Is RSS Still Relevant?

I'd like to believe that RSS is still relevant and remains one of the most important technologies we've created. The moment I built this blog, I made sure my feed was working properly. Back in 2013, the web was already starting to move away from RSS. Every few months, an article would go viral declaring that RSS was dying or dead. Fast forward to 2025, those articles are nonexistent, and most people don't even know what RSS is.

The Power of RSS

One of the main advantages of an RSS feed is that it allows me to read news and articles without worrying about an algorithm controlling how I discover them. I have a list of blogs I'm subscribed to, and I consume their content chronologically. When someone writes an article I'm not interested in, I can simply skip it. I don't need to train an AI to detect and understand the type of content I don't like. Who knows, the author might write something similar in the future that I do enjoy. I reserve that agency to judge for myself.

The fact that RSS links aren't prominently featured on blogs anymore isn't really a problem for me. I have the necessary tools to find them and subscribe on my own. In general, people who care about RSS are already aware of how to subscribe. Since I have this blog and have been posting regularly this year, I can actually look at my server logs and see who's checking my feed.

From January 1st to September 1st, 2025, there were a total of 537,541 requests to my RSS feed. RSS readers often check websites at timed intervals to detect when a new article is published. Some are very aggressive and check every 10 minutes throughout the day, while others have somehow figured out my publishing schedule and only check a couple of times daily.

RSS readers, or feed parsers, don't always identify themselves. The most annoying name I've seen is just node, probably a Node.js script running on someone's local machine. However, I do see other prominent readers like Feedly, NewsBlur, and Inoreader. Here's what they look like in my logs:

5.12.235.52 - - [08/Jan/2025:03:16:11 +0000] "GET /feed.rss HTTP/2.0" 200 17253 "-" "FreshRSS/1.25.0 (Linux; https://freshrss.org)"
92.247.181.15 - - [08/Jan/2025:03:19:20 +0000] "GET /feed.rss HTTP/2.0" 200 17253 "https://idiallo.com/" "Inoreader/1.0 (+http://www.inoreader.com/feed-fetcher; 15 subscribers; )"
64.71.157.114 - - [08/Jan/2025:03:24:22 +0000] "GET /feed.rss HTTP/1.1" 200 20725 "-" "Feedbin feed-id:1457348 - 8 subscribers"

Two Types of Readers

There are two types of readers: those from cloud services like Feedly that have consistent IP addresses you can track over time, and those running on user devices. I can identify the latter as user devices because users often click on links and visit my blog with the same IP address.

So far throughout the year, I've seen 1,225 unique reader names. It's hard to confirm if they're truly unique since some are the same application with different versions. For example, Tiny Tiny RSS has accessed the website with 14 different versions, from version 22.08 to 25.10. I've written a script to extract as many identifiable readers as possible while ignoring the generic ones that just use common browser user agents.

Here's the list of RSS readers and feed parsers that have accessed my blog:

- Akregator
- BazQux
- Blogtrottr
- CapyReader (RSS Reader)
- CommaFeed
- Emacs Elfeed
- Feeder (feeder.co)
- Feed2Pages
- FeedBurner
- FeedFetcher-Google
- FeedFlow (RSS Reader)
- FeedMe
- FeedParser (library: feedparser/*)
- FeedR
- FeedValidator
- Feedbin
- Feedly
- Feedsearch-Crawler / Feedsearch Bot
- Feedspot
- Fastfeedparser
- Feeeed
- Feeder.co (Mozilla-like entry)
- FlipboardProxy
- FreshRSS
- Gofeed
- Miniflux
- NetNewsWire (RSS Reader)
- NewsBlur (NewsBlur Feed Fetcher / Finder)
- Newsboat
- NextCloud-News
- NextReader
- Otter RSS
- Reeder
- ReadYou
- RssServer
- RSS Reader Bot
- RSS-Agent
- RSS Feed Finder / RSSFeedFinder
- RSS Guard
- RSS Mobile
- RSS-Quality-Harvester (News Aggregator)
- RSSOwlnix
- RSSingBot / RSSing
- RSSingBot (rssing.com)
- ScourRSSBot
- Shiori
- SimplePie (Feed Parser)
- Sleuth (by fynd.bot)
- SpaceCowboys Android RSS Reader
- Tiny Tiny RSS (tt-rss)
- TheOldReader (theoldreader.com)
- Unread RSS Reader
- Vienna
- WireReaderBot (wirereader.app)
- Yarr
- Yahoo/Feed-related entries
- UniversalFeedParser (library)
- Fraidycat

Raw list of RSS user agents here

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RSS might be irrelevant on social media, but that doesn't really matter. The technology is simple enough that anyone who cares can implement it on their platform. It's just a fancy XML file. It comes installed and enabled by default on several blogging platforms. It doesn't have to be the de facto standard on the web, just a good way for people who are aware of it to share articles without being at the mercy of dominant platforms.

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