RSS & Feed API
The RSS & Feed API is a universal RSS, Atom and JSON Feed reader that returns clean JSON.
🤖 Using an AI assistant? Copy this link into ChatGPT / Claude / Cursor — it reads every endpoint and parameter instantly and tells you if this API fits your use case.
The primary fetch endpoint returns a feed's metadata (title, link, description, language, updated, image, author) and its entries in a normalized shape regardless of source format, and you can discover a site's feeds, merge several feeds, search and batch. It is built for readers, content pipelines and monitoring tools that need normalized feed data without handling three feed formats. One ReefAPI key, one shared credit pool, the standard envelope.
One item schema across three feed formats, and where each action's limits sit
The point of this engine is that an RSS 2.0 item, an Atom entry and a JSON Feed object come back with the same keys, so you write one parser. What is not normalized is the item id, which stays in the source feed's own shape. This table records format detection, date handling, the dedup arithmetic and the per-action caps, all from live calls on 2026-08-27.
| Thing | Behavior | Measured |
|---|---|---|
| feed.format | Auto-detected, and also echoed as meta.format | The BBC world feed came back "rss2.0", github.com/python/cpython/releases.atom came back "atom", and daringfireball.net/feeds/json came back "json-feed". |
| items[].published | Always ISO 8601 UTC with a Z, whatever the source format used | "2026-08-26T11:32:11Z" from an RFC-822 RSS date, "2026-08-12T13:57:54Z" from an Atom RFC-3339 date, "2026-08-26T20:18:04Z" from JSON Feed. updated is frequently null even when published is set. |
| items[].id | The feed's own identifier, passed through, and the one field whose shape varies by source | RSS: the article link with a "#0" suffix. Atom: "tag:github.com,2008:Repository/81598961/v3.12.14". JSON Feed: the permalink URL. A Megaphone podcast: a bare UUID. |
| summary against content_html | summary is always clean plain text; the raw HTML body only arrives with include_content=true | content_html is capped at 30 KB. Leaving include_content off is the difference between a 20 KB response and a multi-megabyte one. |
| Podcast fields | Present only on iTunes-flavored feeds | The Vergecast returned feed.podcast {explicit: false, type: "episodic", owner: "Vox Media Podcast Network"}, item.podcast {episode_type: "full", duration_seconds: 1065} and enclosures[0].type "audio/mpeg". |
| merge dedup | Canonical link key with tracking parameters stripped; limit is applied after dedup | The same BBC feed under two URLs (rss.xml and rss.xml?v=2) gave total_before_dedup 54, unique_after_dedup 27, removed_duplicates 27. With dedup:false the same call gave 54 / 54 / 0. |
| since / until | ISO date or datetime, filtered before limit is applied | since 2026-08-26 on a 27-item BBC feed returned item_count 17 while total_items still reported 27. |
| Caps | fetch and search 100 items, merge 200, batch 20 feeds, merge and search 10 URLs, discover 20 feeds | Out-of-range integers are clamped rather than rejected: limit 500 returned ok:true with all 27 items the feed had. |
| Bad enum value | Rejected, with the legal values in the error detail | sort_by "bogus" returned INVALID_PARAM, message "invalid value 'bogus' for 'sort_by'", detail.allowed ["feed_order", "published", "title", "author"], retryable false. |
sort_by defaults to feed_order, so fetch, search and batch return items in the publisher's own order rather than newest-first. Pass sort_by=published when you need chronology. merge is the exception: it is date-sorted by construction and only takes sort_dir.
Real request and response JSON
Captured from the indexed primary action, search, on .
