1. RSS Market Context: The Protocol That Refused to Die
The Numbers
| RSS feed market size (2025) | $2.54B, projected $4.5B by 2035 (5.9% CAGR) |
|---|---|
| RSS reader market size (2024) | $300M, projected $500M by 2033 (6.3% CAGR) |
| Websites offering RSS feeds | ~30% of all websites (W3Techs); ~250K active news/blog/podcast feeds indexed |
| RSS reader adoption growth | 34% year-over-year (2024) |
| Podcast industry (built on RSS) | $32.5B (2025), projected $114B+ by 2030 |
| Podcast advertising (delivered via RSS) | $3.56B (2025), 84% using dynamic ad insertion via RSS |
| Media monitoring market (RSS-powered) | ~$5.7B (2025) |
The “RSS Is Dead” Narrative vs. Reality
On July 1, 2013, Google shut down Google Reader. The product had been “successful and growing” according to its own team, but Google wanted to consolidate around Google+. The shutdown didn’t just kill a product — it killed an ecosystem. Google Reader had become the RSS client, which meant it had quietly killed off the independent RSS reader market. When it died, alternatives weren’t well developed, and users migrated to Twitter.
But RSS never died. It went underground:
- Every podcast in the world distributes via RSS. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast — they all read RSS feeds. The $32B+ podcast industry is literally built on RSS.
- Every Substack newsletter has an RSS feed. So does every WordPress blog (43% of all websites).
- YouTube channels have RSS feeds (most people don’t know this).
- Reddit subreddits have RSS feeds (append
.rssto any subreddit URL). - GitHub repositories have RSS feeds for releases, commits, and tags.
- Government sites publish RSS extensively — SEC EDGAR updates every 10 minutes via RSS, USDA publishes agricultural statistics via RSS.
- Mastodon accounts all have RSS feeds. Every account on the fediverse is subscribable.
- arXiv and PubMed publish new papers via RSS. Researchers have used RSS for decades.
Five Forces Driving the RSS Renaissance (2024–2026)
- 1. Algorithmic Feed Fatigue
- Average daily social media time dropped from 151 to 141 minutes (2022–2024) — the first multi-year decline ever recorded. Twitter/X’s post-Musk algorithmic changes, Instagram’s pivot to Reels, and Facebook’s decline all push users toward curated, user-controlled feeds.
- 2. The Newsletter Boom (and Fatigue)
- Substack hit 50M subscribers. But only 17% of US adults pay for digital news, and inbox clutter is real. RSS provides a way to follow newsletters without the email overhead. Every Substack, Ghost, and Buttondown newsletter has an RSS feed.
- 3. AI Makes Feeds Useful Again
- RSS’s core problem was always information overload — hundreds of feeds, thousands of articles. AI summarization, smart prioritization, and trend detection (Feedly Leo, Inoreader Intelligence, Readwise Ghostreader) finally solve this. RAG pipelines use RSS as a structured data ingestion layer.
- 4. Platform Crackdowns
- Twitter/X and Reddit restricted or killed third-party API access, making RSS more reliable for following content programmatically. RSSHub (5,000+ global instances, 38.9K GitHub stars) generates feeds from sites that don’t offer them natively.
- 5. Fediverse & Decentralization
- Mastodon, Bluesky, and ActivityPub share RSS’s philosophical DNA — open, decentralized, user-controlled. Flipboard fully federated via ActivityPub in 2024. Meta Threads supports ActivityPub. The IndieWeb movement explicitly advocates for RSS as a core building block.
RSS Feed Standards
| Format | Status | Adoption |
|---|---|---|
| RSS 2.0 (XML) | De facto standard since 2002 | Dominant. Supported everywhere. |
| Atom (XML) | IETF standard (RFC 4287) | Common. Often used alongside RSS. |
| JSON Feed | v1.1 (2020). Linodians community took over stewardship Oct 2025. | Niche. Supported by NetNewsWire, NewsBlur, Feedbin, Inoreader, ReadKit, Reeder. NPR publishes JSON Feed. Limited enterprise adoption. |
| WebSub (fka PubSubHubbub) | W3C Recommendation (2018) | Real-time push for RSS. Used by WordPress.com, Blogger, CNN, Mastodon, Medium. Superfeedr (acquired by Medium 2016) was the main hub. |
2. RSS Reader & Aggregator Landscape
The RSS reader market has stratified into five tiers, from enterprise intelligence platforms to free open-source self-hosted tools. Revenue ranges from $0 (open source) to $7.3M (Feedly).
