You’d think getting an RSS feed URL would be simple — a site publishes content, you subscribe to it, done. Except a surprising number of sites either bury the feed link in the page source, use a non-standard path, or have dropped RSS support entirely without telling anyone. The four methods below cover those cases reliably. They’re ordered by effort: start with Method 1 and only go deeper if the previous one comes up empty.
- What does an RSS feed URL actually look like?
- Method 1 — URL pattern guessing
- Method 2 — Check the page source for autodiscovery tags
- Method 3 — Use an RSS reader to detect it
- Method 4 — Generate one from a site that doesn’t have RSS
- How the methods compare
- When to skip RSS entirely
- Getting content without finding the feed URL
- FAQ
What does an RSS feed URL actually look like?
An RSS feed URL is just a regular web URL that points to an XML document instead of a webpage. It typically ends in /feed, /rss, /rss.xml, or /atom.xml — and when you open it in a browser, you’ll either see raw XML or a styled feed page, depending on your browser and the site’s configuration.
Here’s what a valid get rss feed url response looks like when parsed correctly:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>Site Name</title>
<link>https://example.com</link>
<description>Latest articles</description>
<item>
<title>Article Title</title>
<link>https://example.com/article-slug</link>
<pubDate>Sun, 30 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>Most modern sites also publish Atom feeds alongside RSS — same idea, slightly different XML structure. Both serve the same purpose: a machine-readable list of recent content with timestamps and URLs.
Method 1 — URL pattern guessing (try this first)
The majority of common CMS platforms use predictable feed paths. Before doing anything technical, try appending these to the site’s root domain:
| Platform | Common RSS feed URL patterns |
|---|---|
| WordPress | /feed, /feed/rss2, /?feed=rss2 |
| Ghost | /rss |
| Substack | /feed |
| Blogger | /feeds/posts/default?alt=rss |
| Medium | /feed/@username |
| YouTube (channel) | https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNEL_ID |
| Custom/other | /rss.xml, /atom.xml, /feed.xml |
This works for roughly two-thirds of sites that have RSS at all — the ones running a mainstream CMS with default settings. If the URL returns a valid XML document, you’re done. If it returns a 404 or an HTML error page, move to Method 2.
Method 2 — Check the page source for autodiscovery tags
The RSS autodiscovery spec lets sites embed their feed URL directly in the HTML <head> as a <link> tag. If the site has this configured, you can find the get rss feed url in about 30 seconds without any tool.
In any browser, open the site’s homepage, right-click, and choose “View Page Source.” Then search (Ctrl+F / Cmd+F) for application/rss+xml or application/atom+xml. You’re looking for something like this:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="Site Name — RSS Feed"
href="https://example.com/feed/" />The href value is your RSS feed URL. Copy it, paste it into a browser, and confirm the XML loads. Done.
Many sites embed multiple feed URLs here — one for the main blog, one per category, one for comments. Pick the one whose title attribute matches what you actually want to monitor.
Method 3 — Use an RSS reader’s auto-detect feature
RSS readers like Feedly, Inoreader, or NewsBlur all have an auto-detect step: paste the site’s homepage URL into the “add feed” field, and the reader tries the common paths and autodiscovery tags automatically. If it finds something, it shows you a preview — and you can grab the feed URL from the reader’s subscription details panel.
This is the lowest-effort option if you already use a feed reader. It’s essentially Methods 1 and 2 automated, with a cleaner UI. The downside: it fails on the same sites those methods fail on — anything with a non-standard path, or anything that’s dropped RSS support.
Method 4 — Generate a feed for sites that don’t have RSS
Some sites — particularly news aggregators, JavaScript-heavy SPAs, and social platforms — don’t publish an RSS feed at all. For these, you have two options:
- Use a feed generation service. Tools like Feedity, FetchRSS, or RSS.app can scrape a page’s content and generate an RSS feed URL for it. You paste the page URL, the service crawls it, and you get a hosted feed. These work until the site’s layout changes — then the scraper breaks and your feed goes silent.
- Write a custom scraper. If you control the environment, a lightweight Python script using
requests+BeautifulSoupcan fetch a page and format the results as RSS/JSON. More work upfront, but it’s yours to maintain.
Method 4 is where the effort-to-reliability ratio starts to feel wrong. Feed generators fail silently, and scrapers require ongoing maintenance every time the source site updates its HTML structure.
How the 4 methods compare
| Method | Works without the site’s RSS feed? | Setup effort |
|---|---|---|
| URL pattern guessing | ||
| Page source autodiscovery | ||
| RSS reader auto-detect | ||
| Feed generator / scraper |
Setup effort reflects the time to get a working feed URL from a new source. Ongoing maintenance costs (broken scrapers, changed HTML structure) are not reflected here — they favor Methods 1–3 significantly.
