--- title: Atom is better than RSS, in ways that matter | daily.dev description: A technical argument for why Atom is superior to RSS in ways that actually matter for content producers. The key practical differences highlighted are title... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/atom-is-better-than-rss-in-ways-that-matter-sfkrgevjh twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Atom is better than RSS, in ways that matter | daily.dev og:description: A technical argument for why Atom is superior to RSS in ways that actually matter for content producers. The key practical differences highlighted are title... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/atom-is-better-than-rss-in-ways-that-matter-sfkrgevjh og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/sFkRgeVjh.png og:image:alt: Atom is better than RSS, in ways that matter og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Atom is better than RSS, in ways that matter **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A technical argument for why Atom is superior to RSS in ways that actually matter for content producers. The key practical differences highlighted are title encoding semantics — Atom's text construct allows unambiguous handling of HTML characters and markup in titles, while RSS has no reliable encoding semantics leading to inconsistent behavior across readers — and the summary/full item distinction. The post also acknowledges the podcast ecosystem as a major exception, blaming Apple's early dominance for locking podcasting into RSS-only support, a situation that persists today with Apple Podcasts removing Atom support in 2023. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 63 comments across lobsters, hackernews (as of 2026-08-02). **TL;DR:** The community broadly agrees Atom is technically superior to RSS, but most commenters see the debate as largely academic since feed readers support both formats and the practical differences rarely affect end users. A notable side thread debates JSON Feed as a more modern alternative. **Sentiment:** 30% positive · 45% mixed · 25% skeptical **The case for** - Essentially all feed readers support both Atom and RSS, so switching to Atom has no real downside for publishers. - Atom avoids real-world encoding/parsing bugs (e.g., HTML in titles) that plague many RSS feeds in the wild. - Atom has better-defined timestamps, encoding, and content handling, reducing ambiguity for implementers. **The pushback** - Apple Podcasts and some podcast tooling require RSS, making Atom a non-starter for podcasters. - Atom's strict XML requirement means HTML5 content must be converted to XHTML5, which is more work than simple string templating. - Atom requires absolute self-links, which is annoying for static site generators that don't know their deployment domain at build time. - The debate is seen as stale and irrelevant by many, since neither format is widely understood by average users and both are niche. **By community** - lobsters (mixed): Lobsters commenters largely agree Atom is the obvious technical choice but find both formats user-unfriendly, and debate whether the article's opening framing is a logical fallacy. - hackernews (mixed): HN commenters accept Atom's technical superiority but argue the practical difference is minimal since readers support both, with a lively side debate about JSON Feed as a better modern alternative and the VHS/Betamax analogy. **Hottest debate:** Whether the VHS/Betamax analogy applies — i.e., whether Atom 'lost' to RSS or whether the two formats effectively coexist since all readers support both. **Open questions** - Why did Apple choose to lock podcasting into RSS rather than Atom, and will that ever change? - Is JSON Feed now the most practical choice for new projects, superseding both RSS and Atom? - Should the community rally around a single blessed set of web standards (like an RVA23-style profile) to reduce format fragmentation? **Highlights** > I agree that Atom is easier to use and better defined in some ways. But why on earth would you want to put unrestricted HTML in the title in the first place? How is a reader supposed to handle that? It's just a stupid thing to allow. In practice, the differences between the syndication formats don't really matter. Today even less than when they were created, as a solution for most of the differences is just a prompt away. In my humble opinion, JSON feed (https://www.jsonfeed.org/version/1.1/) is the most practical format. By a small margin, but still... - it's really simple and doesn't use XML - it doesn't allow stupid things like HTML in titles (which I guarantee >50% of all implementations can't handle correctly) - JSON Feed allows feeds to have a and a (square!) , which is a very practical thing for readers. You can use the in lists of feeds, and the to present a single feed. Atom has a small square icon and a which is supposed to use a 2:1 aspect ratio. 2:1 is completely useless. No site has a logo in 2:1. It's also useless for most full-name logos, like 'New York Times'. (RSS is, of course, even worse; it doesn't even recommend an aspect ratio, practically guaranteeing that RSS readers can look bad) You can see that JSON feed has been designed from a feed consumer's point of view: what does an RSS reader need to make a feed look good? While Atom and especially RSS have been written from a publisher's point of view, making everything possible. Especially RSS, which has shown its flexibility in becoming the de facto format for podcasts. But in the end, users won't notice any difference (as long as publishers are smart enough to use square images!). So any feed is a win, no matter whether RSS, Atom, or JSON feed. > — [tjansen on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49142580) > Do video cassette recorders and players support both VHS and Betamax? Because essentially all feed readers support both Atom and RSS. > — [chrismorgan on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49142966) > I've implemented syndication feeds for about twenty years and Atom was always the obvious pick. Twenty years on, I still can't name a reason to choose RSS over it. Outside podcasting, where Apple made RSS the practical choice, what's actually going through people's heads when they pick RSS anyway? > — [hongminhee on lobsters · 1 points, 1 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/80cn4r/atom_is_better_than_rss_ways_matter#c_21l6ki) > Personally, I don’t care at all since we’ve gotten JSON feeds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON_Feed Not every programming language I use can output RSS/Atom/XML by default, but pretty much all of them can output JSON natively, no library needed, just fine. The spec is short and easy to understand, to the point it’s little effort to manipulate the feeds, adding to them or consuming them even without a dedicated reader if need be. To consume other people’s feeds, I mostly don’t care what format they are as long as my reader can understand them. To generate my feeds, I always use JSON. Most of them are for personal use, but even for those which aren’t, I never had any complaints (most feed readers seem to be able to read those just fine). > — [latexr on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49142779) > Atom is correct to a degree that is annoying. It is XML, so not all HTML5 is allowed. You would have to convert your HTML5 to XHTML5. Possible but harder than string-concatenation. It requires full self links, so you must put your domain name in there as relative links would be an error. When using a static generator, why should I care where the files are published? My website has valid Atom feeds. Still, it's an annoying format to me. > — [qznc on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49142848) **Source threads** - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/80cn4r/atom_is_better_than_rss_ways_matter) · 18 points · 13 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49138897) · 45 points · 50 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [From RSS to Atom](https://daily.dev/posts/from-rss-to-atom-c07gmou1t) · Susam Pal · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Thoughts, notes and what I read](https://daily.dev/posts/thoughts-notes-and-what-i-read-rjcc7yeqo) · RUBYLAND · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [This is the best RSS reader I've ever used, and it's not even an RSS reader](https://daily.dev/posts/this-is-the-best-rss-reader-i-ve-ever-used-and-it-s-not-even-an-rss-reader-2e45j35om) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [RSS doesn’t have to be boring](https://daily.dev/posts/rss-doesn-t-have-to-be-boring-idvrxci23) · Bite Code · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [RSS Feeds Send Me More Traffic Than Google](https://daily.dev/posts/rss-feeds-send-me-more-traffic-than-google-itibtlh5j) · Terence Eden · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/atom-is-better-than-rss-in-ways-that-matter-sfkrgevjh) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Atom is better than RSS, in ways that matter","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/atom-is-better-than-rss-in-ways-that-matter-sfkrgevjh","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/atom-is-better-than-rss-in-ways-that-matter-sfkrgevjh"},"datePublished":"2026-08-02T05:31:12.411Z","dateModified":"2026-08-02T10:20:19.908Z","description":"A technical argument for why Atom is superior to RSS in ways that actually matter for content producers. 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