Reject Convenience Forum

Hi all

I've been seeing some posts around here on RSS reader recommendations and setup and all. This is a bit of a different question: how does it work?

I recently downloaded the fluent reader app, but they want me to enter credentials and API keys from different RSS services. Fair enough, I move over to Inoreader and add this forum to my feed. I go over to developer settings and... The API key is behind a paywall.

At this point I'm confused about the business model around RSS services. I think its fair to ask for a subscription if there are server costs included - those cost money. But I'd assume the website associated with publishing RSS does the hosting, and an RSS reader requests the XML or whatever as soon as you boot up the app, similar to how a browser requests some HTML only when you need it and the website server returns the request. Given that I see people talking about self-hosting an RSS service, that doesn't seem to be the case... I think?

So my question is more: how does RSS work in terms of client-server model? Does the end user need a server (additional to the one publishing RSS) to read RSS? If so: why? If not, is the price for RSS readers solely cost for developing the app? How difficult would it be to make your own?

bgmeulem wrote: Sat Aug 09, 2025 9:21 am So my question is more: how does RSS work in terms of client-server model? Does the end user need a server (additional to the one publishing RSS) to read RSS? If so: why? If not, is the price for RSS readers solely cost for developing the app? How difficult would it be to make your own?

I don't know the exacts but I've never heard of an paid rss reader

RSS/Atom (traditionally) are a file hosted on a website, that provides a easy to format data structure. RSS reader can format this data into something nice for humans to read

All this API key hubbub sounds like greedy companies to me

Yeah, RSS is just an XML file that describes a feed. You should be able to just put the feed URL into an RSS reader and that's it. Don't use some RSS service; just install an RSS reader onto your computer or phone.

zonk wrote: Sat Aug 09, 2025 11:43 am Yeah, RSS is just an XML file that describes a feed. You should be able to just put the feed URL into an RSS reader and that's it. Don't use some RSS service; just install an RSS reader onto your computer or phone.

Said it better than me!
But yeah, thats what rss is :3

How @TeaInTheMorning and @zonk wrote, its a simple XML file that the Feeder grabs periodically, what you might be referring to is a Feed aggregator, its basically a Feed reader on the Web, which has some other Functionality too like Read Management and Categorization from which you can then sync to a client if you choose to do so. It makes it easier to have the Same feed across all your Devices and also to know what you have already read. As I see it, Inoreader is that with some extra Features on top. This is why they require an Account

The other thing I can I think of is some Feeds are payed and require HTTP Auth or API keys to access. For example 404 Media does have a full text RSS Feed where you get the entire Article in your Reader for which you have to pay for.

What I would recommend to check out Capy reader it is a standard RSS reader, that also can hook in to such Aggregators if you choose to use them in the Future.

Just managed to read these replies in an RSS reader. Thanks for the explanations all! The inoreader app indeed seems to be a feed aggregator in addition to a reader, but aggregation is a subscription only perk, which was what confused me. Feedly seems to have reasonable free features. I'll snoop around a bit more, thanks y'all!

bgmeulem wrote: Sun Aug 10, 2025 10:08 am Just managed to read these replies in an RSS reader. Thanks for the explanations all! The inoreader app indeed seems to be a feed aggregator in addition to a reader, but aggregation is a subscription only perk, which was what confused me. Feedly seems to have reasonable free features. I'll snoop around a bit more, thanks y'all!

Sounds good!
Though if you are willing to go through the effort, manually finding rss links will be a lot cheaper
(There are tons of free, and even open source readers out there)

On android "feeder" is great and i like "fluent reader" for desktop, though I've heard good things about "rssguard"

Also here's my favorite RSS explanation https://ncase.me/rss/