No, RSS is not dead. The BBC, The New York Times, NPR and The Guardian publish RSS feeds today, podcast apps get new episodes from RSS feeds, and WordPress, Substack, YouTube, Reddit and Mastodon make feeds for you. RSS mostly works out of sight, which is why it can look as if it went away.
Why do people say RSS is dead?
- Google Reader closed. Google shut down its RSS reader on July 1, 2013. The feeds kept running, and people moved to other readers. Google Reader: what happened tells the story.
- The RSS icon is harder to find. Sites often have a feed without showing an icon for it. Paste the site's address into a reader, and it usually finds the feed.
- Some sites did drop their feeds. Reuters stopped updating its public feeds in 2020 (see Reuters RSS feeds for what works instead), and X (Twitter) has no RSS feeds at all.
Who still publishes RSS feeds?
All of these news feeds had new stories on September 27, 2026, when we checked them:
| Publisher | Feed URL |
|---|---|
| BBC News | https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml |
| The New York Times: Home Page | https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml |
| The Guardian: World news | https://www.theguardian.com/world/rss |
| NPR News | https://feeds.npr.org/1001/rss.xml |
| The Washington Post: World | https://feeds.washingtonpost.com/rss/world |
| The Verge | https://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml |
For every section of these two outlets, see BBC RSS feeds and New York Times RSS feeds.
Which platforms make RSS feeds for you?
Many sites don't have to think about RSS at all, because their platform makes the feed. Each example below was live on September 27, 2026:
| Platform | Where the feed is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | Add /feed/ to a site's address | WordPress Newshttps://wordpress.org/news/feed/ |
| Substack | Add /feed to a newsletter's address | On Substackhttps://on.substack.com/feed |
| YouTube | Every channel has a feed | YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCBR8-60-B28hp2BmDPdntcQ |
Add .rss to a subreddit's address | r/technologyhttps://www.reddit.com/r/technology/.rss | |
| Mastodon | Add .rss to a profile's address | Mastodonhttps://mastodon.social/@Mastodon.rss |
| Podcasts | Each show's feed lists its episodes | The Dailyhttps://feeds.simplecast.com/Sl5CSM3SPlanet Money https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml |
Bluesky profiles have feeds too, and Google News publishes one for any search.
Do podcasts still use RSS?
Yes. A podcast feed is an RSS feed with an audio file attached to each episode, and podcast apps check it for new episodes. Apple publishes technical requirements for podcast RSS feeds in Apple Podcasts. The Daily and Planet Money, in the table above, are public RSS feeds that any podcast app or RSS reader can follow.
How many RSS feeds are still active?
Nobody counts every feed on the web, but we can share what Feeder sees. On September 27, 2026, more than 300,000 feeds that Feeder users follow had published at least one new post in the previous 30 days. They came from more than 100,000 different websites.
That count only includes feeds that someone follows in Feeder and that loaded without errors, so it's a floor, not a total.
Why use RSS today?
- You see every post. A feed lists everything a site publishes, newest first, with no algorithm choosing for you.
- You stay private. Following a feed needs no account and no e-mail address on the site.
- It's all in one place. News sites, blogs, podcasts and YouTube channels land in the same reader, and so can Google Alerts.
Do RSS readers still exist?
Yes. Feeder, Feedly and Inoreader run on the web and on phones. NetNewsWire and Reeder are apps for Mac, iPhone and iPad, and FreshRSS and Miniflux are free, open-source readers you host yourself. Best RSS readers compares them.
How do I start using RSS?
- Pick an RSS reader. It checks your feeds for you and collects new posts in one list.
- Add the sites you read. Paste a site's address, and the reader finds its feed. Coming from another reader? Bring your feeds with an OPML file.
- Read. New posts arrive newest first, marked unread until you get to them.
Common questions
Is RSS still used?
Yes. News sites, blogs and podcasts publish feeds, and YouTube, Reddit, Substack and Mastodon make them for every channel, community, newsletter or account.
Did Google kill RSS?
No. Google closed Google Reader in 2013, but RSS kept going. Google itself still publishes RSS feeds for Google News searches, and Google Alerts can send results as an RSS feed.
Why is RSS important?
It's an open format. Any site can publish a feed and any reader can follow it, with no platform in between deciding what you see.
Does YouTube still have RSS feeds?
Yes. Every channel has one at https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id= followed by the channel's ID. Or paste the channel's address into Feeder, and it finds the feed.
Try Feeder
Feeder is an RSS reader for the web, iOS and Android, with extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Edge. The free plan follows up to 200 feeds, updated as often as every 30 minutes, with no ads. Plus is $7.99 a month, billed yearly, for 2,500 feeds, updates as often as every 5 minutes and e-mail summaries.
Get started with Feeder for free