Tier 1: Commercial SaaS Leaders
| Company | Revenue | Team | Pricing | Key Differentiator |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feedly | $7.3M (Sep 2025) | 66 employees | Free / Pro $6.99/mo / Pro+ $12.99/mo / Enterprise (custom, thousands/mo) | Enterprise pivot: Threat Intel, Market Intel, Biopharma Research. “Leo” AI engine. 15M+ users, 40M+ content sources. |
| Inoreader | $5.9M (2025) | Small team (Sofia, Bulgaria) | Free (150 feeds) / Pro from ~$2/mo / Enterprise custom | Power-user features: rules engine, automation, Bluesky integration, 50+ language support. n8n integration connects to 1,000+ apps. Intelligence features added 2025. |
Tier 2: Read-It-Later Hybrids
| Product | Revenue/Funding | Team | Pricing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Readwise Reader | Bootstrapped (some investment from Reform Ventures). Revenue not publicly disclosed; estimated mid-eight-figures based on 25 employees and $13/mo pricing. | 25 employees. Founded by Daniel Doyon & Tristan Homsi (2018). | $13/mo (includes Readwise + Reader) | RSS + newsletters + PDFs + ePubs + YouTube + podcasts + Twitter threads. Ghostreader AI. Benefited massively from Pocket’s July 2025 shutdown and Omnivore’s 2024 shutdown. |
| Matter | $7M Series A (GV-led, 2021) | Small team | Free (core read-later) / Premium for advanced features | Launched “Matter II” in 2025. Core service is free forever. Adding RSS, newsletter, and unified subscription support. Competing for Pocket refugees. |
Tier 3: Established Independents
| Product | Model | Pricing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feedbin | Bootstrapped, solo founder (Ben Ubois) | $5/mo or $50/year | Clean, reliable. Newsletter-via-email support. Full API. No ads, no tracking. Ruby on Rails. Open source. |
| NewsBlur | Bootstrapped, solo founder (Samuel Clay). 100% subscription revenue. | Free (64 feeds) / Premium $2/mo / Archive $3/mo | Open source. Surged from 50K to 110K users after Google Reader shutdown. ~20K paid subscribers at peak. Full-text reading, story change tracking, IFTTT integration. |
| The Old Reader | Indie, small team | Free (100 feeds) / Premium $3/mo or $25/year | Spiritual successor to Google Reader. Grew from 10K to 200K users in 2013. Minimal, focused on fundamentals. |
| Feedspot | Profitable, small team | Free / Pro $7.99/mo | Also operates a “Top RSS Feeds” directory (huge SEO play). Generates RSS feeds from sites without native support. |
Tier 4: Native & Desktop Apps
| Product | Platform | Pricing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reeder | Apple (Mac, iPhone, iPad) | Classic: $10 Mac / $5 iOS (one-time). New Reeder: subscription model. | 2024 rebuild added Reddit, Mastodon, Bluesky, YouTube as sources beyond RSS. Moving to “all-in-one inbox” model. |
| NetNewsWire | Apple (Mac, iPhone, iPad) | Free, open source (MIT) | Version 7 released Jan 2026 with Liquid Glass design for macOS 26. Supports RSS, Atom, JSON Feed, RSS-in-JSON. Syncs via iCloud, Feedbin, Feedly, BazQux, Inoreader, NewsBlur, The Old Reader, FreshRSS. |
Tier 5: Self-Hosted & Open Source
| Project | Language | GitHub Stars | Pricing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FreshRSS | PHP | ~11K | Free (self-hosted) | Multi-user, extensions, themes, multiple database backends. WebSub support. XPath web scraping for sites without feeds. Large community. |
| Miniflux | Go | ~7K | Free (self-hosted) / $15/year hosted | Minimalist, single binary. Maintained primarily by Frédéric Guillot. Faster and lighter than FreshRSS. Fewer features by design. |
| Tiny Tiny RSS | PHP | ~6K | Free (self-hosted) | Original maintainer departed October 2025. Community fork continues. Feature-rich but personality-driven project. |
3. RSS-Powered Business Tools
RSS is the hidden data layer beneath dozens of B2B SaaS categories. Most customers never know they’re using RSS. They just know they’re “monitoring competitors” or “tracking threats.”
Feedly’s Enterprise Pivot: The Case Study
Feedly is the most important case study in RSS-to-enterprise pivoting. Founded 2008 by Edwin Khodabakchian, Cyril Moutran, and Olivier Devaux. Inherited 15M users when Google Reader died. Rather than competing on consumer RSS features, Feedly built three enterprise intelligence products on top of its RSS infrastructure:
- Feedly Threat Intelligence
- For cybersecurity teams. Collect, analyze, and share actionable intel on vulnerabilities, cyberattacks, threat actors, and IoCs. Custom pricing (estimated $1,600–$3,200+/month). Listed on Gartner Peer Insights for Security Threat Intelligence.
- Feedly Market Intelligence
- For competitive intelligence and strategy teams. Track competitors, market trends, and industry developments.
- Feedly Biopharma Research
- For pharmaceutical research teams. Track clinical trials, drug development, and regulatory changes.
The AI engine powering all three is “Leo” — Feedly’s AI that does entity extraction, topic classification, sentiment analysis, trend detection, and deduplication across 40M+ content sources. Leo is what turns a consumer RSS reader into an enterprise intelligence platform.
Result: $7.3M revenue (2025), 66 employees. Only raised $1.5M total — essentially bootstrapped to multi-million revenue. The consumer product still exists (and drives traffic), but enterprise is where the money is.
