# Financial Times News Scraper (`xtracto/ft-scraper`) Actor

Seamlessly retrieves full Financial Times articles by bypassing Cloudflare protection without requiring expensive residential proxies.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/xtracto/ft-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Farhan Febrian Nauval](https://apify.com/xtracto) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Lead generation, Other
- **Features:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 85 total users, 32 monthly users, 70.7% runs succeeded, 1 bookmarks
- **User rating**: 5.00 out of 5 stars

## Pricing

from $5.00 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event and usage. You are charged both the fixed price for specific events and for Apify platform usage.

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

## Financial Times Article Scraper

Extract the full text, headline, summary, authors, dates and image of any **ft.com** article, or list the newest FT headlines.

### Why Use This Actor?

- **Full article text** - the whole story, not just the opening paragraphs. In our November 2026 test the text matched FT's own word count on every article we checked.
- **Financial markets research** - FT's analysis of macroeconomics, central banks and capital markets.
- **Business intelligence** - track coverage of specific companies, industries and economic trends.
- **Global perspective** - European, Asian and emerging-market news alongside US coverage.
- **Fast and light** - an article takes a few seconds; no browser is started.

### You only pay for articles

A URL that gives no article is not added to your results and is not charged. If **no** URL in a run gives an article (for example the link is wrong or the page does not exist), the run ends **Failed** and its status message names the URL and the reason. When a run mixes good and bad URLs, it succeeds and the status message lists the URLs that failed.

### Input

```json
{
  "url": "https://www.ft.com/content/example-uuid",
  "urls": [
    "https://www.ft.com/content/uuid-one",
    "https://www.ft.com/content/uuid-two"
  ],
  "mode": "article",
  "limit": 10
}
```

### Output

```json
{
  "url": "https://www.ft.com/content/66933e51-e06d-475c-aed2-f808f9443dea",
  "source": "Financial Times",
  "title": "Donald Trump undecided on Taiwan arms sale after summit with Xi Jinping",
  "description": "US president raises doubts about $14bn weapons package for Taipei after two days of meetings in China",
  "content": "Donald Trump said he had not yet determined whether to approve a $14bn US arms sale to Taipei after a two-day summit with Xi Jinping at which the Chinese president warned him not to “mishandle” the Taiwan issue. Speaking on Air Force One after the conclusion of the visit on Friday, Trump said he had not decided on the arms sale, which has already been authorised by his administration, adding: “I’ll make a determination over the next fairly short period.” The US president said the leaders had dis...",
  "image": "https://images.ft.com/v3/image/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2Fd3927c5d-5105-4959-8281-95f9acc20468.jpg?source=next-article&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&width=700&dpr=1",
  "language": "en-GB",
  "word_count": 905,
  "published_date": "2026-05-15T16:08:18.721Z",
  "modified_date": "2026-05-15T16:08:18.000Z",
  "authors": [
    "James Politi",
    "Demetri Sevastopulo",
    "Edward White",
    "Joe Leahy"
  ],
  "categories": "",
  "tags": ""
}
```

### Fetch Latest News

Set `mode` to `"latest"` to fetch the newest article URLs and titles from Financial Times instead of extracting a single article.

**Input:**

```json
{
  "mode": "latest",
  "limit": 10
}
```

**Output** - array of objects:

```json
[
  {
    "url": "https://www.ft.com/content/9f8d01dd-4ef8-475e-8b76-9cb0e325fb60",
    "title": "Starmer set for vetting showdown with ‘heartbroken’ Olly Robbins",
    "published_date": "Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:03:15 GMT",
    "source": "Financial Times"
  }
]
```

Headlines come from FT's public news feed.

