Troubleshooting external RSS feed errors

If you've connected an external RSS feed through RSS Ingestion, or an externally hosted podcast through the Podcast feed block, and beehiiv isn't pulling in new content, the most likely explanation is that beehiiv couldn't reach the feed. Here's what each error means and how to fix it.

Common RSS fetch errors and how to resolve them

beehiiv checks your external feed periodically, and a few things can cause that check to fail: your site's firewall, its rate limiting rules, a login requirement, a moved or deleted URL, a server issue, or a typo in the domain. Find the error you're seeing below for what it means and how to fix it.

The feed returns a 403 error

A 403 error usually means the website hosting your feed has a firewall or web application firewall (WAF) in place that's blocking requests from beehiiv.

What to do: Ask whoever manages your website's hosting, security, or firewall settings to allowlist beehiiv's fetcher in your WAF configuration. See Allowlisting beehiiv's fetcher below for the exact value to add.

The feed returns a 429 error

A 429 error means the site hosting your feed is rate limiting requests, and it's currently blocking beehiiv for making too many requests in a given period.

What to do: Ask whoever manages your website to adjust their rate limiting rules to allow more frequent requests from beehiiv's user agent. See Allowlisting beehiiv's fetcher below for the value to use when setting up that exception.

The feed returns a 401 error

A 401 error means the feed requires a login or other authentication to access. beehiiv can only fetch feeds that are publicly accessible, so it can't retrieve content from a feed that sits behind a login.

What to do: The feed needs to be made publicly accessible (no login required) for beehiiv to pull content from it. If you're featuring a podcast through the Podcast feed block, private or subscriber-specific feeds (like a premium or Patreon-only feed) aren't compatible with a public feed block. If the show has a public RSS feed available, use that URL instead.

The feed returns a 404 or 410 error

A 404 or 410 error means the feed URL beehiiv is trying to reach no longer exists at that address, either because it moved or was taken down.

What to do: Confirm the current, correct URL for your feed, then update it in your beehiiv account:

• For RSS Ingestion, update the feed under your publication's RSS settings.
• For the Podcast feed block, update the connected feed from the block's design panel in the Website Builder.

The feed returns a 5xx error

A 5xx error means the server hosting your feed ran into a problem on its end while beehiiv was trying to fetch it.

What to do: This is usually temporary and not something you need to act on. If the error keeps happening across multiple fetch attempts, check with whoever manages your website's hosting to see if their server is experiencing ongoing issues.

The fetch times out

A timeout means the server hosting your feed took too long to respond to beehiiv's request.

What to do: This points to a performance issue with the server hosting your feed. Check with whoever manages your hosting about the server's response times, especially if the feed is large or the hosting environment is slow to respond.

The feed has a DNS failure

A DNS failure means the domain in your feed URL doesn't resolve at all, so beehiiv can't even reach the server to make the request.

What to do: Double check the feed URL for typos. If the URL is correct, confirm the domain itself is live and its DNS is configured correctly.

Allowlisting beehiiv's fetcher

If your WAF or firewall is blocking beehiiv (a 403 error) or your rate limiting rules are throttling beehiiv (a 429 error), the fix in both cases is the same: add an exception for beehiiv's user agent.

Configure the exception as a substring match on beehiiv-rss-fetcher rather than matching the full user agent string exactly. beehiiv's user agent includes a version number that can change, and a substring match keeps your allowlist working through those updates.

If you're also using an externally hosted podcast feed (through the Podcast feed block or importing a podcast into beehiiv), add a second exception for the substring beehiiv-podcast-importer, since podcast RSS fetches use a separate user agent from other external RSS feeds.

Consult your WAF or hosting provider's documentation for how to add a user agent exception, since the exact steps vary by provider.

Frequently asked questions about external RSS feed errors