FeedPigeon FAQs

Frequently asked questions to help you understand RSS feeds and FeedPigeon

RSS

What is RSS?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed format that allows users to access updates to online content in a standardized, computer-readable format. It enables you to subscribe to your favorite websites and receive updates directly in your email or RSS reader.

How do I know if a website has RSS feeds?

Often you'll find a feed URL indicated by this icon RSS Feed Icon.

There are also browser extensions that can make it easy to find feeds when visiting a webpage. At FeedPigeon we have been using Feed Preview in Firefox/Waterfox/LibreWolf and for Chromium based browsers, others around the web have been using RSS Subscription Extension (by Google). Both of these extensions support a one-click subscribe feature, you can enter https://feedpigeon.co.uk/subscriptions/new?url=%s into the URL field to subscribe with FeedPigeon.

What is FeedPigeon?

FeedPigeon is a service that delivers the latest content from your favorite RSS feeds directly to your inbox. It simplifies the process of staying updated with multiple websites by sending you full-text content in an easy-to-read email format.

How do I know if my RSS feed URL is valid?

To check if your RSS feed URL is valid, you can paste it into an RSS reader or use an online RSS validator. If the feed is valid, it will display the latest posts; if not, you may see an error message or no content. One we use is the W3 Feed Validator.

How can I discover new feeds?

In general you can just discover new sites like you normally would, via link aggregators, social media, and friends or family. When you find a site you like just check to see if they have a feed - see above for browser extensions that can help. However, if you want to focus on sites that have feeds available we can recommend the following tools.

What protocols does FeedPigeon support?

FeedPigeon supports all of the common feed protocols on the web. This includes support for Atom, RSS2 as well as best-effort support for earlier non-standardized versions of RSS.

Email

Does subscribing to a feed share my email?

No, subscribing to a feed with FeedPigeon does not share your email with the feed provider. Your email is only used to send you updates from the feeds you subscribe to.

While you are subscribed the feed owner can "contact" you by posting new entries. However, once you unsubscribe they will have no way to reach you anymore.

FeedPigeon never shares your email with anyone.

Missing Backdated Entries

At the moment, FeedPigeon will only fetch the latest entry. In the future, feeds will be better filtered to ensure all feeds since subscribing have been delivered. Even then, though, feeds newly added with a publication date over a year ago will be ignored. If an entry is added with a date well in the past, it is almost always a bug in the feed that would result in re-notifications for old entries

How can I filter my email?

One easy way to filter is the From address. Important account information will come from FeedPigeon <accounts@feedpigeon.co.uk>, these are important service alerts such as password resets and credit level warnings. These messages will always be sent to your Primary email. Feed updates will come from a unique per-subscription email address.

FeedPigeon also sets a handful of email headers on notifications which can be used for advanced filtering by some mail clients. The following headers are currently provided.

FeedPigeon-Categories: Rust, "Programming Languages"
The categories of the post encoded as a comma-separated list of word tokens. The order of categories is undefined.
FeedPigeon-Entry-Id: https://example/post/8
The Entry ID of the post in the feed. If an ID is not available FeedMail will generate a likely-unique ID.
From: "FeedPigeon Blog" <feed-610@feedpigeon.co.uk>
The name used is the title of the feed (after applying any user-configured title override). The address is unique per-subscription.
List-Id: "FeedPigeon Blog" <feed-610.feedpigeon.co.uk>
The name used is the title of the feed (after applying any user-configured title override). The identifier is unique per-subscription.
Subject: Updates to HTML Processing
The title of the post.
User-Agent: feedpigeon.co.uk/1
Always starts with feedpigeon.co.uk/.

Updates and Announcements

You can keep up-to-date with our roadmap below and also by following the FeedPigeon blog. If you prefer, you can subscribe to the RSS feed at https://feedpigeon.co.uk/blog/rss or sending an email.

What is on the roadmap for FeedPigeon?

  • Choose different emails to use for feeds
  • Select to include content or no content in emails sent (partially delivered with summary delivery method)
  • Override feed title - DELIVERED 23/06/2025
  • Creation of your own digest for a feed - DELIVERED 23/06/2025
  • Feed status (healthy or unhealthy) - DELIVERED 28/06/2025
  • Import / Export of subscription feed URLs in OPML format - DELIVERED 08/07/2025
  • Automatic detection of Feeds from a given URL - DELIVERED 23/06/2025
  • More custom headers to help you filter your incoming feeds - continuous development
  • WebSub support - DELIVERED 29/06/2025

Polling

How can I identify FeedPigeon polling?

FeedPigeon uses a User-Agent header that starts with feedpigeon.co.uk/{version} where {version} is a decimal integer. The version does not change often but may be updated if an important change is made to FeedPigeon polling.

FeedPigeon is overloading my server - what now?

The quickest fix is to add a Cache-Control header to your feed, FeedPigeon will never poll more often than the value in the max-age parameter, unless it is larger than 24 hours in which case FeedPigeon may poll more often, but no more frequently than every 24 hours.

If that does not work, or can not be done, contact FeedPigeon Support and we'll look into it and find a solution as soon as possible.

Legal

Where is your Privacy Policy?

In progress. Contact us with any questions at security@feedpigeon.co.uk in the meantime. However, if you subscribe to an RSS feed, your email will be stored until you unsubscribe from that feed. No other information is stored.

Contact Us

Can I request a feature?

Yes! Feature requests and feedback can be sent to FeedPigeon Support.

Where do I report a security vulnerability?

You can send security reports to security@feedpigeon.co.uk. For more information see our security.txt.

I have a question that isn't listed here - where can I get in touch?

If you have a question that doesn't fit into any other category, you can send us an email.