Reddit Ends RSS Feeds and Its Public API: What Changes for You

By Jaspal Singh October 1, 2026 Updated: October 1, 2026

Reddit is switching off RSS feeds on November 13, 2026, and will close its free public API by March 2027. Old Reddit is also being narrowed to moderators and recent users. If you follow subreddits in a feed reader, run a bot, or use tools that read Reddit, your setup must change before those dates.

What Happened

On September 30, 2026, Reddit published a set of announcements in its r/modnews and r/redditdev communities that close several of the last open doors into the site. According to TechCrunch's report on the announcement, RSS feeds for every subreddit stop working on November 13, 2026, and public API access ends by March 2027. Reddit described RSS as "a common surface for large-scale scraping and automated abuse."

The API wind-down has its own timeline. The Next Web lays out the dates: Reddit stops accepting new API access requests on October 31, 2026; third-party apps and bots that have not registered and been approved by January 12, 2027 will be cut off; and the public API closes completely in March 2027. Reddit says more than 14,000 apps and bots are already registered on its Developer Platform, and it is offering $1,000 to each eligible app that completes its migration, paid from a $1 million fund.

The third change concerns Old Reddit, the 21-year-old classic desktop layout at old.reddit.com. Reddit already began requiring a login for it this summer. Engadget reports that "in the next few months" access will be limited further: logged-in moderators keep it, as do people who have used Old Reddit within the past six months. New accounts and anyone who has not used the classic layout in six months will lose it. Reddit says this still covers "the vast majority" of Old Reddit users.

For moderators who use RSS to watch their communities, Reddit points to a Discord Relay app built on its Developer Platform, which pushes new posts into a Discord channel. Regular readers get no direct replacement.

Why It Matters

RSS is one of the oldest ways to follow a website without visiting it. Adding .rss to almost any Reddit URL has produced a machine-readable feed for well over a decade, and feed readers, newsletters, alerting scripts, Slack and Discord integrations, and research tools all lean on it. Ending it is not a cosmetic change. It removes the simplest way to get Reddit content out of Reddit without an account, an approved app or a commercial agreement.

The money explains the timing. TechCrunch notes that Reddit's "other revenue", the business outside advertising, grew 24% year over year to $43 million in the second quarter of 2026, largely from AI data licensing. Reddit signed licensing deals with Google and OpenAI in 2024, and its value to those buyers depends on its conversations not being freely available to everyone else. Every open feed is a way to collect that data without paying for it.

That puts AI assistants in an awkward spot. Many chatbots and AI search tools currently fetch Reddit threads to answer questions like "what do people actually think of this laptop?" Once the public API is gone, TechCrunch says, those products will need a commercial deal with Reddit for its data. Companies that already pay are unaffected; smaller ones may simply lose Reddit as a source.

It is also the end of a long arc. In 2023 Reddit began charging for heavy API use, at $0.24 per 1,000 calls, which forced popular third-party apps such as Apollo to shut down and triggered a site-wide moderator blackout. In mid-2024 it updated its robots.txt to block crawlers that had no agreement with it. This week's announcements close the remaining free routes.

How It Works

To see what is changing, it helps to separate the four ways software reads Reddit today.

RSS feeds

An RSS or Atom feed is a plain XML file listing recent posts with titles, links, authors and timestamps. A feed reader polls it every few minutes and shows anything new. No login or developer key is needed, which is why RSS is convenient for people and equally convenient for scrapers. A scraper can poll thousands of subreddit feeds and rebuild a large slice of the site's new content without ever touching the official API or its rate limits. Reddit has already been throttling feeds that it suspects are automated. After November 13, those URLs stop serving content altogether.

The public Data API

The API is the structured interface behind apps, moderation bots and research tools. Since 2023, developers have needed to register an app and authenticate with OAuth, and high-volume users pay. The free tier has stayed open for low-volume, non-commercial use. Reddit is now closing that tier. Developers who want to keep working with Reddit data have to register and be approved by January 12, 2027 and move to Reddit's own Developer Platform, which it calls Devvit.

