Importing and republishing feed content
These plugins center on bringing feed or podcast material into WordPress, a different task from creating feeds for other platforms.
- WPeMatico RSS Feed Fetcher and RSS Importer: Their names place them among the category’s feed-import tools; they have 10,000 and 20,000 active installs, respectively.
- FeedWordPress: Another feed-focused option, with 8,000 active installs.
- Podcast Importer SecondLine: A podcast-specific import option, with 4,000 active installs.
- Tag overlap: The feed tag overlaps with 185 RSS plugins, while content overlaps with 16 and podcast with 17, reflecting adjacent uses within the category.
Custom feeds for news and publishing platforms
Some RSS plugins are oriented toward feeds for particular publishing platforms rather than importing external feeds into a site.
GN Publisher: Google News Compatible RSS Feeds has 20,000 active installs and established adoption. Its rating is excellent, based on few reviews, and it was updated last month. The news tag overlaps with 27 plugins in the RSS category.
The Yandex-named plugins have different adoption levels: RSS for Yandex Turbo has 20,000 active installs and established adoption, while RSS for Yandex Zen has 4,000 and niche adoption. Both have excellent ratings based on their respective review counts, and both were last updated 17 months ago.
Changing which content appears in feeds
These plugins address whether feeds are available or which site content they include.
- Disable Feeds: Its name signals feed disabling; it has an excellent rating based on few reviews, but was last updated 104 months ago.
- Disable Feeds WP: Also named for disabling feeds, it has an excellent rating based on few reviews and was updated five months ago.
- RSS Includes Pages: Its name points to expanding feed contents; it was updated two months ago and has a mixed rating based on few reviews.
Displaying feeds and publishing podcasts
RSS-related tools also cover displaying feed items and podcast publishing, beyond importing feed content.
Super RSS Reader represents the display-oriented side of the category, with 9,000 active installs and an excellent rating based on a moderate number of reviews. The widget tag overlaps with 29 RSS plugins, indicating a related display use.
Podlove Podcast Publisher represents podcast publishing, with 3,000 active installs and a good rating based on few reviews. The podcast tag overlaps with 17 plugins in the category.
A fragmented category with uneven maintenance
RSS is a broad but modestly concentrated category, and recent updates are uncommon across its plugins.
There are 360 plugins in the category, but only seven have at least 10,000 active installs and none has 100,000 or more. The largest install count among the listed plugins is 20,000, suggesting adoption is spread across a long tail rather than dominated by a single high-install option.
Just 27% of plugins were updated in the last year. The contrast among top plugins is notable: WPeMatico RSS Feed Fetcher was updated this month, while RSS Importer was last updated 24 months ago and Disable Feeds 104 months ago. Checking both update recency and review signals can help distinguish plugins with very different maintenance histories.