast and cheap.

### Use cases

- Full-text RSS: many feeds only carry a teaser; this fetches the article and extracts the whole text.
- Brand, competitor and keyword monitoring: schedule it with `sinceDate` and `keywords` to get only new, relevant items.
- Feed articles into LLMs, vector databases and summarizers as clean Markdown.
- Build news datasets, research corpora or a personal reader.

### Input

| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| `feedUrls` | RSS, Atom or JSON Feed URLs. |
| `siteUrls` | Website URLs; the feed is auto-discovered via `<link rel="alternate">` or common paths (`/feed`, `/rss.xml`, `/atom.xml`, ...). |
| `articleUrls` | Individual article URLs to extract directly. |
| `maxItemsPerFeed` | Newest N items per feed (default 5). |
| `maxItems` | Hard cap on items output and charged per run (default 500). |
| `extractFullText` | Fetch each article and extract text + Markdown (default on). Off = feed data only, cheaper. |
| `sinceDate` | ISO date (`2026-10-01`) or relative (`7 days`). Older items are skipped. |
| `keywords` | Keep items whose title, summary or categories match any keyword. |
| `maxConcurrency`, `respectRobotsTxt` | Politeness controls. |

An empty input `{}` runs with `https://hnrss.org/frontpage`, 5 items.

```json
{ "feedUrls": ["https://hnrss.org/frontpage"], "siteUrls": ["https://www.theverge.com"], "maxItemsPerFeed": 10, "sinceDate": "3 days", "keywords": ["AI", "openai"], "extractFullText": true }
```

### Output (one row per item, deduplicated by URL)

```json
{
  "feedTitle": "Example Blog", "feedUrl": "https://example.com/feed", "title": "Hello world",
  "url": "https://example.com/hello", "canonicalUrl": "https://example.com/hello",
  "publishedAt": "2026-10-09T14:00:00.000Z", "author": "Jane Doe", "categories": ["news"],
  "summary": "First 500 characters...", "leadImage": "https://example.com/hero.jpg", "language": "en",
  "wordCount": 842, "text": "Clean article text...", "markdown": "# Hello world\n...",
  "fullTextExtracted": true, "paywalled": false, "note": null, "fetchedAt": "2026-10-10T12:00:00.000Z"
}
```

A summary (items, extraction failures, robots blocks, paywalls, skipped counts) is saved to the key-value store as `OUTPUT`.

### Pricing (pay per event)

- **$0.002 per article** with full text extracted (`article-extracted`): $2 per 1,000.
- **$0.0008 per feed item** without full text (`feed-item`): $0.80 per 1,000. Also used when an article cannot be fetched or extracted, so you never pay the higher price for a missing body.
- One event per output item. Set a max charge per run and the actor stops at the limit.

### Limitations

- Needs a public RSS, Atom or JSON feed, or a site with a discoverable feed (`link rel=alternate`, or common paths such as `/feed` and `/rss.xml`; up to 3 discovered feeds). It cannot list articles from a site with no feed.
- Defaults to 5 items per feed (`maxItemsPerFeed`) and 500 items per run (`maxItems`). Feeds usually expose only their latest entries, so it is not an archive crawler.
- Full-text extraction uses Readability on static HTML only: no JavaScript rendering, no login, no paywall bypass. Pages under 30 extracted words count as failures and return feed data only (charged as a feed item, not an article).
- Fetches wait at least 200 ms between requests to the same host, run up to 4 in parallel (max 10), and time out after 30 s with up to 2 retries. Responses over 15 MB are skipped. `robots.txt` is honored for article fetches by default.
- Language and lead image come from page metadata and may be empty.

### FAQ

**Does it bypass paywalls?** No. It only reads publicly published feeds and pages. If a page looks paywalled, you get whatever is public plus `paywalled: true` and a note.
**Does it respect robots.txt?** Yes, for article fetches (switchable, but leave it on). Feed URLs you supply are fetched directly. Requests are rate-limited per host and identify as `WintersWorksFeedReader`.
**JavaScript-only sites?** Not supported (no headless browser); extraction fails gracefully and you get feed data.
**Why is some text noisy?** Extraction uses Mozilla Readability heuristics; pages like Wikipedia or index pages can include infoboxes or tables. Quality is best on blogs and news articles.
**Is this legal?** It reads publicly published feeds and pages, respects robots.txt by default and does not bypass paywalls or logins. Feed and article content is still the publisher's copyrighted work. Personal analysis, search and monitoring are common uses, but republishing it may need permission. You are responsible for how you use and republish it, and for following each publisher's terms.

Built by Winters Works.

### Use from code and AI agents

Call it from any language with the Apify API, or let an AI agent find and run it through the [Apify MCP server](https://mcp.apify.com).

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient
run = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>").actor("wintersworks/rss-feed-news-article-extractor").call(run_input={"feedUrls": ["https://hnrss.org/frontpage"]})
items = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>").dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items
```

Results land in the run's dataset (JSON, CSV, Excel). Set a maximum charge per run in the run options to cap spend.

# Actor input Schema

## `feedUrls` (type: `array`):

RSS, Atom or JSON Feed URLs.

## `siteUrls` (type: `array`):

Website URLs. The actor looks for <link rel=alternate> feeds and common paths like /feed, /rss.xml, /atom.xml.

## `articleUrls` (type: `array`):

Individual article URLs to extract directly (no feed needed).

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

Newest items taken from each feed.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Hard cap on items output (and charged) per run.

## `extractFullText` (type: `boolean`):

Fetch each article page and extract clean text + Markdown ($0.002/article). Off = feed data only ($0.0008/item).

## `sinceDate` (type: `string`):

ISO date (2026-01-31) or relative like '7 days'. Items older than this are skipped. Items without a date are kept.

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

Keep only items whose title, summary or categories contain any of these (case-insensitive). Empty = all.

## `maxConcurrency` (type: `integer`):

Parallel article fetches (kept polite, per-host rate limit applies).

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

Respect robots.txt for article page fetches.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "feedUrls": [
    "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
  ],
  "siteUrls": [],
  "articleUrls": [],
  "maxItemsPerFeed": 5,
  "maxItems": 500,
  "extractFullText": true,
  "sinceDate": "",
  "keywords": [],
  "maxConcurrency": 4,
  "respectRobotsTxt": true
}
```

# Actor output Schema

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

All result items from the run's default dataset.

# 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 = {
    "feedUrls": [
        "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("wintersworks/rss-feed-news-article-extractor").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 = { "feedUrls": ["https://hnrss.org/frontpage"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("wintersworks/rss-feed-news-article-extractor").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 '{
  "feedUrls": [
    "https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
  ]
}' |
apify call wintersworks/rss-feed-news-article-extractor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

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

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/bUXab3KTrsveayw6y/builds/v0kFBucp8BI3TbreU/openapi.json