What is RSS Anything?

Updated

RSS Anything is a free web tool from Diffbot that turns a page full of links into an RSS or Atom feed. You give it the URL of a site that publishes a list of links but offers no feed of its own, and it returns a feed URL you can paste into any RSS reader. It's aimed at the common case of an "old" website — a page that lists articles, posts, or updates as plain links — that you'd like to follow alongside everything else you read.

How it works

The workflow is deliberately minimal:

  1. Enter a URL — paste the address of the page that contains the list of links you want to follow.
  2. Get a feed URL — the tool returns a feed address generated from that page.
  3. Subscribe — add the returned URL to your RSS reader, and it will poll the page and surface new links as feed items.

The input is the link-list page itself, not an individual article. The output is a feed URL, which is what your reader subscribes to. The expected result is that new links appearing on that page show up as new items in your reader, so you can track updates without visiting the site.

When it's useful

RSS Anything fits a specific gap rather than replacing a normal feed:

  • Sites with no feed. A blog, changelog, or directory that lists links but never published RSS or Atom.
  • "Old" websites. Pages built before feeds were standard, where the only way to see what's new is to reload the page and scan the list.
  • Link roundups and indexes. Any page whose main content is a list of links to other pages.

If a site already offers a working RSS or Atom feed, you don't need this — subscribe to the existing one directly.

Key things to know

Aspect Detail
Provider Diffbot
Input URL of a page containing a list of links
Output RSS or Atom feed URL
Typical use Reading link-list pages in an RSS reader

The tool is described by its makers as existing "because Jerome wants to read all the things in RSS" — a plain statement of the underlying motivation: bringing pages that were never feed-enabled into a feed reader.

Limitations to keep in mind

  • It works on pages whose content is a list of links. A page that isn't structured that way may not produce a useful feed.
  • The feed reflects what's on the page when it's checked, so it's only as good as the page's own update behavior.
  • Because it's a third-party service reading someone else's page, changes to that page's layout can affect the feed.

If your goal is simply to follow a link-heavy page in your reader without manual checking, RSS Anything is a direct way to do it: enter the URL, take the feed URL it returns, and subscribe.