Media Monitoring & Social Listening
RSS is foundational infrastructure for the $5.7B media monitoring market:
| Tool | Pricing | RSS Connection |
|---|---|---|
| Brand24 | From $79/mo (annual). 4,000+ customers. Acquired by Semrush/Prowly in 2024 for PLN 55M. | Monitors 25M+ online sources including news sites, blogs, forums — many via RSS feeds. 100K brands tracked. 25B mentions collected. |
| Mention (by Agorapulse) | From ~$29/mo. Acquired by Agorapulse in April 2025. | Web monitoring layer pulls from RSS feeds of news sites and blogs as core data sources. |
| Brandwatch (Cision) | Enterprise ($10K+/year) | RSS feeds are one of many data sources for their monitoring engine. |
RSS-to-Email Services
| Service | Model | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Mailbrew | Paid SaaS | Automated email digests from RSS feeds, Twitter, Reddit, HN. Personal newsletter product. |
| Blogtrottr | Free (ad-supported) / Paid | RSS/Atom feed to email in real-time. Unlimited subscriptions on free plan. Keyword filters. |
| Kill the Newsletter! | Free, open source | Converts email newsletters into Atom feeds (reverse direction). By Leandro Facchinetti. No account required. Self-hostable. |
| Buttondown | Freemium | Newsletter platform with built-in RSS feed support for every newsletter. |
Social Media Automation via RSS
| Tool | Pricing | How RSS Powers It |
|---|---|---|
| dlvr.it | Free / Pro $12.50/mo / Plus $24.90/mo | Auto-posts RSS feed items to 21 social networks. X/Twitter overage: $2.50/100 posts due to API cost increases. |
| Zapier | Free (limited) / From $19.99/mo | RSS trigger: “New Item in Feed” is one of the most popular Zapier triggers. Connects RSS to 7,000+ apps. |
| IFTTT | Free (limited) / Pro $3.49/mo | RSS applets connect feeds to email, social media, Slack, Google Sheets, and more. |
| Buffer | From $6/mo | RSS feed integration for automatic social media scheduling. |
RSS for Compliance & Regulatory Monitoring
- SEC EDGAR RSS Feeds
- The SEC provides RSS feeds for all EDGAR structured disclosure submissions, updated every 10 minutes Monday–Friday, 6am–10pm EST. Covers XBRL filings, mutual fund risk/return summaries, and Inline XBRL filings. Rate limit: 10 requests/second per user. Used by compliance teams, hedge funds, and fintech companies for real-time filing alerts.
- Government Gazette RSS
- Federal Register, USDA NASS, EPA, FDA — all publish RSS feeds. State and local governments increasingly publish public notices via RSS.
- Academic Paper Monitoring
- arXiv publishes new paper feeds by category. PubMed provides RSS for saved searches. Researchers have used RSS for over 15 years to track new publications in their fields.
4. RSS Infrastructure & Developer Tools
The infrastructure layer is what makes RSS an ecosystem rather than just a format. These tools generate feeds from sites without native RSS, bridge between protocols, parse feeds at scale, and provide real-time push notifications.
Feed Generators (Making the Unsubscribable Subscribable)
| Project | Type | GitHub Stars | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| RSSHub | Open source (MIT) | 38.9K | The world’s largest RSS network. 5,000+ global instances. 900+ contributors. Generates RSS feeds from virtually anything — social media, e-commerce, forums, government sites. Companion browser extension RSSHub Radar auto-detects feeds on any page. Created by DIYgod. |
| RSS-Bridge | Open source (Public Domain) | 8.7K | PHP web app that generates feeds for websites without them. CssSelectorBridge allows feed creation via CSS selectors. Officially hosted instance at rss-bridge.org. Actively maintained. |
| Open RSS | Nonprofit, donation-funded | — | Provides free RSS feeds to the public. Advocates for RSS adoption. Published analysis of “How Google Helped Destroy Adoption of RSS Feeds.” |
| RSS.app | Commercial SaaS | — | #1 commercial RSS feed generator. Creates feeds from websites, social media. Widgets, bots for Discord/Slack/Telegram. 7-day free trial, tiered pricing. |
| Feedity / Politepol | Commercial / Open source | — | Visual RSS feed generators for sites without native feeds. Point-and-click interface. |
Feed Parsing Libraries
| Library | Language | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| rss-parser | Node.js/npm | Most popular JavaScript RSS parser. Lightweight, Promise-based. |
| feedparser | Python | Universal feed parser by Mark Pilgrim/Kurt McKee. Handles RSS, Atom, RDF. |
| gofeed | Go | Go library for parsing RSS, Atom, and JSON feeds. |
| Feedjira | Ruby | Fast RSS/Atom parser for Ruby applications. |
| Rome / ROME2 | Java | Java library for RSS and Atom feed parsing and generation. |
Protocol & Infrastructure Services
- Superfeedr (acquired by Medium, 2016)
- Real-time RSS API using WebSub/PubSubHubbub. Founded by Julien Genestoux. Processed millions of feed updates per day. Provided real-time push notifications for feed changes. Still operational at superfeedr.com.
- WebSub (W3C Recommendation)
- Formerly PubSubHubbub. Push protocol for real-time RSS. Used by WordPress.com, Blogger, CNN, Fox News, Mastodon, Medium, diaspora*. Turns polling-based RSS into real-time push. Supported natively by FreshRSS.