### Cron Schedule: Auto-Fetch Newest Articles

Combine `mode: "latest"` and `mode: "article"` to keep a fresh feed running on autopilot:

1. **Schedule** a recurring run of this Actor with `{"mode": "latest", "limit": 20}` via Apify Schedules (UI ▸ Schedules ▸ Create new). A cron expression like `*/30 * * * *` runs it every 30 minutes.
2. **Webhook** the dataset of the latest run into another Actor run with `mode: "article"` and the new URLs as input — Apify integrations let you chain runs via the "Actor finished" webhook without any glue code.
3. The article-mode run extracts the full body, image, authors, and metadata for each URL and appends to your master dataset.

Common cron expressions:

| Frequency | Cron |
|---|---|
| Every 15 minutes | `*/15 * * * *` |
| Hourly | `0 * * * *` |
| Every 6 hours | `0 */6 * * *` |
| Daily at 06:00 UTC | `0 6 * * *` |

### Other News Actors

Need a different news source? All actors in this collection:

| Actor | Source |
|---|---|
| [`aljazeera-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/aljazeera-scraper) | Al Jazeera |
| [`apnews-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/apnews-scraper) | AP News |
| [`bbc-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/bbc-scraper) | BBC News |
| [`cnbc-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/cnbc-scraper) | CNBC |
| [`forbes-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/forbes-scraper) | Forbes |
| [`fortune-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/fortune-scraper) | Fortune |
| [`ft-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/ft-scraper) | Financial Times |
| [`guardian-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/guardian-scraper) | The Guardian |
| [`msn-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/msn-scraper) | MSN News |
| [`nytimes-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/nytimes-scraper) | New York Times |
| [`reuters-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/reuters-scraper) | Reuters |
| [`scmp-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/scmp-scraper) | South China Morning Post |
| [`techcrunch-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/techcrunch-scraper) | TechCrunch |
| [`upi-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/upi-scraper) | UPI |
| [`yahoo-finance-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/yahoo-finance-scraper) | Yahoo Finance |
| [`smart-news-loader`](https://apify.com/xtracto/smart-news-loader) | Any news site |
| [`bloomberg-scraper`](https://apify.com/xtracto/bloomberg-news-article-scraper) | Bloomberg |

All actors support `mode: "latest"` for fetching newest article URLs from each source.

### Scope & Compliance

- **No login needed.** You do not need an FT account.
- **Copyright stays with the publisher.** Output is intended for research, monitoring, archiving and analysis. You are responsible for using it in line with the publisher's Terms of Service, copyright law and any applicable data-protection rules — republishing article text is generally not permitted.
- **Polite pace.** Articles are fetched one at a time; the actor is not built for very high-volume traffic.

# Actor input Schema

## `url` (type: `string`):

Single article URL to extract.

## `urls` (type: `array`):

List of article URLs to extract.

## `mode` (type: `string`):

Operation mode: 'article' to extract a single article (default), 'latest' to fetch newest headlines from the source's RSS feed.

## `limit` (type: `integer`):

Number of latest articles to return when mode is 'latest'. Default: 10.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Optional. Requests go through Apify Proxy when enabled; an article that does not load is retried up to 3 times, each through a new proxy session.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "url": "https://www.ft.com/content/60d09841-052a-44f3-a8ae-52c38fdbb5ab",
  "mode": "article",
  "limit": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": [
      "RESIDENTIAL"
    ]
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

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

One row per scraped record, stored in 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 = {
    "url": "https://www.ft.com/content/60d09841-052a-44f3-a8ae-52c38fdbb5ab",
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true,
        "apifyProxyGroups": [
            "RESIDENTIAL"
        ]
    }
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("xtracto/ft-scraper").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 = {
    "url": "https://www.ft.com/content/60d09841-052a-44f3-a8ae-52c38fdbb5ab",
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": True,
        "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"],
    },
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("xtracto/ft-scraper").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 '{
  "url": "https://www.ft.com/content/60d09841-052a-44f3-a8ae-52c38fdbb5ab",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": [
      "RESIDENTIAL"
    ]
  }
}' |
apify call xtracto/ft-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,xtracto/ft-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

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/n6V0QtTASA6ceUK9k/builds/YIGIZzotMLaiDaTNy/openapi.json