{
"method": "POST",
"url": "https://api.reefapi.com/feed-gateway/v1/search",
"headers": {
"x-api-key": "$REEF_KEY",
"content-type": "application/json"
},
"body": {
"url": "https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/rss.xml",
"query": "a e i o u",
"match": "any"
}
}{
"ok": true,
"meta": {
"api": "feed-gateway",
"endpoint": "search",
"mode": "live",
"latency_ms": 677.8,
"record_count": 30,
"bytes": 23101,
"cache_hit": false,
"ssrf_guarded": true,
"scanned": 30,
"feeds_total": 1
},
"data": {
"items": [
{
"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyxlm877p2o#0",
"title": "Russian online retail warehouses hit by deadly Ukrainian strikes",
"link": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyxlm877p2o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss",
"published": "[redacted-phone]T13:06:25Z",
"updated": null,
"author": null,
"summary": "Drones targeted Wildberries facilities near Moscow and in Tambov. Ukraine's leader called them \"major logistics facilities\" supplying \"sanctioned components\".",
"categories": [],
"enclosures": [],
"image": "https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/240/cpsprodpb/82d1/live/dae460c0-82a9-11f1-b976-0b9c15b0ccfc.jpg"
},
{
"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg8w4dpjkwo#0",
"title": "Many Ukrainian soldiers outraged over removal of defence minister, troops tell BBC",
"link": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg8w4dpjkwo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss",
"published": "[redacted-phone]T19:04:09Z",
"updated": null,
"author": null,
"summary": "Protests erupted in Ukraine on Thursday after Mykhailo Fedorov's removal - and now soldiers are also criticising the move.",
"categories": [],
"enclosures": [],
"image": "https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/240/cpsprodpb/0d83/live/2d7f0f[redacted-phone]f1-bee8-53ce494e1abc.jpg"
},
{
"id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy748n8zx8ro#0",
"title": "US strikes hit Iran for seventh consecutive night",
"link": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy748n8zx8ro?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss",
"published": "[redacted-phone]T16:56:34Z",
"updated": null,
"author": null,
"summary": "Iran has retaliated against US allies in the region, with Kuwait reporting that a power and water plant had been hit.",
"categories": [],
"enclosures": [],
"image": "https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/240/cpsprodpb/bd47/live/65f[redacted-phone]f1-b976-0b9c15b0ccfc.jpg"
}
],
"item_count": 30,
"total_scanned": 30,
"query": "a e i o u"
}
}What the RSS & Feed API does
| Action | Description | Concrete use case | Key params |
|---|---|---|---|
| fetch | Fetch ONE feed URL (RSS 2.0/0.9x, RSS 1.0/RDF, Atom, JSON-Feed 1.1 — auto-detected) and normalise it into one clean JSON schema. Broken XML, HTML entities, encoding mess and truncated feeds are repaired automatically (recovery step reported in meta). | Content platforms call fetch to fetch ONE feed URL (RSS 2.0/0.9x, RSS 1.0/RDF, Atom, JSON-Feed 1.1. | url, limit, sort_by, sort_dir, include_content, ... |
| discover | Find the feeds of ANY website: parses <link rel=alternate> tags + visible anchor hints, then probes common feed paths at BOTH the host root (/feed, /rss.xml, /atom.xml, /index.xml, …) AND under the given path (e.g. /r/programming/.rss). Every candidate is fetched and VERIFIED as a real parseable feed before being returned — so it works even on sites that don't declare a feed link-tag. | Research tools call discover to find the feeds of ANY website. | url, probe, limit |
| merge | Merge up to 10 feeds into ONE de-duplicated, date-sorted stream. Duplicates are detected on a canonical link key (tracking params stripped) falling back to guid/title. Each item carries its source_feed. | Community analysts call merge to get merge up to 10 feeds into ONE de-duplicated, date-sorted stream. | urls, limit, sort_dir, dedup, since, ... |
| search | Keyword-filter feed items (like RSSHub filter / Feedly search, but no account). Searches title/summary/author/categories (and content_html when include_content=true); multi-word queries match any or all terms; exclude= drops unwanted items. | Media monitors call search to get keyword-filter feed items (like RSSHub filter / Feedly search, but no account). | url, urls, query, exclude, fields, ... |
| batch | Fetch up to 20 feeds in ONE call (concurrent, fault-isolated): each feed returns independently with its own ok/error — one dead feed never fails the batch. | Content platforms call batch to fetch up to 20 feeds in ONE call (concurrent, fault-isolated). | urls, limit, include_content, sort_by, sort_dir |
Call search from your stack
curl -X POST https://api.reefapi.com/feed-gateway/v1/search \
-H "x-api-key: $REEF_KEY" \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"url":"https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/rss.xml","query":"a e i o u","match":"any"}'import requests
r = requests.post(
"https://api.reefapi.com/feed-gateway/v1/search",
headers={"x-api-key": REEF_KEY},
json={
"url": "https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/rss.xml",
"query": "a e i o u",
"match": "any"
},
)
print(r.json()["data"])const res = await fetch("https://api.reefapi.com/feed-gateway/v1/search", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"x-api-key": process.env.REEF_KEY,
"content-type": "application/json",
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"url": "https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/rss.xml",
"query": "a e i o u",
"match": "any"
}),
});
const { ok, data, meta, error } = await res.json();Ask your MCP-connected assistant: call reefapi.feed-gateway.search with {"url":"https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/rss.xml","query":"a e i o u","match":"any"}.Who uses this API and why
- Feed readers call fetch to normalize RSS, Atom and JSON feeds into one schema.