- Granary
- Converts between RSS, Atom, microformats, ActivityStreams 1 & 2. Part of the IndieWeb toolkit by Ryan Barrett. Bridges the gap between RSS world and fediverse/social web.
- Bridgy Fed
- Open-source ActivityPub proxy that connects personal websites (with RSS/h-entry) to the fediverse. Allows IndieWeb sites to federate with Mastodon users. Used by thousands of personal sites.
5. Emerging RSS-Adjacent Startups & Products
The Living and the Dead
| Product | Status | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Alive. $71M revenue. $1.3B valuation. | Founded 2010 by Mike McCue. 127 employees. Raised $236M over 6 rounds. Fully federated via ActivityPub in 2024 — 700+ curated publisher accounts, 15K+ magazines. Users can follow anyone in the fediverse. 145M monthly users (2018 figure, likely lower now). Pivoting hard into fediverse as its identity. | |
| Readwise | Alive. Growing. Bootstrapped. | Founded 2018 by Daniel Doyon & Tristan Homsi. 25 employees. $13/mo. Chose to not raise VC in 2018. Reader product (2023 public beta) combines RSS + read-later + highlighting + AI. Won big from Pocket’s death (July 2025) and Omnivore’s death (Oct 2024). Revenue not disclosed publicly. |
| Refind | Alive. Free. 500K+ users. | Daily personalized link newsletter. Monitors 10K+ content sources. Algorithmic + human curation. Favors “timeless pieces.” 4.9/5 app rating. RSS-adjacent rather than RSS-native. |
| Artifact | Zombie. Minimal maintenance. | AI-powered news app by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger. Launched Jan 2023, announced shutdown Jan 2024 (“market opportunity wasn’t big enough”). But it never fully shut down — Systrom revealed “it takes a lot less to run it than we had imagined” and just he and Krieger keep it running. Lesson: even Instagram founders couldn’t build a news aggregation business. |
| Nuzzel | Dead (2021). | Showed you links shared by people you follow on Twitter, ranked by share count. Acquired by Scroll, which was acquired by Twitter (May 2021). Immediately shut down. Twitter promised to “bring the core elements of Nuzzel directly to Twitter” — never happened. Beloved product, killed by acquisition. |
| Omnivore | Dead (2024). Code remains open source. | Open-source read-it-later app. Acqui-hired by ElevenLabs (Oct 2024) for their engineering team. Service shut down Nov 2024, users given 2 weeks to export. Team pivoted to building ElevenReader. Codebase (MIT license) remains on GitHub for self-hosting. |
| Dead (July 2025). | Mozilla shut down Pocket on July 8, 2025. Acquired in 2017, shut down because Mozilla wanted to “focus resources.” Pocket Premium ($4.99/mo) users refunded. Data export ended Nov 12, 2025. API disabled same day. Created massive migration wave to Readwise Reader, Matter, and others. | |
| Nitter | Mostly dead. | Alternative Twitter frontend that provided RSS feeds for any Twitter account. Broke when Twitter/X shut down free API access. Some instances sporadically functional using workarounds. |
Key Takeaways from the Graveyard
- Acquisition kills RSS products. Nuzzel (Twitter), Omnivore (ElevenLabs), Pocket (Mozilla) — all acquired, all dead. Acquirers want teams, not products.
- VC-backed news aggregators struggle. Artifact had Instagram founders and AI talent. Still couldn’t justify the market size to investors. Consumer news is a hard VC pitch.
- Bootstrapped RSS tools survive. Feedbin, NewsBlur, Miniflux — small, profitable, sustainable. The RSS market rewards independence.
- Every death creates migration. Google Reader’s death created Feedly. Pocket’s death grew Readwise Reader. Omnivore’s death sent users to FreshRSS and Miniflux. The audience is loyal and always looking for a new home.
6. The Podcast RSS Economy
The entire podcast industry is built on RSS. This is the single largest commercial application of RSS, and it’s not even close. Every podcast in the world (except Spotify exclusives) distributes via RSS feeds.
Market Size
| Global podcast market (2025) | $32.5B (Grand View Research); estimates range $28B–$40B depending on methodology |
|---|---|
| Projected market (2030) | $114B+ (29.45% CAGR) |
| Podcast advertising (2025) | $3.56B globally. Projected to surpass $3B in US alone (IAB). |
| Dynamic ad insertion (2025) | 84% of all podcast ads; >90% of ad revenue |
| Active podcasts (2025) | 533,943 producing fresh content (up from 259,371 in 2024) |
| US podcast reach (2025) | More than half of the US population |
How Podcast RSS Distribution Works
- Podcaster uploads audio to a hosting platform (Buzzsprout, Transistor, Libsyn, etc.)
- Hosting platform generates and maintains an RSS feed with episode metadata, audio file URLs, show notes
- Podcaster submits the RSS feed URL to directories: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts
- Directories poll the RSS feed periodically (or receive WebSub push notifications) for new episodes
- Listeners subscribe in their preferred app, which fetches from the directory (or directly from the RSS feed)
- No directory actually hosts the audio — they just read the RSS feed and link to the hosted files
This is critical: Apple Podcasts, Spotify (for non-exclusives), Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castbox, and every other podcast app are essentially RSS readers with audio playback. The entire $32B+ podcast industry is an RSS application.
