Website Freshness Detector - Last Update Signals + Stale Flag

The NanoScrape Website Freshness Detector Scraper is an Apify actor that extracts structured web data from Website Freshness Detector. It returns 17 fields per result including url, status_code, sitemap_lastmod, homepage_last_modified, footer_copyright_year, priced at $3/1k url probed, with no API key or monthly subscription required.

Probe any website for signs of when it was last updated: sitemap lastmod, Last-Modified header, footer copyright year, and RSS/Atom feed dates. Returns a stale_flag verdict (active / stale / abandoned / unknown) so agencies can prioritize web-design rebuild pitches. Pay-per-result.

Open on Apify →

Pricing

$3.00 / 1,000 url probed

Runtime

Cloud (Apify)

Proxy

Datacenter

What you can scrape — 17 fields per result

Field	Type	Example	Group
`company_id`	string \| null	(populated when data available)	Core
`url`	string	(populated when data available)	Core
`final_url`	string \| null	(populated when data available)	Core
`sitemap_url`	string \| null	(populated when data available)	Core
`latest_feed_pubdate`	string \| null	(populated when data available)	Location
`status_code`	integer \| null	(populated when data available)	Other
`sitemap_lastmod`	string \| null	(populated when data available)	Other
`homepage_last_modified`	string \| null	(populated when data available)	Other
`footer_copyright_year`	integer \| null	(populated when data available)	Other
`most_recent_signal`	string \| null	(populated when data available)	Other
`most_recent_source`	string \| null	(populated when data available)	Other
`stale_flag`	string \| null	(populated when data available)	Other
`months_since_last_signal`	number \| null	(populated when data available)	Other
`signals_found`	integer \| null	(populated when data available)	Other
`signal_note`	string \| null	(populated when data available)	Other
`probed_at`	string \| null	(populated when data available)	Other
`error`	string \| null	(populated when data available)	Other

Input example — showcase (full detail)

{
  "urls": [
    "https://vercel.com/",
    "https://www.apify.com/",
    "https://example.com/"
  ],
  "probeTimeoutMs": 10000,
  "respectRobotsTxt": true,
  "concurrency": 3,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

Cost math

Priced at $0.0030 per url probed. 10 url probeds ≈ $0.03, 100 ≈ $0.30, 1,000 ≈ $3.00. The first runs land inside Apify's $5/mo free-tier credit — pay only for what you extract, no monthly subscription.

Integrations

n8n / Make / Zapier — trigger runs and process results via webhook
AI Agents (MCP) — Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, LangChain, LlamaIndex
Python / Node.js — Apify SDK for programmatic access
Google Sheets / Airtable — export via Apify integrations

Run this actor directly on Apify (no code)

Click Open on Apify above to run website-freshness-detector in your browser - no code, no install. In the Apify console you get:

One-click test - fill in the input form, or paste the JSON example above into the JSON editor tab, then hit Start.
Live output - watch rows stream into an interactive Output table as they arrive, or flip to the raw JSON / Log view.
Export in any format - one click to download the dataset as JSON, CSV, XML, Excel, HTML table, RSS, or JSONL.
Schedules - run this actor daily, weekly, hourly, or on a custom cron. Apify handles timing and stores every dataset run.
Integrations & webhooks - fire a webhook on success/failure, or plug into Zapier, n8n, Make, Airbyte, Google Sheets, Slack, S3, Postgres, and more from the Actions tab.
Transparent cost - see exact usage against your $5/month free tier before you spend a cent.

Get your Apify API token

To run this actor from your own code you need an Apify API token. Get one in about a minute:

Sign up for a free Apify account (Google, GitHub, or email).
Go to Settings → Integrations → API tokens.
Click Create a new API token. Copy it and keep it secret.

Free tier: Apify credits your account with $5 of platform usage every month, no credit card required. Enough to test any actor meaningfully - at $0.001 per result on typical scrapers, that is roughly 5,000 results for free every month.

Call from code

Run this actor from any language via the Apify REST API. Replace YOUR_TOKEN with your API token and adapt the input JSON to your needs.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/santamaria-automations~website-freshness-detector/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{}'

// npm install apify-client
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('santamaria-automations/website-freshness-detector').call({});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

# pip install apify-client
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('YOUR_TOKEN')
run = client.actor('santamaria-automations/website-freshness-detector').call(run_input={})
items = list(client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).iterate_items())
print(items)

// dotnet add package Apify.Client
using Apify.Client;

var client = new ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN");
var run = await client.Actor("santamaria-automations/website-freshness-detector").CallAsync(new { });
var items = await client.Dataset(run.DefaultDatasetId).ListItemsAsync();

// Maven: com.apify:apify-client
import com.apify.client.ApifyClient;

ApifyClient client = new ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN");
ActorRun run = client.actor("santamaria-automations/website-freshness-detector").call(Map.of());
List<Map<String,Object>> items = client.dataset(run.getDefaultDatasetId()).listItems();

Use with AI agents (MCP)

This actor is available on the Apify MCP server, so you can drive it from any MCP-compatible AI client - Claude Desktop, Claude.ai, Cursor, VS Code, LangChain, LlamaIndex, or a custom agent - without writing any code.

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=santamaria-automations/website-freshness-detector

Example prompt once connected:

"Use <code>website-freshness-detector</code> to run a scrape on my target list and give me the results as a table."

Clients that support dynamic tool discovery (Claude.ai, VS Code) receive the full input schema automatically via add-actor.

Use with no-code platforms

Trigger this actor from your favorite automation tool. Every platform below can call the Apify API in a few clicks - no code required.

Add the n8n Apify node (installed by default on n8n Cloud; on self-hosted install @apify/n8n-nodes-apify).
Set Actor to santamaria-automations/website-freshness-detector.
Choose operation Run Actor and get dataset, paste your input JSON, and connect a downstream node (Google Sheets, Postgres, webhook, ...).

Create a new Zap with any trigger.
Add a Webhooks by Zapier POST action to https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/santamaria-automations~website-freshness-detector/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN.
Body: your input JSON. Content-Type: application/json.

Create a new scenario.
Add an HTTP module: URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/santamaria-automations~website-freshness-detector/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN, method POST, body raw JSON.
Parse the response with a JSON module to iterate items downstream.

Create a new workflow.
Add an HTTP Request step: POST to https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/santamaria-automations~website-freshness-detector/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN.
Access steps.http.$return_value in subsequent steps.

Install the API Connector plugin.
Add a new API: POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/santamaria-automations~website-freshness-detector/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN, body type JSON.
Initialize the call with your input, then reference the response array in workflow actions.

FAQ

How much does the website-freshness-detector cost?

$3.00 / 1,000 url probed, billed per result on Apify. Apify's $5/month free tier covers the first runs. No monthly subscription — you only pay for what you extract.

What fields does it return?

17 fields per result. Full field catalog is listed in the 'What you can scrape' table above — includes core identifiers, descriptive text, dates, and any category-specific data.

Is scraping this site legal?

Scraping publicly available data is generally permitted in most jurisdictions, but GDPR applies to any personal data you collect. Review your local rules and consult a lawyer for commercial use.

How fresh is the data?

Every run pulls live data at execution time. Set up a schedule (daily/hourly/weekly cron) in the Apify console to keep your dataset current automatically.

Related actors in this category

Open on Apify →