How to Follow Substack Newsletters with RSS

Quick Answer

Short answer: Add /feed to any Substack publication address, for example name.substack.com/feed, and paste the result into RSS Wrangler. New posts arrive in your reader in order. You can then switch off Substack emails and read everything in one place.

Newsletter subscriptions accumulate quietly. One signup becomes ten and ten become thirty. The inbox becomes a second job of triage, promotions tabs and unread badges. Each newsletter was worth reading when you subscribed, but email forces every one of them through the same narrow channel as bills, work threads and password resets.

RSS separates reading from mail. This guide shows where Substack hides its feeds, how to subscribe in RSS Wrangler, what happens with paid posts and how the same trick covers Ghost, Beehiiv and Medium.

Every Substack already has a feed

Substack generates an RSS feed for every publication automatically, whether the author mentions it or not. The platform promotes email because email serves its growth model, but the feed sits alongside every publication waiting to be used. Finding it takes seconds once you know the patterns.

Paste the candidate address into a new browser tab. A wall of structured text confirms the feed exists. Copy that address into RSS Wrangler, which also auto discovers the feed if you paste the plain publication address instead.

Subscribe and organise

Add each newsletter feed to RSS Wrangler and group them in a folder called Newsletters. Folders keep twenty subscriptions as calm as five, because the reader shows one chronological stream per folder instead of twenty separate inboxes. Mark the folder read when you finish and the backlog clears to zero, which email never allows.

Repeat for every Substack you follow. The whole migration for a typical set of subscriptions takes under half an hour, and each migration permanently removes several emails per week from your inbox.

Paid posts and honest limits

Free posts arrive in full through RSS. Paid subscriber posts normally arrive as titles with excerpts only, because the feed has no way to carry your paid login. This is a platform boundary rather than a reader limitation. It applies in every RSS reader equally.

If you pay for a publication, keep reading paid posts through email or the Substack app and let RSS handle everything free. Many readers find this split ideal: free reading moves to the calm channel while paid reading keeps the channel it needs.

Switch the emails off

Once the feed works, open the subscription settings on Substack and switch off email notifications for that publication. Your subscription stays counted on the author dashboard, so no writer loses a subscriber when you change channels. Repeat per publication until the inbox holds mail again instead of reading material.

The same trick elsewhere

Ghost publications expose /rss/ after the domain. Beehiiv publications expose /feed in the same way as Substack. Medium member posts sit behind medium.com/feed/username for public content. If a source has abandoned RSS entirely, a tokenised email such as Kill the Newsletter can turn each newsletter email into a feed. The pattern is consistent: modern newsletter platforms all generate feeds and all underplay them, so the migration in this guide transfers directly.

FAQ

Does every Substack have an RSS feed? Yes, in practice. Substack generates a feed for every publication automatically. The patterns in this guide locate it within seconds.

Do paid Substack posts appear in RSS? Free posts appear in full. Paid posts normally appear as titles with excerpts only, since the feed cannot carry your subscription login.

Can I stop the emails after subscribing by RSS? Yes. Turn off email notifications in the Substack subscription settings and keep the RSS subscription. The author keeps you as a subscriber either way.

Does the author know I switched to RSS? Your subscription stays counted on their dashboard. Reading by feed changes your reading habit, not your relationship with the writer.

Summary

Substack feeds exist for every publication and take seconds to find with the address patterns above. Subscribe in RSS Wrangler, organise newsletters into one folder, switch off the emails and keep paid reading where it belongs. The inbox returns to mail and reading returns to its own calm channel.

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