Podcast Hosting Platforms (The RSS Feed Generators)
| Platform | Revenue/Scale | Pricing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Libsyn | $58.7M revenue (2022). Public (OTCMKTS: LSYN). $112M+ paid to creators since 2017. | From $5/mo | Oldest major podcast host. Founded 2004. Creator payouts jumped 40% in H1 2025. The original podcast-via-RSS platform. |
| Buzzsprout | 120K+ active podcasts. 400K+ podcasters since 2009. 7% hosting market share. | Free (2hrs/mo) / From $12/mo | Beginner-friendly. Family-owned (Higher Pixels, Jacksonville FL). Popular Buzzcast podcast about the industry. |
| Transistor.fm | ~$4.5M ARR (est. from $375K MRR). 34K+ podcasts. 7,500 paying accounts. | $19–$199/mo | Bootstrapped by Justin Jackson & Jon Buda. 6-person team. Multi-show support. “Calm company” philosophy. Powers 30K+ RSS feeds. Supports OP3 open analytics. |
| Podbean | 600K+ podcasters. 149K+ active. | Free (5hrs) / From $9/mo | All-in-one: hosting, monetization (Ads Marketplace, dynamic ad insertion), Apple Podcasts Subscriptions integration. |
| Captivate | Growth-focused | From $19/mo | Unlimited shows. IAB-certified analytics. Ad marketplace + recording/editing tools added late 2025. |
| Spotify/Megaphone | Enterprise | Enterprise pricing | Spotify acquired Megaphone (2020), Chartable & Podsights (2022). Chartable shut down Dec 2024, rolled into Megaphone. Enterprise-grade dynamic ad insertion. |
| RSS.com | — | Free (unlimited episodes) | Free podcast hosting with unlimited episodes. Monetized via ads. The domain name itself is valuable. |
Podcast Analytics (Built on RSS Prefix Tracking)
| Service | Status | How It Works |
|---|---|---|
| Podtrac | Active. Independent. | Prefix-based tracking. Podcaster prepends Podtrac URL to their RSS feed’s audio URLs. Podtrac counts downloads as requests pass through. |
| OP3 | Active. Open source. By John Spurlock. | Free, open podcast prefix analytics. 17M+ downloads/month across 3,900+ shows. Public stats pages. IAB-friendly. No signup required — prepend https://op3.dev/e/ to episode URLs. Supported by Transistor.fm. |
| Chartable | Dead (Dec 2024). Acquired by Spotify Feb 2022, rolled into Megaphone. | Was the leading independent podcast analytics platform. Spotify’s acquisition concerned the industry about consolidation. |
7. Revenue & Business Model Analysis
How RSS Companies Make Money
| Model | Examples | Revenue Range | Characteristics |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consumer Freemium | Feedly, Inoreader, The Old Reader | $1–$13/mo per user | Large free tier drives adoption. 2–5% convert to paid. Works at scale but margins are thin. Feedly has 15M users but most are free. |
| Enterprise Intelligence | Feedly Threat Intel, Feedly Market Intel | $1,600–$3,200+/mo per seat | Same RSS infrastructure, 100x the price. AI layer + team features + SSO/SAML + custom onboarding. This is where the real money is. |
| Flat Subscription | Feedbin, NewsBlur, Miniflux | $2–$5/mo per user | Simple, transparent. No free tier (or very limited). Works for bootstrapped solo founders. Sustainable but not VC-scale. |
| One-Time Purchase | Reeder Classic ($5–$10) | $5–$10 per sale | Traditional app economics. Hard to sustain long-term without new versions. Reeder moved to subscription for new version. |
| Open Source + Hosted | Miniflux ($15/year hosted), FreshRSS (free only) | $0–$15/year | Code is free, hosting is the product. Very low revenue per user. |
| Podcast Hosting (RSS Generation) | Transistor ($19–$199/mo), Buzzsprout, Libsyn | $5–$199/mo per account | Generate + host RSS feeds for podcasters. Stickier than reader subscriptions because switching means changing your feed URL everywhere. Transistor: ~$4.5M ARR. Libsyn: $58.7M revenue. |
| Feed-Based Automation | dlvr.it, Zapier RSS triggers | $12–$30/mo | RSS as trigger for automated workflows. Customers pay for the workflow, RSS is the data source. |
| Feed Generation SaaS | RSS.app, Feedity | Tiered SaaS | Create RSS feeds from sites that don’t have them. Charge per feed or per plan tier. |
Revenue Comparison: Key Players
| Company | Revenue | Team Size | Revenue/Employee | Funding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $71M | 127 | $559K | $236M raised | |
| Libsyn | $58.7M (2022) | ~100 | ~$587K | Public (LSYN) |
| Feedly | $7.3M | 66 | $111K | $1.5M total |
| Inoreader | $5.9M | ~10–15 (est.) | $400K–$590K | Bootstrapped |
| Transistor.fm | ~$4.5M ARR | 6 | $750K | Bootstrapped ($5K each) |
| Readwise | Not disclosed (est. multi-millions) | 25 | — | Mostly bootstrapped (some Reform Ventures) |
| Feedbin | Not disclosed | 1 | — | Bootstrapped |
| NewsBlur | Not disclosed (~$40K–$60K/mo est. from ~20K subs at $2–$3) | 1 | — | Bootstrapped |
The Feedly Pivot Lesson
Feedly’s pivot from consumer RSS to enterprise intelligence is the most instructive story in the space:
- Phase 1 (2008–2013): Consumer RSS reader. Growing alongside Google Reader.
