Looking at RSS User-Agents

February 4th, 2021
meta, rs, tech
An RSS reader sends periodic requests to get the latest feed. This includes a User-Agent field, identifying which fetcher is running:
Feedbin feed-id:1242010 - 38 subscribers
This fetcher is nicely passing along statistics, saying how many readers it represents.

I took one day of logs, with 5,962 requests for my RSS feed:

$ sudo grep '"GET /news.rss ' \
    /var/log/nginx/access.log.1 \
  | awk -F'"' '{print $6}' \
  | wc -l
5962
There were 162 unique User-Agents:
$ sudo grep '"GET /news.rss ' \
    /var/log/nginx/access.log.1 \
  | awk -F'"' '{print $6}' \
  | sort \
  | uniq \
  | wc -l
162
Of the 5,962 requests, 932 (16%) gave stats:
$ sudo grep '"GET /news.rss ' \
    /var/log/nginx/access.log.1 \
  | awk -F'"' '{print $6}' \
  | grep 'subscriber\|reader' \
  | wc -l
932
They sent 21 distinct User-Agents:
$ sudo grep '"GET /news.rss ' \
    /var/log/nginx/access.log.1 \
  | awk -F'"' '{print $6}' \
  | grep 'subscriber\|reader' \
  | sort \
  | uniq \
  | wc -l
21
Some sent multiple requests with different numbers of subscribers:
Feedbin feed-id:1242010 - 38 subscribers
Feedbin feed-id:372940 - 11 subscribers
Feedbin feed-id:382 - 1 subscribers
I suspect this comes from people using old URLs that then get redirected to my current URL. For example, now it's https://www.jefftk.com/news.rss, but it used to be http://www.jefftk.com/news.rss, and even longer ago it was an sccs.swarthmore.edu address. Summing subscriber counts, I see:
  • Feedly: 573
  • inoreader.com: 87
  • NewsBlur: 62
  • Feedbin: 50
  • theoldreader.com: 34
  • Dreamwidth Studios: 7
  • BazQux: 5
  • Bloglovin: 2
  • Feed Wrangler: 2
  • pine.blog: 1
While this only tells us about users who are subscribed to my blog, it seems like Feedly is the biggest player here by a lot.

Different services fetched at different intervals. Taking the shortest interval for each distinct User-Agent:

  • Feedly: 7min
  • Feedbin: 15min
  • Bloglovin: 30min
  • Dreamwidth Studios: 30min
  • Feed Wrangler: 30min
  • NewsBlur: 30min
  • BazQux: 40min
  • inoreader.com: 1hr
  • theoldreader.com: 2hr
  • pine.blog: 24hr
Looking through the requests that don't list subscribers, several do seem to be services. I'll try reaching out to them to see if they're interested in adding subscriber counts to their User-Agents.

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

On Apologizing To Kids

Everyone is so weird about apologizing to children.

via Thing of Things August 25, 2025

Against the Teapot Hold in Contra Dancing

The teapot hold is the most dangerous common contra dancing figure, so I’ve been avoiding it. The teapot hold, sometimes called a "courtesy turn hold,” requires one dancer to connect with their hand behind their back. When I realized I could avoid put…

via Emma Azelborn August 25, 2025

Little Puppy

She's very little and she likes to do stuff with me. She also likes to bark around and run around and jump around. She also likes to go to places with me and that's all I have.

via Nora Wise's Blog Posts August 23, 2025

more     (via openring)