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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-10T15:07:02+00:00

Should I ask websites if I need to use their rss feed as data

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Should I ask websites if I need to use their rss feed as data for my iPhone app?

I have seen several apps which use rss feed as their back end. Did they ask for permission from the websites whom they use as the source?
Most websites have a restriction on how many calls an app can make per second or per hour for an RSS feed.
But if my app is distributed amongst several users, it is not really a single user who is calling for rss feed.

Also one idea I had was to cache the rss feed on some different server for some time, but then the users might not get the most latest feed. I will cache the downloaded app on the user’s phone, but for how long would makes sense?

I don’t wanna get sued for using RSS feed from websites, but asking every website for permission is too much.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Most RSS feeds are available to the public to subscribe to, so there shouldn’t be a problem if your app is subscribing to them. If you were worried, however, you could contact the site (which I’m sure they’d appreciate), post a link to their site in your app (a nice gesture), or do as you said and cache the feed for as long as you think it could go without being updated.

    I’m not 100% sure if this helps, but here are three articles on RSS licensing:

    http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Syndication

    http://wiki.creativecommons.org/RSS_1.0

    http://wiki.creativecommons.org/RSS_2.0

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