- Phase 2 (2013–2018): Google Reader dies. Feedly inherits 15M users. Becomes the default RSS reader. Revenue from consumer Pro subscriptions ($6–$13/mo). Sustainable but not exciting.
- Phase 3 (2018–2022): Builds “Leo” AI engine. Launches Feedly for Teams. Begins enterprise sales. Prices jump from $13/mo to $1,600+/mo for threat intel.
- Phase 4 (2022–present): Three enterprise products (Threat Intel, Market Intel, Biopharma Research). Listed on Gartner. Enterprise drives the majority of revenue growth. Consumer product still exists as a funnel and SEO play.
The math: At $7.3M revenue with 15M free users and consumer plans at $6.99–$12.99/mo, even a 2% conversion rate would yield ~$25M from consumer alone. The revenue implies either very low conversion or that the enterprise products, while higher-priced, serve fewer customers. The enterprise play is still early.
8. Underexploited RSS Opportunities
RSS + AI (The Biggest Opportunity)
- Feed Summarization & Synthesis
- AI can transform 500 articles/day into a 5-minute intelligence briefing. Feedly Leo does this for enterprise at $1,600+/mo. Nobody does it well for individuals at $10–$20/mo. Precis (open source, GitHub) is an early attempt — a self-hosted RSS reader that uses LLMs to summarize and synthesize.
- RSS as Data Layer for RAG Pipelines
- RSS feeds are perfectly structured for Retrieval-Augmented Generation. Title, URL, timestamp, full-text content, author, categories — all machine-readable. 51% of enterprise AI systems now use RAG (up from 31% in 2024). RSS provides a clean, real-time, structured data ingestion layer for LLM applications.
- AI Agent Consumption
- AI agents need structured data feeds to stay current. RSS provides exactly this — no scraping, no API keys, no rate limits, just structured XML/JSON. “RSS for robots” could be larger than RSS for humans.
- “Personal AI Newspaper”
- Combine RSS feeds + AI summarization + personalization + daily digest. This is the Artifact vision (which failed at VC scale) executed as a bootstrapped tool at $10/mo. The audience exists: everyone who misses Google Reader but wants it smarter.
Vertical RSS Applications
| Vertical | RSS Data Sources | Who Pays | Estimated Willingness to Pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regulatory/Compliance Monitoring | SEC EDGAR (10-min updates), Federal Register, FDA, EPA, state regulators | Compliance officers, legal teams, hedge funds | $500–$5,000/mo (high-value, mission-critical) |
| Security/Threat Intelligence | CVE feeds, vendor security advisories, dark web monitors, NIST NVD | Security teams, CISOs, MSSPs | $1,000–$10,000/mo (Feedly charges $1,600+/mo) |
| Competitive Intelligence | Competitor blogs, press releases, job postings, GitHub repos, product changelogs | Product managers, strategy teams | $200–$2,000/mo |
| Developer Dependency Monitoring | GitHub releases, npm package changelogs, CVE feeds, library blogs | Engineering teams, DevSecOps | $50–$500/mo |
| Academic Research Monitoring | arXiv, PubMed, bioRxiv, SSRN, Google Scholar alerts (via RSS) | Researchers, R&D teams, pharmaceutical companies | $100–$1,000/mo |
| Real Estate Listing Aggregation | MLS feeds (some via RSS), Craigslist RSS, property listing sites | Real estate investors, agents | $50–$200/mo |
| Financial News & SEC Filings | SEC EDGAR, financial news RSS, earnings call feeds, 8-K/10-K alerts | Traders, analysts, hedge funds | $200–$5,000/mo |
| Supply Chain Monitoring | Supplier news, port authority updates, commodity price feeds, weather alerts | Supply chain managers, procurement teams | $200–$2,000/mo |
| PR/Media Monitoring (Budget) | News site RSS, blog RSS, Google News RSS, social media RSS (via RSSHub) | PR professionals, small agencies | $50–$200/mo (undercuts Brand24/Mention by 80%) |
| Newsletter-to-Feed Conversion | Email newsletters (via Kill the Newsletter pattern) | Information workers, knowledge workers | $5–$20/mo |
RSS for the Social Web
- IndieWeb Movement
- The IndieWeb community advocates for personal websites with RSS, Webmention, and micropub as the building blocks of a decentralized social web. Every personal blog with RSS is already part of this network. Bridgy Fed connects personal sites to the fediverse.
