Substack RSS Feed: URL, Paid Posts and Uses
By the newsletterapi team · Published · Updated · 5 min read
The problem: “I just want my latest Substack posts to show up on my website and in my other tools, without hacks.”
Short answer
Every Substack publication has a public RSS feed at https://yourname.substack.com/feed, or at yourdomain.com/feed on a custom domain. As of October 2026 the feeds we checked held the 20 most recent posts. Free posts carry their full HTML, and paid posts stop at the paywall with a "Read more" link.
The problem
Writers and the people who build their sites want Substack posts to show up elsewhere: on a company site, a personal blog or a Slack channel. When they try, they hit walls:
"Between the Substack CORS blocks and Substack blocking Azure addresses, where the corporate website is hosted, there isn't a decent way of share Substack post information with the corporate website." (r/Substack, 2025-09-08)
"Every time I post an X article, claude takes it and posts it in beehiiv, substack, medium, linkedin and my personal blog" (X, 2026-10-16)
This is a niche pain rather than a mass one. In our October 2026 review of public developer threads, problems reading Substack (rate limits, format changes, RSS errors such as an n8n "RSS feed returns 403" thread) came up in 8 of the 23 developer sources. It is still where most "show my posts elsewhere" projects start.
The fix for most of these jobs is the feed Substack already publishes. RSS is the oldest and most reliable way to get posts out of Substack. Every publication has a feed, it needs no login, and almost every reader app and automation tool understands it. Here is how to find yours and what it actually contains, as of October 2026.
What is the URL of a Substack RSS feed?
Substack's help centre gives one line: "You can find the RSS feed for your publication at https://your.substack.com/feed" (Substack Help). Replace your with your subdomain.
| Your setup | Feed URL | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Substack subdomain | https://yourname.substack.com/feed |
garymarcus.substack.com/feed |
| Custom domain | https://www.yourdomain.com/feed |
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/feed |
On a custom domain the feed simply follows the domain. We confirmed this by reading The Pragmatic Engineer's feed on its custom domain once on 2026-10-21, and it returned a normal RSS document. Substack hosts custom domains on a subdomain such as www, with the root domain redirecting to it (Substack Help). Use the www form in feed readers to avoid a redirect.
To find the feed for any publication you read, take its home page address and add /feed.
What does a Substack RSS feed include?
We read two public feeds once each on 2026-10-21, at a polite pace, to check the structure: Marcus on AI and The Pragmatic Engineer. Both returned 20 items, the most recent posts. Substack's own importer documentation warns about the same pattern on other platforms: "Some platforms will only include the most recent posts, such as the latest 20 posts, in their RSS" (Substack Help).
Each item in the feeds we read carried these fields:
| Field | What it holds |
|---|---|
title |
Post title |
description |
The post subtitle or teaser |
link and guid |
The post URL |
dc:creator |
Author name |
pubDate |
Publication date |
enclosure |
The post's cover image (type image/jpeg in our sample) |
content:encoded |
The post body as HTML |
The channel also includes publication details and podcast tags (iTunes and Google Play), because Substack uses the same feed format for podcasts.
Do paid posts appear in the Substack RSS feed?
Yes, but only up to the paywall. In the Marcus on AI feed, the paid post "Generative AI in disarray" carried roughly two dozen words of body text, followed by a "Read more" link back to the post. Another post with a mid-article paywall stopped at the line just before it. Free posts carried their full HTML.
| Post type | In the feed? | Body text |
|---|---|---|
| Free post | Yes | Full HTML |
| Paid post | Yes | Truncated at the paywall, plus a "Read more" link |
| Older posts beyond the latest 20 | No | – |
| Notes | Not in the publication feed we read | – |
This is deliberate and good for writers: the feed promotes paid posts without giving them away. Paid subscribers who want full text should read in the Substack app or by email.
How do I use my Substack RSS feed with Zapier, IFTTT or my website?
