gCaptain Maritime News Scraper

gCaptain Maritime News Scraper

Scrape gCaptain maritime news articles from the RSS feed, filtered by search term, up to a million per run. Every article comes with its title, link, publication date, and full content. No API key required. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

gCaptain is the leading source for maritime and offshore news, but manually monitoring its feed for specific vessels, incidents, or regulatory changes is slow. This scraper reads the public gCaptain RSS feed directly and returns matching articles in a clean, consistent format. Filter by a title search term so only the news that matters to your operation reaches your dataset.

Who uses it	What they scrape gCaptain for
Maritime analysts	Track breaking news on specific vessel types or shipping routes.
Commodity traders	Monitor port disruptions and offshore energy developments that move markets.
Supply chain managers	Collect early warnings on piracy, weather, and canal closures.
Maritime lawyers	Gather incident reports and regulatory announcements for case research.

What it does

This Actor collects gCaptain maritime news articles from the RSS feed and returns each one as a flat row with its title, link, publication date, and content.

• 📰 RSS feed scraping: Pulls articles directly from the standard gCaptain RSS feed, no login or browser needed.
• 🔍 Title search filter: Supply a search term to return only articles whose titles contain your keyword, like a vessel name or port.
• 📊 Structured output: Each article is returned as a flat row with title, link, publication date, and full content, ready for analysis.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with gCaptain data

🚢 Monitor vessel incidents.

A maritime insurance underwriter runs the scraper daily with a search term for 'collision' or 'grounding' to collect incident reports for risk assessment.

📈 Track offshore energy news.

An energy analyst filters the feed for 'wind farm' or 'FPSO' to gather articles on project approvals and construction milestones.

⚓ Watch port disruptions.

A logistics coordinator searches for 'strike' or 'congestion' to get early notice of delays at major ports.

📋 Archive regulatory changes.

A compliance officer collects articles mentioning 'IMO' or 'MARPOL' to maintain a timeline of new maritime regulations.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API key	Reads the public RSS feed, no registration or authentication needed.
Title filtering	Supply a keyword to get only articles mentioning a specific vessel, port, or topic.
High volume	Collect up to a million articles per run for historical analysis.
Fixed schema	Every article arrives with the same fields, making it easy to pipe into a database or spreadsheet.

How it compares

No other Store actor targets gCaptain the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

	gCaptain Maritime News Scraper	Build it in-house	By hand
Setup	Run it now, zero config	Days of engineering	None, but hours per pull
When gCaptain changes	Maintained for you	You fix it	You re-learn the page
Proxies, retries, anti-bot	Built in	Your problem	Browser only
Output	Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export	Whatever you build	Copy-paste
Cost	Pay per result	Engineering time	Analyst hours

Configure the run

Drive the Actor from the gCaptain RSS feed URL and an optional title search term. The filter runs as each article is read so only matches reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "feedUrl": "https://gcaptain.com/feed/"
}

A larger pull:

{
  "maxItems": 200,
  "feedUrl": "https://gcaptain.com/feed/"
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.0085 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$0.85
1,000 results	$8.50
10,000 results	$85.00

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the gCaptain Maritime News Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to gCaptain through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/gcaptain-maritime-news-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results?

Check your search term. The filter matches substrings in article titles, so a typo or overly specific phrase may return nothing. Try a shorter or broader keyword. Also confirm the feed URL is set to https://gcaptain.com/feed/.

Why am I getting fewer articles than my maxItems setting?

The RSS feed only contains a limited number of recent articles. If fewer articles exist in the feed than your maximum, the Actor returns all available ones. This is expected behavior for RSS-based scraping.

The run failed with a timeout error.

The gCaptain server may be slow to respond. Increase the Actor's timeout setting in your run options, or try running at a different time of day when the site may be under less load.

The article content is truncated or missing.

RSS feeds often include only a summary or excerpt, not the full article body. This is a limitation of the source feed. For full-text extraction, you would need a web scraper that visits each article page.

Can I change the RSS feed URL to a category-specific feed?

Yes. gCaptain offers category-specific RSS feeds. You can replace the default feed URL with a category feed URL, such as one for offshore news or maritime jobs, if available on the site.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Do I need an API key or login to scrape gCaptain?	No. This Actor reads the public RSS feed at gcaptain.com/feed/, which requires no authentication or API key.
Can I scrape only articles about a specific ship or company?	Yes. Use the search term field to filter article titles. The Actor will return only articles whose titles contain your keyword.
How many articles can I scrape in one run?	You can set the maximum up to 1,000,000 articles per run. The actual number returned depends on how many matching articles exist in the feed.
What data fields does each article include?	Each article row includes the title, link, publication date, and full content. The exact field list is shown in the sample output on the Actor's page.
Can I scrape the full text of each article?	The Actor returns the content available in the RSS feed. For the full on-page article text, check if a separate web scraping Actor is available.
How often is the gCaptain RSS feed updated?	The gCaptain RSS feed updates as new articles are published. You can schedule this Actor to run hourly or daily on Apify to catch every new post.
Can I export the data to Google Sheets?	Yes. You can export your dataset to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, and Apify integrations can send it directly to Google Sheets.
Does this Actor handle pagination?	The RSS feed returns a fixed number of recent articles. The Actor collects all available items in the feed up to your specified maximum.
Can I filter by date range instead of a search term?	The Actor filters by title substring. For date-range filtering, you can post-process the dataset using the publication date field after the run completes.
Is this Actor affiliated with gCaptain?	No. This is an unofficial scraper built by the Apify community. It reads publicly available RSS feed data.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by gCaptain, LLC. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.