- ActivityPub + RSS Convergence
- Mastodon, Flipboard, Threads, Tumblr, and PeerTube all support or are adopting ActivityPub. Every Mastodon account has an RSS feed. The fediverse and RSS are philosophically aligned and technically interoperable.
9. Bootstrapper Playbook: $0 to $10K MRR with RSS
Technical Stack
| Component | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Feed Parsing | feedparser (Python), rss-parser (Node), gofeed (Go) |
Battle-tested libraries. Handle RSS 0.9x, 1.0, 2.0, Atom, JSON Feed. |
| Feed Fetching & Scheduling | Cron jobs or task queue (BullMQ, Celery, Faktory) | Poll feeds at configurable intervals. Respect ETags and Last-Modified headers to avoid wasting bandwidth. |
| Storage | PostgreSQL | JSONB columns for flexible feed metadata. Full-text search built in. All successful RSS tools (Miniflux, FreshRSS, Feedbin) use Postgres. |
| Deduplication | Hash article GUIDs + URLs + content fingerprints | Feeds publish duplicates constantly. Dedup is essential for UX. |
| Full-Text Extraction | Readability algorithm (Mozilla’s, or @postlight/mercury-parser) |
Many feeds publish excerpts only. Full-text extraction provides the complete article. |
| AI Layer (optional) | OpenAI/Anthropic API for summarization. Embeddings for similarity search. | This is the differentiator. Without AI, you’re building another Miniflux. With AI, you’re building Feedly Leo at 1/100th the price. |
| Delivery | Email digest, Slack webhook, web UI, API | Meet users where they are. Most enterprise users want Slack or email, not another web app. |
Differentiation Strategies
- 1. Vertical Focus (Best for Bootstrappers)
- Don’t build a generic RSS reader. Build “RSS for [vertical].” Examples: RSS for security teams (Feedly proved this works), RSS for compliance teams (SEC EDGAR + regulatory feeds), RSS for developers (GitHub releases + CVEs + package changelogs). Vertical focus lets you charge 10–50x more than a consumer reader and sell to specific buyer personas.
- 2. AI Layer on Open-Source Infrastructure
- Use FreshRSS or Miniflux as the feed fetching layer. Build an AI summarization and intelligence layer on top. Open-source infrastructure + proprietary AI = defensible product. Similar to how Vercel is built on Next.js.
- 3. Integration-First
- Build the best “RSS to Slack/Teams/Notion/Email” pipeline. The value isn’t reading RSS — it’s getting the right information to the right place at the right time. This is what dlvr.it does for social media and Mailbrew does for email.
- 4. Feed Generation (Under-Served)
- Build the commercial version of RSSHub — a managed service that generates RSS feeds from sites without native RSS support. RSS.app does this but there’s room for competition. Charge per feed or per plan tier. Enterprise customers who need monitoring but can’t install RSSHub will pay for this.
Pricing Models That Work
| Model | Works For | Example Pricing | Path to $10K MRR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per-user/seat | Team/enterprise intelligence tools | $49–$199/user/mo | 50–200 users |
| Per-feed/source | Monitoring tools, feed generators | $29–$99/mo (25–100 feeds) | 100–350 customers |
| Flat subscription | Consumer readers, personal tools | $5–$15/mo | 667–2,000 customers (much harder) |
| Usage-based | API products, feed generation services | $0.01–$0.05 per feed poll | High volume needed |
Content Marketing for RSS Products
Your audience is the content-savvy crowd — developers, researchers, journalists, power users. They live on Hacker News, Reddit, IndieWeb forums, and technical blogs. This is one of the most receptive audiences on the internet for content marketing:
- HN launch: “Show HN: I built [vertical] monitoring tool using RSS” — guaranteed engagement.
- Technical blog posts: “How we process 1M RSS feeds per day,” “RSS vs. API: Why feeds are better for monitoring.”
- SEO play: Target “monitor competitor website,” “track SEC filings,” “automated news monitoring” — none of these searches mention RSS, but RSS is the answer.
- Open-source component: Release your feed parsing or deduplication library as open source. Free marketing to the developer community.
- Product Hunt: RSS tools consistently do well. The audience overlaps perfectly.
10. Customer Acquisition for RSS Products
Who Buys RSS-Powered Tools (and What They Call Them)
Critical insight: Nobody searches for “RSS tool.” They search for the outcome RSS delivers. Your positioning should never mention RSS in the headline.
| Buyer | What They Search For | What They’re Actually Buying | Budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| PR/Comms Professional | “media monitoring tool,” “brand mention tracking,” “press coverage tracker” | RSS feed aggregation + keyword alerts | $100–$500/mo |
| Competitive Intel Team | “competitor monitoring,” “competitive intelligence tool,” “track competitor news” | Competitor blog/press release RSS + alerts | $200–$2,000/mo |
| Security/Threat Intel Team | “threat intelligence platform,” “vulnerability monitoring,” “CVE alerts” | Security advisory RSS + CVE feeds + AI triage | $1,000–$10,000/mo |
| Content Marketer | “content curation tool,” “trending content finder,” “content discovery” | Industry RSS feeds + trend detection | $50–$200/mo |
| SEO Professional | “competitor backlink monitoring,” “industry news aggregator” | RSS + Google Alerts RSS + competitor blog monitoring | $50–$300/mo |
| Product Manager | “competitor product updates,” “changelog monitoring,” “competitor feature tracking” | Competitor changelog RSS + release monitoring | $100–$500/mo |
| Compliance Officer | “regulatory change monitoring,” “SEC filing alerts,” “compliance news” | Government RSS + SEC EDGAR + regulatory feeds | $500–$5,000/mo |
LinkedIn DM Outreach Templates
Template 1: For PR/Communications Professionals
Hi [Name],
I noticed you lead communications at [Company]. Quick question: how are you currently tracking media coverage and brand mentions across news sites and blogs?
