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n8n RSS Feed Trigger nodeConfigure RSS Feed Trigger in n8n.

A published feed item is an event, and the n8n RSS Feed Trigger node turns it into a workflow run. It sits at the very start of the canvas, polls the address you give it, and hands each new entry to the nodes downstream. One required parameter, version 1, nothing to authenticate.

Try the RSS Feed Trigger node on n8nSee the 1 parameters

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Why automate

What does the n8n RSS Feed Trigger node actually do?

It starts a workflow when an RSS feed gets a new item. You paste the feed address into Feed URL, n8n polls that address, and every entry it has not seen yet becomes its own execution. The node is a trigger, which means it opens the workflow and has no input port at all: nothing whatsoever can run before it.

Three shapes come up again and again. The first is a watchlist: a competitor blog, a regulator's news page, a job board that exposes a feed. Each new entry lands in the workflow, gets filtered on a keyword with If, and only the entries that matter reach a human. The second is an archive: every published item gets flattened into a row and appended to Google Sheets, so the team gets a searchable history of a feed nobody reads daily.

The third is a relay. A release feed, a status page feed, a podcast feed, anything that publishes on its own schedule, pushed straight into Slack the moment the poll picks it up. Reshaping the entry before it goes out is a job for Edit Fields (Set): feeds vary a lot in how they name things, and a workflow is easier to read when the fields have been renamed once at the top.

Now the part people get wrong. There is a second RSS node in n8n, the app node called RSS Read, and the two are not interchangeable. RSS Read is something you place inside a workflow that is already running: it reads a feed on demand, when a run reaches it. The RSS Feed Trigger node cannot be placed there. It only sits first, and it is the thing that makes the run happen in the first place. If you already have a trigger and you just want to fetch a feed, you want the app node.

The other boundary is protocol. This node reads an RSS feed and nothing else. A JSON endpoint, a REST API, a page with no feed at all: none of that is in scope here, and the node to reach for is HTTP Request, which calls any HTTP endpoint. It is the fallback whenever a dedicated node is missing an HTTP operation, never for something that is not HTTP in the first place.

Two more limits worth knowing before you build on it. The node polls, so it checks the feed on a schedule rather than being notified by the publisher: how often is set by the Poll Times mode in the node panel, and the delay between publication and execution is whatever that mode allows. And polling only happens in production when the workflow is active. While you are editing, running the test execution starts a one off listen so you can see the shape of an item, then it stops.

Parameters

How do you configure the one parameter?

The RSS Feed Trigger node has one parameter. For each one: the node as you configure it in n8n, what the parameter changes, and our field notes.

01

Feed URL

feedUrl

What you see in n8n

Notes & use cases

This is the address of the RSS feed to poll, and it is the only thing the node needs to work. n8n reads that address on each poll and passes the new entries down the canvas, one item per entry.

Key parameters

  • Feed URL: the URL of the RSS feed to poll, as a string. It is required, so an empty value stops the node from running. The address is the one a site advertises for its feed, not the address of an article page.
Use cases
point it at a changelog feed to get one execution per release note, or at a press feed so every announcement is captured the same way.
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FAQ

RSS Feed Trigger in n8n, answered

01Is the RSS Feed Trigger node included in n8n?
Yes. It is a core node, shipped with n8n itself, so there is nothing to install and no extra cost on the n8n side. You get it on n8n Cloud, the hosted offer run by n8n, and on a self hosted instance installed through Docker or npm under the Community Edition and its Sustainable Use licence. A workflow built around this node behaves the same either way, which matters if you prototype on Cloud and later move to your own server. The feeds you poll are public addresses, so nothing about the node depends on the hosting choice.
02What credentials does the n8n RSS Feed Trigger node need?
None. This node has no credential and no Authentication selector, so there is nothing to set up on the account side: no key to generate, no OAuth screen to click through, no token to rotate later. You paste a feed address and the node works. That makes it one of the fastest nodes to get running, and it also means access control is out of its hands. If a feed sits behind a login or a signed URL, this node has no way to present those credentials, and you are looking at a different approach entirely.
03What are the limits of the RSS Feed Trigger node?
It does one thing: start a workflow when a feed publishes a new item. There is a single parameter, Feed URL, plus the Poll Times mode that sets how often the poll runs. It does not read anything that is not an RSS feed, it has no filtering of its own, and it does not fetch the full article behind an entry. Filtering, enrichment and routing all happen in the nodes after it. The page describes version 1, the highest version in the catalogue. An older workflow can still show an earlier version with fewer options, and a node never upgrades itself.
04RSS Feed Trigger or RSS Read: which one do you need?
It depends on where the feed check belongs. Take the trigger when the feed is the reason the workflow runs at all: nothing else starts it, and each new entry should produce its own execution. Take the RSS Read app node when the workflow already has a trigger and reading a feed is one step among others, for example a daily run that checks four feeds in a row and merges the results. The trigger can only be first on the canvas. The app node can only be somewhere after a trigger. That placement rule settles almost every case.
05n8n or Make for watching an RSS feed?
Both watch feeds, so the choice sits elsewhere. Make is a hosted platform with no self hosting option and pricing counted per operation, which means a chatty feed costs more as it gets chattier. n8n runs on your own server through Docker or npm, or on n8n Cloud if you prefer not to run it, so the feed data and the workflow stay wherever you decide to put them. If data control and a predictable cost as volume grows are what you care about, self hosted n8n answers that. If you would rather not maintain anything, the hosted side of either tool is the honest comparison.
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