Reddit Ends RSS Feeds as It Tightens Data Access

Reddit is closing two long-used ways to follow and build on its conversations. The company says RSS feeds will stop working on November 13, 2026. It is also moving developers away from its remaining public Data API access, with that transition scheduled to finish in March 2027. The dates are different, but the direction is the same: more of Reddit will be accessible only through routes the company controls.

In an update to moderators, Reddit said it is retiring RSS as part of changes to its infrastructure and efforts to limit automated abuse. RSS is a simple feed format that lets readers receive new posts in a feed reader without repeatedly visiting a website. It has also been useful to researchers, community managers and anyone who wants a chronological view of a subreddit without relying on an app’s recommendations.

Reddit pointed moderators towards Discord Relay for some alerts, but that is not a replacement for the public RSS feeds people use to follow communities. A reader who currently keeps track of several subreddits in an RSS app will need a different routine after November 13. Reddit also plans to narrow access to Old Reddit, its older interface, to logged-in moderators and people who have used it recently. The company said that recent-use window will be six months.

The developer change is separate. In a notice to developers, Reddit said it will stop accepting new requests for public Data API access on October 31, 2026. Unregistered developer access begins to go away on January 12, 2027, while remaining public access is due to end in March. Reddit wants apps and bots moved onto its Developer Platform, where it says about 14,000 registered apps and bots already operate.

That does not mean every third-party use of Reddit data disappears overnight. Existing arrangements and tools have their own terms, and developers have months to review the migration. Still, it changes the default expectation. For years, a public feed or API was a relatively straightforward way to build useful services around an online community. Now creators must work within Reddit’s approved platform, and readers lose a particularly open way to follow posts.

Reddit’s argument is that open access also makes large-scale scraping easier. That concern is not abstract for the company, which has been fighting over how AI firms collect and use its content. Its dispute with Anthropic over Reddit data shows why the platform sees conversations as valuable material, not merely pages that anyone can copy at scale. But there is a real distinction between an industrial scraper and a person checking a community in a feed reader. The policy reaches both.

For developers, the practical question is whether Reddit’s new tools can preserve the moderation bots, accessibility projects and niche apps that made communities easier to use. For readers, the immediate question is simpler: how will they follow the communities they care about once RSS stops? Reddit has offered a timetable for the change. It has not offered an equivalent open substitute for that everyday use.