We built a monitoring tool that tracks [X] sources in real-time and delivers a daily briefing to your inbox or Slack. It catches mentions that tools like Google Alerts miss because it monitors sources directly rather than relying on search indexing.
Would a 5-minute demo be worth your time this week?
Template 2: For Competitive Intelligence Teams
Hi [Name],
I see you work on strategy/competitive intelligence at [Company]. I’m curious: when [Competitor X] publishes a blog post, updates their pricing page, or pushes a new release — how quickly does your team find out?
We built a tool that monitors competitor websites, blogs, job postings, and product changelogs in real-time. Our customers typically catch competitor moves 2–5 days before they show up in Google Alerts.
Happy to show you what it looks like for [Company’s] competitive landscape. 15 minutes?
Template 3: For Security/Threat Intel Teams
Hi [Name],
I noticed [Company] is in [industry]. Your security team is probably monitoring CVEs, vendor advisories, and threat actor activity across dozens of sources.
We help security teams consolidate those feeds into a single, AI-prioritized dashboard with automated triage. Instead of checking 30+ sources manually, your analysts get a daily briefing of what matters to your specific stack.
Would it be helpful to see how we map to your current workflow? Happy to do a 15-minute walk-through.
Template 4: For Product Managers (Competitor Monitoring)
Hi [Name],
As a PM at [Company], you’re probably keeping tabs on what [Competitor A] and [Competitor B] are shipping. Manual checking gets old fast.
We built a tool that automatically monitors competitor changelogs, blog posts, pricing pages, and job postings — and sends you a weekly digest with what changed. Think of it as an automated competitive landscape tracker.
Want me to set up a free trial with your top 5 competitors pre-loaded?
Cold Email Template (Generic)
Subject: How [Similar Company] tracks [specific thing] automatically
Hi [Name],
I noticed [Company] competes in [market]. [Similar Company in same space] uses our tool to automatically track when [specific relevant thing happens] — new regulations, competitor launches, security advisories, etc.
They told us it replaced 3 hours/week of manual monitoring per analyst.
Worth a 10-minute call to see if it could help your team too?
[Name]
SEO Strategy
Target outcome-based keywords, not technology-based ones:
| Keyword Cluster | Monthly Volume (est.) | Competition | Your Angle |
|---|---|---|---|
| “monitor competitor website changes” | 2K–5K | Medium | RSS-powered monitoring is faster and more reliable than web scrapers |
| “track SEC filings automatically” | 1K–3K | Low | SEC EDGAR RSS + AI summarization |
| “media monitoring tool small business” | 3K–8K | High (Brand24, Mention rank here) | 80% of Brand24 features at 20% of the price |
| “CVE vulnerability monitoring” | 1K–3K | Medium | Real-time CVE feed + AI triage for your specific tech stack |
| “competitor changelog tracker” | 500–1K | Low | GitHub release RSS + blog RSS + AI summary |
| “news aggregator for business” | 2K–5K | Medium | Curated industry intelligence, not generic news |
Community-Led Growth
- Hacker News
- The RSS enthusiast community lives here. “Show HN” posts about RSS tools reliably hit the front page. Comment on existing RSS discussions with genuine expertise. The HN audience converts to paid users at unusually high rates because they understand and value the technology.
- Reddit (r/selfhosted, r/rss, r/degoogle)
- Self-hosters and privacy advocates are natural RSS users. Offer a self-hosted option (even if your main product is SaaS) to build credibility in these communities.
- IndieWeb Community
- IndieWebCamp events, chat.indieweb.org, IndieWeb wiki. These are the true believers who will evangelize your product if it aligns with open-web values. Small but extremely vocal and influential.
- Product Hunt
- RSS tools consistently perform well on Product Hunt. The PH audience overlaps with the RSS audience. Time your launch for a Tuesday or Wednesday for best visibility.
Partnership Opportunities
- Slack App Directory: “RSS to Slack” is a high-intent search in the Slack marketplace. Build a Slack app that delivers RSS intelligence to channels.
- Microsoft Teams: Same play as Slack. Enterprise customers often prefer Teams.
- Notion Integration: Auto-populate Notion databases from RSS feeds. Power users love this.
- Zapier/Make/n8n: Be a first-class integration partner. Many customers discover tools through automation platform marketplaces.
- Podcast hosting platforms: If building podcast analytics, partner with Transistor, Buzzsprout, Captivate for distribution.