Crawling
RSS Feed Parser
Parse RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0 and Atom feeds, normalise their dates and links, and see every problem a feed reader would trip over.
- Fetched live by our server
- Nothing stored
The tool
Enter a feed URL, or paste the XML. Pasted feeds never leave your browser.
Loading the tool…
The URL you enter is sent to our server, which requests that page from the public internet and returns the response to your browser for analysis. We do not store the URL or the response, and we do not add either to analytics. Requests come from our server, not from your device or from the crawlers being simulated, so a site that blocks data-centre addresses or verifies crawlers by IP may answer differently.
What this tool checks
- Fetches the feed and reports its status, redirects and content type, or reads pasted XML
- Detects RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0 (RDF) and Atom 1.0 and reads the channel title, link, description, language and update time
- Normalises RFC 822 and RFC 3339 dates and lists any that cannot be read
- Resolves relative links against xml:base and the feed link, and flags invalid and non-HTTPS links
- Reads authors, categories and enclosures such as podcast audio files
- Warns about missing required fields, duplicate GUIDs, HTML in titles and malformed XML
How to read the results
- Check the response panel. A feed served as text/html, or with an error status, will fail in most readers.
- Read the feed summary to confirm the format and the number of entries found.
- Work through the warnings. Missing titles or links, unreadable dates and duplicate GUIDs cause the most trouble in readers and aggregators.
- Search, sort or page through the entries, then export them as CSV or JSON if you need them elsewhere.
About this tool
RSS, Atom and RDF
A web feed is an XML document listing a site’s recent items: articles, episodes, products or updates. Three formats are still in common use. RSS 2.0 wraps items in a channel element and uses pubDate with an RFC 822 date such as Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT. Atom 1.0, standardised as RFC 4287, uses feed and entry elements, ISO 8601 timestamps and a required unique id for every entry. RSS 1.0 is built on RDF and is mostly found on older systems.
WordPress publishes RSS 2.0 at /feed/ and Atom at /feed/atom/, with further feeds per category, tag and author.
What breaks feeds most often
- Malformed XML. A single unescaped ampersand, a stray character before the XML declaration or a PHP warning printed into the output stops the whole feed from parsing.
- Unreadable dates. Dates in local formats such as
20/10/2026are not valid in either format, so readers sort or display those items incorrectly. - Relative links. RSS 2.0 expects full URLs. Atom allows relative links resolved against
xml:base, but many consumers still mishandle them. - Duplicate or changing GUIDs. Readers use the GUID or id to recognise items they have already shown. If it changes, old items reappear as new.
- Wrong content type. Feeds served as
text/html, or blocked by a firewall for non-browser clients, may never reach the reader.
A minimal valid RSS 2.0 feed
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>Example News</title>
<link>https://example.com/</link>
<description>Updates from Example</description>
<item>
<title>Spring launch</title>
<link>https://example.com/news/spring</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://example.com/news/spring</guid>
<pubDate>Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>Feeds and search
Search engines can use RSS and Atom feeds to discover new URLs, and Google accepts feeds submitted in Search Console as a form of sitemap. A feed lists only recent items, so it complements rather than replaces an XML sitemap. Keep the feed’s links canonical and its dates accurate, and make sure your robots.txt does not block the feed URL.
Safe parsing
Feeds come from outside your control, so this parser takes care with them. Remote feeds are fetched by our server with the same protections as every other tool here, and the XML is parsed in your browser by its built-in parser, which never loads external entities or document type definitions. Nothing in the feed is executed.
Limits and honest caveats
- Feeds larger than the fetch limit set by the site are cut off, which usually makes the XML invalid. Paste a smaller excerpt in that case.
- Parsing uses your browser's XML parser, which never loads external entities or DTDs. Feeds that depend on custom entities will report as malformed.
- The parser reads the common elements of each format and the Dublin Core author and date fields. Extensions such as iTunes podcast tags are not listed individually.
- A feed that is valid here can still be rejected by a particular service with stricter rules of its own.
What people use it for
- Checking why a podcast directory or feed reader rejects a feed
- Exporting a blog's recent posts to a spreadsheet
- Confirming that dates and links are correct after a CMS migration
- Reviewing a feed before submitting it to an aggregator or Search Console
- Inspecting a competitor's publishing schedule from their public feed
Documentation and references
Related tools
Questions
Questions about this tool
The things clients actually want to know — costs, timelines, ownership and what happens after launch.
RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0 (RDF) and Atom 1.0, which together cover almost every feed in use.
Usually an unescaped character such as &, text printed before the XML declaration, or a truncated file. The parser message shows where it stopped.
Google accepts RSS and Atom feeds in Search Console, but they only list recent items. Use them alongside a full XML sitemap.
No. Pasted XML is parsed in your browser. Only feeds you fetch by URL go through our server, and nothing is stored.
RSS needs RFC 822 dates and Atom needs RFC 3339 timestamps. Local formats such as 20/10/2026 match neither.
Documentation last reviewed: by the Best Web Developer engineering team.
Free strategy session
Let’s build something worth finding.
Tell us where you want the business to be in twelve months. We will come back with a costed plan, a realistic timeline, and the numbers we expect to move — no obligation, no jargon.
- 30-minute call, no pitch deck
- Fixed-price proposal in 48 hours
- You own everything we build
Talk to a developer
Not a sales team
- Response time
- Within 1 business hour
- Where we work
- UK, USA & the Gulf
- Contracts
- No lock-in, monthly rolling
- Working since
- 2023