The feed is the official, public way to reuse your own posts elsewhere:
| Use | How | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Feed readers (Feedly, NetNewsWire, Inoreader) | Paste the /feed URL |
Works for any public publication |
| Zapier | "RSS by Zapier" → New Item in Feed | Default dedupe is "Different Guid/URL (recommended)" (Zapier Help) |
| IFTTT | Use the RSS service with your feed, or IFTTT's Substack service | IFTTT lists New post by user and New note by user triggers, both polling (IFTTT) |
| Your website | Fetch the feed server-side and render the latest posts | See embedding Substack posts on your website |
| Cross-posting | Feed → Zapier → LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, X | Post a link and teaser, not the full text. More recipes in Substack integrations |
| Moving into Substack | Substack's importer accepts RSS from other platforms | Only what the source feed holds is imported (Substack Help) |
A simple Zapier recipe
- Create a Zap with RSS by Zapier → New Item in Feed.
- Paste
https://yourname.substack.com/feed. - Keep the default "Different Guid/URL" option, so each new post fires once.
- Add an action, such as posting the title, link and description to Slack or LinkedIn.
- Test it with your latest post.
Why isn't my Substack RSS feed working the way I expected?
- Only recent posts. The feeds we read held 20 items. For your full archive, use Substack's export (see our Substack backup guide).
- Paid text is truncated. That is by design.
- No browser access from other sites. The responses we read carried no
Access-Control-Allow-Originheader, so JavaScript on another domain can't read them. That is the CORS wall the developer quoted above ran into (r/Substack). Fetch the feed on your server or at build time, cache it, and refresh it on a schedule. - No subscriber data. RSS carries posts, never emails or stats. For those, see exporting Substack subscribers.
- Polite use only. Reading your own feed every few minutes is normal. Pulling many publications' feeds in bulk to rebuild their archives is not: Substack's Terms of Use prohibit crawling or scraping and storing "any significant portion of the content on Substack".
What if I need more than RSS gives me?
RSS answers "what are my latest posts?" well. It doesn't answer "give me post 143 as JSON", "search my archive" or "let my AI assistant read my newsletter". For those jobs the newsletterapi Posts API and MCP server connect to your own publication by URL. If you need them, get access.
Questions people ask
- What is my Substack RSS feed URL?
- Add /feed to your publication's address: https://yourname.substack.com/feed, or https://www.yourdomain.com/feed if you use a custom domain.
- Does the Substack RSS feed include paid posts?
- It lists them, but the text stops where the paywall starts and ends with a "Read more" link. Readers need to visit the post to read the rest.
- How many posts are in a Substack RSS feed?
- The two public feeds we read on 2026-10-21 each held 20 items, the most recent posts. Older posts are not in the feed, so it is not a backup.
- Can I use my Substack RSS feed with Zapier?
- Yes. RSS by Zapier has a "New Item in Feed" trigger that fires when a new URL appears in the feed. As of October 2026 Substack has no Zapier app of its own, so RSS is the usual route.
- Can I read a Substack feed with JavaScript in the browser?
- Usually not directly. The feed responses we checked sent no Access-Control-Allow-Origin header, so browsers block cross-site reads. Fetch the feed on a server, or at build time, and cache it.
Sources
- Substack Help: Is there an RSS feed for my publication? (accessed 2026-10-21)
- Substack Help: How do I set up my custom domain on Substack? (accessed 2026-10-21)
- Substack Help: How do I import my posts from another platform? (accessed 2026-10-21)
- Marcus on AI (Gary Marcus): public RSS feed, read once (accessed 2026-10-21)
- The Pragmatic Engineer: public RSS feed on a custom domain, read once (accessed 2026-10-21)
- Zapier Help: Trigger Zaps from new RSS feed items (accessed 2026-10-21)
- IFTTT: Substack integrations (accessed 2026-10-21)
- r/Substack: Advice for RSS / API (corporate site) (accessed 2026-10-21)
- X post by @AunySillyMe on cross-posting (accessed 2026-10-21)
- n8n Community: RSS feed returns 403 (accessed 2026-10-21)
- Substack Terms of Use (accessed 2026-10-21)
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