Devvit and in-platform apps

Devvit apps run inside Reddit's infrastructure rather than on a developer's server. They can add moderation tools, games and custom post types, and Reddit can see and govern exactly what each app reads. The Discord Relay app Reddit recommends to moderators is an example: instead of an outside script pulling an RSS feed, a Reddit-hosted app pushes selected events out to Discord. The data still leaves Reddit, but on Reddit's terms and through an app it approved.

Old Reddit and logged-in browsing

Old Reddit is a lightweight, server-rendered HTML page, which makes it fast for people on slow connections and easy for scrapers to parse. Requiring a login ties every request to an account, so Reddit can rate-limit or ban misbehaving accounts rather than chasing IP addresses. The new "recent users" rule goes a step further: a scraper cannot simply create fresh accounts to get in, because brand-new accounts will not qualify. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has said the company wants to recreate the classic interface "on a modern foundation so it can live on", which suggests the current code itself has a limited life.

Put together, the pattern is consistent. Every remaining anonymous or low-friction route into Reddit's content either closes or moves behind an account, an approved app, or a paid contract.

What's Still Unknown

Several important details have not been published.

Exact Old Reddit dates. Reddit has only said "the next few months". Coverage also differs on the window, with most outlets reporting six months of recent use, so check Reddit's own r/modnews post for the final rule.
Commercial API pricing. Reddit has not said what approved partners, researchers or AI companies will pay after March 2027, or whether academic access gets any special treatment.
What approval requires. The criteria for an app to be approved by January 12, 2027 have not been spelled out publicly, and developers do not know how long reviews will take.
Whether Discord Relay is enough. RSS fed many tools beyond Discord, including email alerts, Slack and custom dashboards. It is unclear whether Reddit will offer other relay options.
Effect on search and AI answers. It is not yet clear how many AI assistants will strike deals with Reddit and how many will quietly stop citing it.

Frequently Asked Questions

When do Reddit RSS feeds stop working?

Reddit says RSS support ends on November 13, 2026. After that date, feed URLs for subreddits, users and searches will no longer return posts, so feed readers will stop showing new Reddit items. Reddit has not announced a replacement for ordinary readers, so anyone following subreddits this way should plan to use the Reddit app, the website, or email digests instead before the cutoff date.

Is there any replacement for Reddit RSS?

Only for moderators. Reddit recommends a Discord Relay app, built on its Developer Platform, that posts new submissions from a community into a Discord channel. Regular users have no official substitute. Third-party services that convert pages into feeds may try to fill the gap, but they would rely on scraping, which Reddit is actively blocking, so they are unlikely to be reliable for long.

When does Reddit's public API shut down?

Reddit stops accepting new API access requests on October 31, 2026. Apps and bots must be registered and approved by January 12, 2027 or they will be cut off, and the public API closes entirely in March 2027. Developers who want to keep working with Reddit are being directed to its Developer Platform, Devvit, where approved apps run inside Reddit's own infrastructure.

Will I still be able to use Old Reddit?

Probably, if you use it regularly. Reddit says moderators and people who have used Old Reddit within the past six months will keep access, and it estimates that covers the vast majority of current users. New accounts and people who have not opened the classic layout in six months will lose it. You must already be logged in to use Old Reddit at all.

Why is Reddit making these changes?

Reddit says RSS and the old interface have become major channels for large-scale scraping and automated abuse, much of it by AI companies collecting training data. There is also a commercial reason: Reddit earns growing revenue from licensing its content to AI firms, and that business is worth more when the same data cannot be collected freely through open feeds and a free API.

Does this affect ChatGPT and other AI assistants?

Yes, for any assistant that reads Reddit through the public API or scraping. After March 2027, TechCrunch reports, AI products will need a commercial agreement with Reddit to access its conversations. Google and OpenAI already have licensing deals, so their tools may be less affected, while smaller AI search products could lose Reddit threads as a source for answers.

What should moderators and bot developers do now?

Moderators who rely on RSS alerts should set up the Discord Relay app or another Devvit-based tool before November 13. Bot and app developers should register their apps and apply for approval well before January 12, 2027, since new access requests close on October 31. Anyone with a script that reads Reddit should audit it now rather than discover the break later.