Economist Scraper

Clean, structured records from The Economist — no browser, no login, no API key. Paste an URL and get one JSON record per page, ready for monitoring, newsletters, analysis or AI pipelines.

Two kinds of pages are supported:

• Full articles from any section — one record with the complete body in reading order, headline, teaser, section tagline, publication and modification times, section, lead image, inline images, outbound links and word count.
• World in Brief — every daily issue is split across several pages. The actor follows the pagination chain (forwards and backwards, so you can start from any page of the issue) and merges the whole issue into one record: the overview, every brief, all dates, images, audio and outbound links.

What you get

• Full articles, one record each — body paragraphs in reading order, with headline, teaser, rubric and fly-title when the article has them
• One record per daily issue — the World in Brief overview plus all briefs (pages are fetched and merged automatically)
• Clean structured body — every paragraph in reading order
• Editorial metadata — article or issue id, date, publication and modification times, headline, teaser, section
• Media — lead image with alt text and credit, inline images, and the text-to-speech audio link when the page provides one
• Links — every economist.com link inside the content, deduplicated
• Forgiving input — start from any page of a World in Brief issue; earlier and later pages are followed until the whole issue is complete
• Always fresh — content is fetched live on every run

A note on data availability

Author attribution is not included in the data this actor receives (it does not log in to economist.com), so the record's byline is always an empty list. Fields stay empty when the source is empty — nothing is invented.

Quick start

Input:

{
  "url": "https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/08/24/iran-will-be-able-to-shrug-off-americas-financial-threats",
  "fetchAllPages": true
}

fetchAllPages only matters for World in Brief issues — a standard article is always returned as one record.

Example records

A full article

Real output from the URL above (first body paragraph and links trimmed):

{
  "id": "62301743-9ff1-4cae-9e1a-a1498af7a5d8",
  "url": "https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/08/24/iran-will-be-able-to-shrug-off-americas-financial-threats",
  "headline": "Iran will be able to shrug off America’s financial threats",
  "teaser": "In the face of fresh sanctions, the regime is defiant",
  "rubric": "In the face of fresh sanctions, the regime is defiant",
  "flyTitle": "Losing pressure",
  "date": "2026-08-27",
  "firstPublished": "2026-08-27T15:45:02.000Z",
  "section": "middle-east-and-africa",
  "byline": [],
  "body": ["WHEN DONALD TRUMP began Operation Epic Fury nearly six months ago he hoped that America’s military might would crush Iran’s regime. When its bombs failed, he bet on sweeteners...", "..."],
  "images": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20260829_MAC047.png",
      "altText": "",
      "caption": "",
      "credit": "The Economist"
    }
  ],
  "leadImage": {
    "url": "https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20260829_MAP502.jpg",
    "altText": "Iranians walk past an anti-US billboard featuring US President Donald Trump in southern Tehran, Iran.",
    "caption": "",
    "credit": "EPA/Shutterstock"
  },
  "linksOut": ["https://www.economist.com/united-states/2026/07/19/the-iran-war-is-americas-least-popular-since-polls-began", "..."],
  "wordCount": 1112
}

World in Brief issue (merged)

Real output for a daily issue (paragraphs trimmed):

{
  "id": "f78ff34d-dc74-4af7-8312-db68223b7f3e",
  "url": "https://www.economist.com/the-world-in-brief/2026/09/06/581aef78-7b03-432c-8685-e33c1b0c86fb",
  "headline": "World in Brief: America strikes Iranian oil tankers; Trump envoys head to Ukraine and Russia",
  "date": "2026-09-06",
  "firstPublished": "2026-09-06T00:00:00.000Z",
  "section": "the-world-in-brief",
  "byline": [],
  "pages": 8,
  "body": ["America said it struck three Iranian oil tankers after Iran launched ballistic missiles ...", "..."],
  "stories": [
    {
      "page": 2,
      "headline": "Oil on troubled waters",
      "body": ["On Sunday the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries ..."],
      "images": []
    }
  ],
  "linksOut": ["https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/08/24/iran-will-be-able-to-shrug-off-americas-financial-threats"],
  "leadImage": {"url": "https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20260905_IBP907.jpg", "caption": "..."}
}

Input fields

Field	Description
url	Full economist.com URL — a standard article in any section, or a World in Brief page (www.economist.com/the-world-in-brief/YYYY/MM/DD/<id>)
fetchAllPages	World in Brief only: when enabled (default), every page of the issue is fetched and merged into one record. Disable to scrape only the page in the URL.

Record fields

Field	Meaning
id	Article content id or issue id (World in Brief)
url / requestedUrl	Page URL / the URL you pasted
headline / teaser	Headline and teaser
rubric / flyTitle	Section tagline and the small label above the headline — when the page provides them (usually present on articles, not on World in Brief)
date / firstPublished / lastModified	Date and timestamps (ISO 8601, UTC)
section / sectionUrl	Section path, e.g. middle-east-and-africa
byline	Always an empty list (see note on data availability)
summary	Empty unless the source provides one
body	Paragraphs in reading order (the overview page for World in Brief)
stories	World in Brief: the individual briefs on pages 2+ (page, headline, teaser, body, images, linksOut)
linksOut	All economist.com links inside the content
images / leadImage	Inline images and the lead image (url, altText, caption, credit)
audio	Text-to-speech audio (url, durationSeconds, isAiGenerated) when the page provides one
page / pages / pageUrls	Pagination context (World in Brief) and all page URLs
wordCount	Total words

Notes

• Times are UTC (ISO 8601 with Z) — unambiguous, convert freely.
• Articles are always returned as a single record. In single-page mode (fetchAllPages: false) a World in Brief record describes only the page in the URL; the same shape minus stories.
• Full article text comes from what the pages themselves make publicly available; this actor performs no login, keeps no session and bypasses nothing.

How much does it cost you?

One World in Brief issue = one dataset item; a standard article = one item. You pay per item only when a run actually finishes — failed runs cost nothing.

FAQ

Can I scrape any economist.com article? Pages the actor supports are standard articles in any section and World in Brief issues. Both work the same way: paste the URL, get one clean record.

How is a World in Brief issue merged? The actor starts from the page in your URL and follows the issue's pagination in both directions until every page of the day's issue is collected, then combines them into a single record. Disable fetchAllPages to get just the one page instead.

Why is byline empty? The data this actor receives does not include author attribution — no login is used (see note on data availability).

What if the issue has changed by the time I run? Each run fetches the issue for the date in the URL. Old URLs keep returning their own issue; nothing is cached, everything is live.