Research
On 27 October 2026 I read the RSS feeds of 119 newsletters on five platforms. Ghost and Buttondown feeds almost always carry the full edition: 18 of 19 and 19 of 20. Substack feeds always exist, but only 10 of 20 carried the full text of their newest editions, because paid posts are cut short and many posts are short notes. beehiiv makes a feed only when the writer creates one, and 18 of 20 beehiiv sites linked none, yet all 20 beehiiv feeds I found carried the full edition. None of the 20 Kit newsletters had a feed at all.
Disclosure: I am Vicente Évora, the founder of Quibr, which reads a newsletter’s RSS feed and turns each edition into social posts. That is why I wanted to know. The method, the counting rules and the limits are all below, so you can check the work.
An RSS feed is a list of your newest editions that software can read. Feed readers use it. So does every tool that posts your newsletter to social media without you, Quibr included.
If the feed holds the whole edition, a tool can write posts from all of it. If it holds two sentences and a “Read more” link, the tool works from two sentences, unless it opens the edition’s page as well.
Most guides say “connect your RSS feed” and stop there. Nobody had checked how much each platform actually puts in the feed, so I did. For where the feed fits in the bigger routine, read the full guide to promoting a newsletter on social media.
A feed counted as full text when at least four of its newest five editions held 150 words or more. Mixed means two or three did. Audio and video episodes were set aside.
| Sample | Read | Full text | Mixed | Mostly short | No public feed | Audio or video only |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Substack | 20 | 10 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| Ghost | 19 | 18 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Buttondown | 20 | 19 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| beehiiv sites | 20 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 18 | 0 |
| beehiiv feeds, once created | 20 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Kit | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 0 |
Counted edition by edition, the gap is clearer. beehiiv feeds held the full text of 97 of 100 editions, Buttondown feeds 96 of 100, Ghost feeds 87 of 95, and Substack feeds 66 of 95.
| Platform | Feed address | Do you have to turn it on? |
|---|---|---|
| Substack | yourname.substack.com/feed, or your domain plus /feed | No |
| Ghost | Your site plus /rss/ | No, unless the site is private |
| Buttondown | buttondown.com/yourname/rss | It needs web archives on |
| beehiiv | A generated address ending in .xml | Yes: Settings, RSS, New RSS Feed |
| Kit | None found | Kit’s help describes RSS only as a way to bring a blog into Kit |
“A unique RSS Feed URL will be generated for your publication. Copy and use this URL as needed.”
That is why most beehiiv sites showed no feed. A reader, or a tool, cannot guess the address. The writer has to create the feed and hand the address over. Once it exists, it is one of the best: all 20 beehiiv feeds I read carried the full edition.
Three things pulled Substack down, and none of them is a broken feed.
For a tool that writes from the feed, all three look the same: there is not much text to work from.
On beehiiv, create the feed: Settings, then your publication, then RSS, then New RSS Feed. Copy the address it generates. beehiiv’s help says the feature is on all plans. In my sample, beehiiv feeds carried the full edition every time, so this one step is all a beehiiv writer needs. If you delete the feed and make a new one, the address changes, so update any tool that uses it.
On Kit, there is no feed to turn on that I could find. Kit’s RSS feature works the other way: it turns a blog’s feed into broadcasts. To use a tool that reads feeds, you would need your editions on a site that has one. Otherwise, paste each edition into a tool that accepts text.
I wrote the counting rules and chose where each sample came from before reading a single feed. Nobody picked newsletters by hand.
Each feed was read once, on 27 October 2026. I looked at its newest five written editions and counted their words with the same counter my free Roast my newsletter uses.
Quibr checks your feed every 30 minutes and writes posts from each new edition. Since 27 October 2026, when an edition in the feed holds fewer than 150 words, Quibr opens the edition’s own page and writes from the full text there. It does that only when the page carries the edition’s title or opening words, so a broken link never sends it off to write about your home page.
A paid edition’s page shows only its free part, so that is all Quibr can read. Kit newsletters cannot be connected, because there is no feed to read.
Use the table above: /feed on Substack, /rss/ on Ghost, /rss on Buttondown, or the address beehiiv generated for you.
You will see raw text with tags. That is normal.
Search the page for a sentence from the end of it. If you find it, the feed carries the full edition.
Check whether the post is paid, or whether your platform has an excerpt setting for feeds.
To set up a tool that posts from your feed, read how to post a newsletter to social media automatically. If you are comparing tools, see the tools that turn a newsletter into social posts and the buyer’s shortlist.
Yes. Every Substack publication has one at /feed, for example yourname.substack.com/feed. Paid posts appear in it cut off, ending in “Read more”.
Yes, but only once you create it: Settings, then RSS, then New RSS Feed. beehiiv generates a unique address ending in .xml. In my sample, 18 of 20 beehiiv sites linked no feed, but all 20 beehiiv feeds I read carried the full edition.
I found none. Kit’s help describes RSS only as a way to bring a blog’s feed into Kit as broadcasts, and none of the 20 Kit newsletters I checked had a feed.
In my sample, yes for almost everyone: 18 of 19 Ghost feeds carried four or five full editions out of their newest five. A Ghost site in private mode has no public feed.
At buttondown.com/yourname/rss, when web archives are on. 19 of the 20 Buttondown feeds I read carried full editions.
Yes, if the feed carries the edition and a tool reads it. Some tools only post a link, some show you the edition and you write each post, and some write the posts too. My guide to posting a newsletter automatically compares them.
Founder of Quibr
Vicente writes Notes to 10K MRR, a weekly build-in-public newsletter on beehiiv, alongside university and a part-time job. Every edition went out on time, and the social posts that were supposed to follow it never did.
He built Quibr to write those posts for him. It started as an idea on 26 November 2024, and the first version shipped in January 2025. Quibr is built and run by one person, and Vicente answers support email himself.
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