Reddit RSS Feeds Are Ending on November 13, 2026: What Still Works and What to Do

Yes, Reddit RSS still works today. On October 18, 2026 all nine feed types we tested returned full post text without a login, but Reddit throttled us to about one feed a minute: at 3 seconds apart only the first two got through. Reddit says it will stop supporting RSS feeds on November 13, 2026, and for anyone who does not moderate the community, it says there is no replacement.

The RSS chapter of how to scrape Reddit in 2026, in full.

The short answer

What Reddit announced, and the dates around it

The RSS end date comes from an admin post in r/modnews titled “Continuing our infrastructure updates: What’s changing in the coming months”. The relevant section is headed “Migrating RSS access to the Developer Platform”. It says:

“Because RSS is now a common surface for large-scale scraping and automated abuse, we’ll stop supporting RSS feeds on November 13, 2026 while preserving moderation workflows that depend on it through supported alternatives.” – a Reddit admin post in r/modnews

The next paragraph splits readers into two groups:

“For common mod alerts, we recommend Devvit apps like [a relay app]. If your mod team relies on RSS, review your setup and migrate workflows before November 13 to ensure your needs are uninterrupted. If you use RSS for feeds outside of a community you moderate, there is no replacement.” – a Reddit admin post in r/modnews

The post closes the topic with “RSS has been a beloved part of the open web for a long time, and we’re grateful to everyone who used it to stay connected to Reddit.” Reddit published a separate dated schedule for its public API in r/redditdev, and the pieces fit together:

RSS goes 13 days after the API intake closes. Read together, the logged-out routes close first and the registered-app route closes by March 2027. In our October 18 test a logged-in session was the one route still returning JSON. The .json half of this story is in our Reddit JSON 403 Forbidden guide.

The same post also mentions Old Reddit: “Earlier this year, we required people to log in to use Old Reddit, addressing its largest source of abusive scraping and automated traffic: unauthenticated access.” – a Reddit admin post in r/modnews. That matches what we saw on October 18: old.reddit.com answered a logged-out request with a 302 to a login page.

The 9-pattern RSS test: what works today

Guides to Reddit RSS list URL patterns without saying how often you can request them. We tested nine patterns logged out on October 18, 2026. The setup: plain HTTPS GET from one residential IP, a current Chrome User-Agent, no cookies. We used r/smallbusiness for most feeds, plus a multi-subreddit feed, a thread in r/redditdev, one public user, and one domain feed.

Two passes: a fast pass at 3 seconds between requests, then a slow pass at 65 seconds. The table shows the slow pass with the fast-pass result next to it.

None of the nine patterns is dead. The nine feeds held 211 entries and 473,594 bytes between them (about 2,200 bytes an entry), because each entry carries the post text. Listing feeds capped at 25 entries; the thread feed returned 13 because that thread was short, while a different, longer thread returned 120 in our pillar guide test. The user feed was the largest at 91,725 bytes.

Earlier the same day, at about 18:59 UTC, a top feed capped at two entries returned 200 with the post body in 7,689 bytes, while a site-wide search feed returned 429 on its first call. That call was the sixth request in a two-second sequence, which fits the rate limit below.

The rate limit: about one feed a minute

The fast pass is the surprise. At 3 seconds apart, the first two feeds returned 200 and every one of the next seven returned 429 with an empty body. At 65 seconds apart, the same seven URLs returned 200.

A 429 means slow down, not that the pattern was removed. If your reader or script errors on some feeds and not others, count requests per minute first.

A commenter in r/rss describes the same pace: “Without providing your key or authorizing, the rate limit is 1-per-minute, which is unusable for normal purposes.” – r/rss. That is one person’s report, and ours is one measurement, so read them as agreeing rather than as a published limit.

This is arithmetic from our 65-second spacing, not a Reddit limit: 20 feeds take about 22 minutes and 100 feeds about 108 minutes. A commenter who wrote “I follow over 100 /r’s with RSS, without it it’s impossible to follow what matters” – r/rss would need nearly two hours for one refresh at that pace, and a script that polls every few minutes would likely see mostly 429s.

Who is affected on November 13

Anything that reads a reddit.com URL ending in .rss stops getting data. Reddit has not said what status code or body the URL will return afterwards, so the failure mode is unknown until the date. Who depends on which pattern:

The mod row has the most friction. One moderator wrote in the r/modnews thread: “So, what if a mod team doesn’t use [the chat app]? RSS is the only way I find out about posts in subs like this one.” – r/modnews. Reddit’s relay app posts to a chat service, so a team that does not use one has no recommended path, and Reddit did not address that in the post we read.

Another r/rss commenter describes a different use, notification management: “I don’t even care about seeing ‘full text’ or images in the feed; I use RSS as a central notification management tool basically.” – r/rss. Our test shows feeds carry full text today.

Why Reddit says it is ending RSS

Reddit gave one reason, in the sentence quoted above: RSS is “a common surface for large-scale scraping and automated abuse”. Our test fits the description of a data surface: a logged-out request returned 25 posts with full text in about 50,000 bytes.

We do not know more than the post says. One r/rss commenter wrote: “Long term, removing RSS only impacts legitimate users, because we needed this specific format for compatibility with feed readers.” – r/rss. That is an opinion, not a measurement.

