What is an RSS feed?
Quick answer
An RSS feed is a special web address that lists a site's newest posts, articles or episodes in a fixed format, so a reader app or an automation can check it for anything new. Nothing has to be scraped: the site publishes the list itself, and anyone can read it.
Last updated
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Updated · By Robert Breen
Why it matters for a small business
Monitoring is where RSS earns its keep. A marketing team wants every new post in a niche forum, a law office wants new rulings from a court blog, an accounting firm wants each new tax notice. Checking those sites by hand every morning eats time and still misses things. An RSS feed lets a workflow pull the list on a schedule and pass only the new items to AI or to Slack.
Because a feed is free and needs no key, it is often the first thing people build on, and the thing they forget is fragile. The site can change or remove it at any time. Reddit is switching off its RSS feeds on November 13, 2026, according to ProLevelMax, and every workflow that reads a subreddit that way will quietly stop getting posts. Nothing errors loudly. The summaries just go blank.
Maya's morning workflow, before and after
| Step | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | Schedule Trigger, weekdays at 8:00 AM | Same |
| Get posts | RSS Read node on the r/smallbusiness new feed | HTTP Request node calling ProLevelMax |
| Summarize | OpenAI sums up what owners are asking | Same, from a trimmed list of posts |
| Share | Slack post in #marketing | Same |
In a real lesson: ProLevelMax in n8n: Keep Your Reddit Workflow Alive After the RSS Shutdown
The ProLevelMax Reddit lesson starts with Maya Chen's workflow at Tallgrass Books, a made-up bookkeeping app. A Schedule Trigger fires every weekday at 8:00 AM, an RSS Read node reads the r/smallbusiness feed, OpenAI writes a summary and Slack posts it. Her blog and ad ideas come from that summary.
The lesson puts the cost of losing it at about 30 minutes a day of reading by hand, roughly $540 a month at $50 an hour (example numbers). The fix swaps only one node: the RSS Read node goes, and an HTTP Request node calls the ProLevelMax Subreddit feed source instead, at $0.003 per call. The trigger, the AI step and Slack stay exactly as they were.
Try this lesson free or read the step-by-step guide.
Common confusions
RSS feed vs webhook
With RSS, your workflow goes and checks the list on a schedule. With a webhook, the other app sends you each event the moment it happens.
RSS feed vs web scraping
A feed is data the site publishes for machines. Web scraping reads the pages built for people, which is why it breaks more often.
Tips
- List every workflow that reads a feed, so you know what breaks if one is switched off.
- Run the replacement side by side with the old feed for a few days before the cutoff date.
- Add a check that alerts you when a scheduled run returns zero items.
Related terms
More n8n and automation terms
Where you use it: free lessons
- ProLevelMax in n8n: Keep Your Reddit Workflow Alive After the RSS Shutdown (n8n, 9 min)
- n8n: Run a Workflow on a Schedule (Every Monday at 8am) (n8n, 6 min)
AI tools that use it
Frequently asked questions
- When does Reddit turn off RSS?
- ProLevelMax puts the date at November 13, 2026. After that, n8n workflows that read Reddit with the RSS Read node stop getting posts.
- What can replace a Reddit RSS feed in n8n?
- An HTTP Request node that calls a data API. The free lesson uses the ProLevelMax Subreddit feed source, which returns the newest posts of one subreddit for $0.003 per call.
- Do RSS feeds need an API key?
- No. A feed is a public address anyone can read, which is why it is easy to start with and why the site can switch it off without warning.