How to Find an RSS Feed for Any Website

Quick Answer

Short answer: To find an RSS feed for any website, look for the RSS icon or footer link, try common URLs like /feed, /rss, or /atom.xml, check the page source for rss link tags, search the web, or paste the site address into RSS Wrangler for automatic discovery.

RSS is one of the oldest and most reliable technologies on the web. Invented at Netscape in 1999, standardised through RSS 2.0 in 2002 and still the engine behind podcasting today, it lets you subscribe to any site’s updates and read them in one place, in chronological order, with no algorithm and no tracking.

The catch: many sites stopped advertising their feed. The little orange icon disappeared from most toolbars and footers, so newcomers assume the site does not have one. In most cases it does. Here is how to find it.

Method 1: Look for the icon or link

Start with the obvious. Scroll to the footer of the site and look for the RSS icon (the orange square with radio waves) or a link labelled RSS, Feed, Subscribe or Atom. Blogs, news sites and documentation hubs often keep the link even when they have removed the icon from the header.

Some sites have a dedicated feeds page, commonly at /feeds, /rss or /feed.

Method 2: Try the standard feed URLs

Most publishing platforms (WordPress, Ghost, Medium clones, static site generators and so on) expose their feed at predictable addresses. Type these after the domain name:

• /feed or /feed/: WordPress sites
• /rss or /rss.xml
• /atom.xml or /index.xml: static sites and blogs
• /feeds/posts/default: Blogger
• /rss.xml: many news sites

Try these directly in a new tab. If you see a wall of angle-bracketed XML, you have found the feed. Copy that URL into your reader.

Method 3: Check the page source

Nearly every modern site declares its feed inside the HTML even if it is not visible. Open the site, then view the page source (Ctrl + U in Chrome) and search for rss or atom. You are looking for a line like:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="https://example.com/feed.xml" />

The href is your feed. Right-click and copy the link or copy the whole URL.

Method 4: Let your reader auto-discover it

You do not have to do any of this by hand. RSS readers with auto-discovery check the page for you. With RSS Wrangler, just paste the website’s address into the search box instead of a feed URL. If the site publishes a feed, RSS Wrangler finds it (looking for application/rss+xml and then application/atom+xml link tags) and adds it for you. You will see “Feed link discovered!”.

The fastest way to find a feed is to stop hunting and let your reader do it.

Method 5: Search for it

A quick search engine query can surface hidden feeds too. Try site:example.com rss or search for example.com "application/rss+xml". Community directories and feed-finding tools can also index a site’s feed when the site itself will not show it.

What if there really is no feed?

Some sites genuinely do not publish one, usually JavaScript-heavy apps or paywalled platforms. Your options:

• Check if the site offers an email newsletter; some services convert those into feeds.
• Look for a third-party mirror or aggregator of the same content.
• Use the follow feature built into Chrome on Android or Microsoft Edge, which can surface updates for feed-less sites via their infrastructure.

But more often than you would think, the feed was there all along, just hidden from view.

FAQ

What is the difference between RSS and Atom? They are two XML formats that achieve the same thing: syndicated updates. Any modern reader, including RSS Wrangler, handles both.

Is it legal to subscribe to a feed? Feeds are published specifically for subscription. You are using the site the way it intends.

Can I follow a YouTube channel or podcast via RSS? Many readers let you subscribe to YouTube channels and podcasts through RSS under the hood; the standard powers podcasting itself.

Summary

Finding a feed is usually a matter of a few seconds: look for the icon, try /feed, check the source or simply paste the site into a reader that auto-discovers feeds. Once you are subscribed, the site comes to you, with every update in order and without the algorithm.

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