Before November 13: a checklist by audience

1. List every Reddit feed you depend on. Search your feed reader subscriptions, scripts, automation flows and website embeds for reddit.com URLs ending in .rss. Write down each URL and what reads it. Match each to a pattern: subreddit, new, top, multi-subreddit, thread, user, search, domain or front page.
2. Split the list into communities you moderate and everything else. Reddit says it is preserving moderation workflows through supported alternatives and recommends a relay app on its Developer Platform for common mod alerts. For feeds outside a community you moderate, Reddit says there is no replacement, so those need a different route or have to be dropped.
3. Move mod alerts to the relay app before November 13. Use the setup guide Reddit links from its r/modnews post and run both the feed and the app in parallel for a few days. A mod team that does not use the chat app the relay posts to needs another plan.
4. Pick a route for the rest by job. For research with an AI assistant, read Reddit through a logged-in browser with the BigIdeasDB Reddit Connector. For a product, apply for approved Reddit API access before October 31, 2026. For casual reading, there is no feed route after November 13.
5. Pace and archive what you hold. The 65-second spacing worked in our test (our spacing, not a published Reddit limit), so a hundred feeds is roughly 108 minutes of arithmetic. Space requests at least 65 seconds apart, save the items you need now, and expect Reddit to serve nothing after November 13.
6. Make jobs fail loudly and re-test after the date. Treat 429 as slow down and any other error or empty feed as a stop signal that alerts a human. Re-test your feed URLs on November 13 and 14, 2026, and remove the ones that fail so a dead feed never reads as no new posts.

If you only read subreddits, the choice is Reddit’s own app or site, or dropping the subscription. A monitoring script on search or domain feeds needs a new source before the date. A website embed should become static content or a link, so visitors do not see an empty box. For code, the response classifier in our 403 guide already separates 429 from 403 and from login redirects, which is what a post-November-13 feed job needs.

What replaces Reddit RSS

Reddit names one replacement, for moderators. The other two routes exist today and do not rely on feed URLs.

Moderators: a relay app on Reddit’s Developer Platform

Reddit recommends a relay app for common mod alerts and links a setup guide in the post. It is built for moderators of communities they run, and it posts to a chat app, so the first question is whether your team uses that app. Run it alongside the feed for a few days before the cutoff to check that every alert you rely on still arrives. Reddit says it is preserving moderation workflows through supported alternatives. It does not say every feed-based workflow will have an exact match.

Researchers and founders: your own logged-in browser

Many people used feeds as a free read of what a subreddit is saying. For that job, our October 18 test found logged-in requests returning JSON while logged-out ones got 403, and your own browser is logged in. The BigIdeasDB Clipper Chrome extension has a Reddit Connector switch. When Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or another MCP client calls one of four Reddit tools on the BigIdeasDB MCP (search_reddit, fetch_subreddit, fetch_post_comments, fetch_reddit_json), your Chrome fetches the page with your Reddit login and returns the result. We measured the round trip once, on October 18, 2026, at about 1.2 seconds.

Compare it with RSS honestly. The connector runs at about one request per second, against the roughly one feed per minute we measured on RSS. It covers search and comment trees (the site-wide search feed returned 429 on its first call in our test). It needs no Reddit API keys, developer account or approval queue. What it does not do is push: it fetches when your AI asks, so it cannot ping you when a new post appears. Chrome has to be running, though it can sit in the background. It is off by default, it only fetches reddit.com pages your AI requests, and it is included with BigIdeasDB Pro. It is built for research at a normal pace, not bulk collection, and excessive use is against the BigIdeasDB Terms. Reddit has not promised that logged-in access stays as it is.

Setup is four steps, in full in the Reddit Connector docs: install Clipper 1.2.0 or later, log in to reddit.com in the same Chrome profile, open the Reddit tab and click Turn on Reddit Connector, then click Test connection. If the AI client side misbehaves, the MCP troubleshooting guide covers it, and the rate limits and clients page lists supported clients.

Products: approved Reddit API access

If you are building something that ships to users, the route Reddit built is the Data API through approval. Reddit’s own schedule is the problem. New requests for public API access stop on October 31, 2026, API access starts to close for apps that have not registered on January 12, 2027, and remaining public API access ends in March 2027. Reddit’s post says over 14,000 apps and bots have registered. Reddit’s Responsible Builder Policy also requires written approval for commercial use, so volume or monetization needs a conversation with Reddit. Our Reddit API alternative for AI guide covers the API side, and the script-wrapper alternative page covers scripts built on the old Reddit wrapper.

Feed-reader subscribers: no replacement

For subscribing to a subreddit in a feed reader, Reddit names no route. Use Reddit’s own app or site, or ask an assistant to search and read threads on demand: searching Reddit from Claude and Cursor, the Reddit research MCP server, finding business ideas on Reddit and free Reddit keyword research. In the 30 days to October 18, 2026, Reddit tools were more than half of all tool calls on the BigIdeasDB MCP, per our internal usage log.

Method and limits

What we tested, how, and what it cannot tell you. Read the limits before you quote a number.

The test cannot show whether the limit is per IP, per account or per User-Agent, whether it differs by region, or whether Reddit will tighten it before November 13. If your feeds behave differently from our table, believe your feeds. Background on the other Reddit endpoints is in the scraping guide and the 403 guide.

Next: run the six steps before the date, set up the Reddit Connector if your use is research, and check pricing for Pro. The MCP tools reference lists every Reddit tool, the Reddit market research guide shows what to do with the results, and the BigIdeasDB MCP covers the rest of the data.

Frequently asked questions

BigIdeasDB Research. (2026). Reddit RSS Feeds Are Ending on November 13, 2026: What Still Works and What to Do. BigIdeasDB. Retrieved from https://bigideasdb.com/reddit-rss-feeds-ending