The Intercept Articles Scraper

The Intercept Articles Scraper

Scrape The Intercept articles by category or search term, up to a million per run. Each article comes with its title, description, URL, and publication date. No login or API key. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

The Intercept's website has no public API, and manual collection of its investigative journalism is slow and error-prone. This Actor reads the public article feeds directly, filtered by category slug or a search term, and returns each match in one fixed schema.

Who uses it	What they scrape The Intercept for
Journalists and researchers	Monitoring The Intercept's latest investigative reports on a specific beat
Media analysts	Tracking coverage frequency and topics over time
NGOs and advocacy groups	Collecting articles related to their issue area for briefings
Data scientists	Building a dataset of article metadata for text analysis

What it does

This Actor collects The Intercept articles by category or search term, and returns each one as a flat row.

• 🔍 Search term filter: substring match on title or description, so only relevant articles are returned.
• 📂 Category slug filter: target a specific section like politics, national-security, or climate.
• 🔢 Maximum articles: cap the number of results per run, from 1 to 1,000,000.
• 📅 Publication date: each row includes the article's publication date for time-series analysis.

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

What you can do with The Intercept data

📈 Track investigative journalism trends.

A media analyst runs the Actor daily with no filters to collect all new articles, then charts publication frequency by category to spot emerging stories.

🔎 Monitor a specific topic.

A researcher sets the search term to 'surveillance' and collects every matching article to build a reading list for a literature review.

📚 Archive a category.

An NGO sets the category slug to 'climate' and collects all articles for a permanent local archive of The Intercept's climate coverage.

🧪 Build a dataset for analysis.

A data scientist collects a large sample of articles and uses the title and description fields to train a topic model.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API key	The Intercept has no public API, so this Actor reads the public feeds directly.
Flexible filtering	Filter by category or search term to get only the articles you need.
Scalable	Collect up to a million articles per run, enough for large-scale analysis.
Structured output	Each article is returned as a flat row with title, description, URL, and date.

How it compares

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

	The Intercept Articles Scraper	Build it in-house	By hand
Setup	Run it now, zero config	Days of engineering	None, but hours per pull
When The Intercept 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 a category slug, a search term, or both, and set a maximum number of articles to collect per run. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
 "maxItems": 10
}

A larger pull:

{
 "maxItems": 200
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.021 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$2.10
1,000 results	$21.00
10,000 results	$210.00

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 The Intercept Articles 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 The Intercept 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/theintercept-articles-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 filters. If you set a category slug, make sure it is spelled correctly and exists on The Intercept. If you set a search term, try a broader term or remove it. Also ensure 'Maximum articles' is at least 1.

Why are my results not matching my search term?

The search is a simple substring match on title and description. It is case-insensitive but does not support boolean operators or wildcards. Try a shorter or more common term.

Why did the run stop before reaching my maximum articles?

The Actor stops when it has collected the requested number of articles or when there are no more articles matching your filters. If you expected more, try removing filters or increasing the maximum.

Why is the publication date missing for some articles?

Some articles on The Intercept may not have a visible publication date in the feed. In that case, the field will be empty. You can use the URL to visit the article and check manually.

Can I get the full article text?

This Actor only collects metadata. To get full text, you would need to use a separate scraper that visits each article URL, or modify this Actor's code if you have the technical skills.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Do I need an API key or login?	No. The Actor reads The Intercept's public article feeds directly, so no authentication is required.
What data does each article row contain?	Each row includes the article title, description, URL, and publication date. The exact fields are shown in the sample output.
How do I filter by category?	Use the 'Category Slug' input field. Enter a slug like 'politics', 'national-security', or 'climate'. Leave it empty to get the main feed.
How does the search term filter work?	The 'Search term for articles' input performs a substring match on the article title or description. Only articles containing that term are returned.
Can I collect all articles from The Intercept?	Yes, set 'Maximum articles' to a high number like 1,000,000 and leave both filters empty to collect the entire main feed.
What is the maximum number of articles per run?	You can set 'Maximum articles' up to 1,000,000. The Actor will stop after collecting that many articles.
In what formats can I export the data?	You can export the dataset as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML from the Apify platform.
Is this Actor affiliated with The Intercept?	No, this is an independent scraper built on the Apify platform. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by First Look Media Works, Inc.
Can I schedule this Actor to run automatically?	Yes, you can set up a schedule in Apify to run the Actor at regular intervals, such as daily or weekly.
Does this Actor scrape the full article text?	No, it collects metadata only: title, description, URL, and publication date. For full text, you would need to visit each URL separately.

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 First Look Media Works, Inc. 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.