- Content pipelines use merge to combine many sources into a single sorted stream.
- Monitoring tools use discover and batch to find and poll every feed for a set of sites.
Questions developers ask before integrating
I passed a website URL to fetch and got PARSE_ERROR.
fetch takes a feed URL, not a site URL. A fetch of https://example.com returned ok:false with error code PARSE_ERROR, retryable false, and the message "url returned an HTML page, not a feed, try the discover action". That is exactly the right next step: discover takes the site URL and hands back feed URLs you can then fetch.
Can discover find a feed on a site that blocks scrapers?
Often, yes, because it does not depend on reading the page. A discover call on reddit.com/r/programming reported page_status 403, meaning the HTML page itself was refused, and still returned https://www.reddit.com/r/programming.rss with 25 items after checking 18 candidates. The discovered_via field tells you which route worked: "link-tag" when the page declared the feed, which is how theverge.com resolved, and "probe" when a common path was guessed and then verified by parsing it.
What does discover return for a site with no feed at all?
Success with nothing in it. example.com returned ok:true, feeds [], count 0, candidates_checked 15 and meta.record_count 0. There is no error to catch, so branch on count rather than on ok. candidates_checked tells you how much was tried before giving up, which was 15 to 18 probes across the calls we made.
How does merge decide that two items are the same story?
On a canonical link key with tracking parameters stripped, falling back to guid or title. Measured directly: the same BBC feed requested under two different URLs produced total_before_dedup 54, unique_after_dedup 27 and removed_duplicates 27. The two genuinely different BBC feeds, world and technology, overlapped on nothing that day, giving 47 in, 47 out and 0 removed. Those four counters are in every merge response, so you can always see what was collapsed.
Both my feeds are called BBC News. How do I tell items apart?
Every merged item carries source_feed {url, title}, and the url is what distinguishes them. In a merge of the BBC world and technology feeds, both entries in the feeds[] array reported title "BBC News" while source_feed.url on each item pointed at the specific feed it came from. Key on source_feed.url, never on the title.
How does keyword search across feeds behave?
search accepts either url or urls (up to 10) and reports what it looked at. "trump ukraine" with match=any over the BBC world feed returned item_count 6 with total_scanned 27. "ai data" with match=all over BBC world plus the Hacker News frontpage returned item_count 1 with total_scanned 47. Matching is case-insensitive substring over title and summary by default; adding "content" to fields only helps if you also set include_content true, because otherwise there is no body to search.
Can I use search as a pure blocklist?
Yes. Pass an empty query with exclude set and it becomes an exclusion filter. Measured: an empty query with exclude="trump" over a 27-item BBC feed returned item_count 23 out of total_scanned 27, and echoed query back as null. That is the equivalent of an RSS filter-out rule, without an account.
What happens to one dead feed inside a batch?
It is isolated and reported, and the call still succeeds. A batch of three URLs where one host does not resolve returned ok:true with feed_count 3, ok_count 2 and meta.feeds_ok 2. The bad entry came back as {url, ok: false, feed: null, item_count: 0, error: {code: "NOT_FOUND", message: "host ... does not resolve"}}. Check each result's own ok flag rather than the outer one.
What is the RSS & Feed API?
RSS & Feed API is a ReefAPI endpoint group for rss & feed It returns live JSON through POST requests under /feed-gateway/v1.
Is the RSS & Feed API free to try?
Yes. ReefAPI starts with 1,000 free credits, no card required. RSS & Feed calls use the same shared credit balance as every other ReefAPI engine.
Do I need a RSS & Feed login or account?
No login to RSS & Feed is needed for the API response. You call ReefAPI with your x-api-key header, and the playground can run live examples before you create a production key.
How fresh is the RSS & Feed data?
The page example is captured from a live fetch call, and production requests fetch live data through ReefAPI rather than a static sample.
How many credits does the RSS & Feed API use?
RSS & Feed actions currently cost 1 credit per successful call. Failed or blocked calls are free, and all APIs draw from one credit pool.
Can I call RSS & Feed from an AI assistant or MCP client?
Yes. Connect ReefAPI once through MCP and your assistant can call feed-gateway actions with the same key, credit pool and JSON envelope used by normal REST requests.