When to skip trying to get an RSS feed URL at all
If you’re monitoring a small number of sites you already know support RSS, the four methods above cover you. But if you’re building something that aggregates content from dozens or hundreds of sources — a media monitoring dashboard, a news-driven app, a RAG pipeline — the math changes fast.
Finding and maintaining RSS feed URLs for 50 sources means 50 individual scrapers or 50 feed subscriptions to monitor for breakage. Every site that drops its RSS feed or changes its URL structure silently breaks your pipeline. Deduplication — handling the same article that 30 outlets republished from a wire service — isn’t something RSS handles at all.
RSS approach
Get RSS feed URL for each source → parse 50 XML files → deduplicate manually → re-check every URL quarterly when feeds break → miss any source without RSS entirely.
News API approach
One GET request with a topic query → structured JSON back → deduplication already handled → 100,000+ sources covered, including those without public RSS feeds.
Getting content without finding the feed URL
LumenFeed is a content aggregation API that covers 100,000+ sources across 20+ languages — articles, podcasts, videos, and live sports data — without requiring you to get an RSS feed URL for each one. You send a single authenticated request with a search query; it returns structured JSON with title, author, sentiment_label, published_at, source_link, and more.
Here’s what a basic query looks like with cURL:
curl -X GET "https://api.lumenfeed.com/api/v1/articles?q=climate+policy&sort_by=date_desc&per_page=20" \
-H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"That single call replaces the entire RSS discovery workflow for that topic — across all sources LumenFeed indexes. No parsing XML, no maintaining feed URLs, no deduplication step. The response fields are consistent regardless of the source, which is the part that makes downstream processing actually predictable.
For developers building content pipelines or monitoring tools, internal links to context: the find RSS feed for website guide covers the manual discovery process in more depth, and the JSON news feed format article explains what structured news data looks like compared to raw RSS XML.
Getting started
LumenFeed’s Developer plan starts at $4.99/month — 10,000 requests, 1 req/s, 7 days of history. No credit card required to start. If you’re replacing a multi-source RSS setup, the Starter plan ($49/month, 75,000 requests) is usually the right fit. Full pricing at lumenfeed.com.
FAQ
How do I get an RSS feed URL from a WordPress site?
Append /feed to the root domain — for example, https://example.com/feed. WordPress generates this by default. If that returns a 404, try /?feed=rss2 or check the page source for an autodiscovery tag with type="application/rss+xml".
What if the site doesn’t have an RSS feed at all?
You have two options: use a feed generator service like Feedity or RSS.app to scrape the page and produce a hosted feed URL, or write a custom scraper. Both require maintenance when the site’s layout changes. For high-volume monitoring across many sources without RSS, a content API like LumenFeed is more reliable.
Can I get an RSS feed URL for a specific category or tag on a blog?
Yes, on WordPress. Category feeds follow the pattern /category/category-name/feed, and tag feeds follow /tag/tag-name/feed. Check the page source on the category or tag archive page — most WordPress themes emit an autodiscovery <link> tag for that specific feed.
What’s the difference between an RSS feed URL and an Atom feed URL?
Both deliver the same type of content — a structured, machine-readable list of recent items with titles, links, and timestamps. Atom is a newer standard with slightly cleaner XML semantics. Most feed readers and parsers support both. When you get an RSS feed URL from the autodiscovery tag, check the type attribute: application/rss+xml is RSS, application/atom+xml is Atom.
Does YouTube have an RSS feed URL I can get?
Yes, but it’s not surfaced in the page source. YouTube’s RSS feed URL requires the channel ID: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=YOUR_CHANNEL_ID. Find the channel ID in the channel’s About page or URL. Note that the feed only includes the 15 most recent videos and doesn’t expose view counts, descriptions, or transcripts.
Why does my RSS feed URL return an empty feed?
An empty or near-empty feed usually means the site hasn’t published recently, the feed path you found is for a category with no posts, or the site has removed content from RSS (some publishers limit RSS to excerpts or recent posts only). Verify the feed URL loads valid XML, then check the <pubDate> values on items to confirm content is actually flowing through it.
Is getting an RSS feed URL legal?
Reading a publicly accessible RSS feed URL is generally treated the same as reading a public webpage — sites publish feeds specifically so readers can subscribe. That said, some sites’ terms of service restrict automated access or redistribution of content. Check the site’s ToS if you’re aggregating at scale, especially for commercial use.
Can a news API replace the need to get an RSS feed URL per source?
Yes — that’s the main value proposition. A content API like LumenFeed indexes sources directly, so you query by topic or keyword and get structured JSON back across 100,000+ sources without locating a single RSS feed URL yourself. This is particularly useful for pipelines that need to cover sources without public RSS feeds, or that need deduplication and sentiment data on top of the raw content.
