Reddit is tightening the ways outside tools can read posts and help manage communities.
On September 30, 2026, the company announced a plan to counter large-scale scraping and automated abuse. RSS feeds will end on November 13, and access to the public Data API will end by March 2027. For the old-design "Old Reddit," Reddit will also require logged-in users to have been active within the past six months.
Community moderators and developers are being offered migration paths. But for general users who subscribe to their favorite communities via RSS, there is no replacement. The changes go to a larger question: who can access Reddit's conversations and posts, and by what means.
What RSS, the API and Old Reddit each lose is different
According to Reddit's September 30 announcement, no alternative is being provided for RSS subscriptions by general users. Apps that use the public API will be required to move to Devvit, and continued use of Old Reddit will require recent activity or moderator privileges.
The update for moderators and the migration schedule for developers, both published the same day, can be summarized by use case and continuation requirements as follows.
| Channel | Timing and change | Remaining uses / alternatives |
|---|---|---|
| RSS feeds | Support ends November 13, 2026 | Discord Relay can be used for notifications about communities you moderate. No alternative for general users who subscribe to communities they do not moderate |
| Public Data API | New access requests close October 31, 2026. Starting January 12, 2027, access will begin to be cut off for unregistered apps and users, or those who have not responded to Reddit's outreach, and remaining public access will end by March | Community apps and bots must move to the developer platform "Devvit" |
| Old Reddit | Within the next few months, logged-in users will also be required to show activity within the past six months | Logged-in moderators can access it even without recent activity |
These are plans announced as of September 30, not changes that have already taken effect.
For Old Reddit, no specific start date for the restriction has been given, nor has Reddit explained how it will determine six months of activity. Also, what is ending is access to the publicly available API; Reddit has not announced that data provision under individual contracts will end across the board.
More significant than the timing is what is left in place afterward.
Bots and apps are required to move to Devvit, and Old Reddit remains for a narrower set of users. General RSS subscriptions, by contrast, end without any official successor for the same use.
Discord Relay is not a substitute for RSS subscriptions
RSS is a mechanism for collecting website updates in a feed reader. Users can check the sources they have chosen in one place.
Unlike opening Reddit's pages and hunting for posts, RSS lets people pull new items from multiple communities into the reader they already use.
Reddit says RSS has become a route for bulk data collection and automated abuse.
But the impact of losing RSS is not limited to those collecting data in bulk. Ordinary users who follow a handful of communities every day will also lose the same mechanism.
The replacement Reddit points moderators to is the Devvit app "Discord Relay."
According to the official setup guide, it can send notifications, such as posts and comments awaiting review, to the Discord or Slack used by a moderation team. Links in the notifications open Reddit so moderators can check the post or comment.
To use it, you need sufficient moderator permissions in the community, as well as permission to connect the destination channel.
In other words, what Discord Relay can replace is moderation notifications for communities that people manage themselves.
That is different, in both purpose and required permissions, from a general user subscribing to new posts in communities they do not manage.
Why Reddit is ending RSS and how general users' information gathering through RSS will be replaced remain separate questions.
Moving to Devvit changes how bots and apps run
According to Reddit, more than 14,000 registrations have already been made to move apps and bots that used the public API to Devvit.
DeltaBot, MagicEyeBot and RemindMeBot were cited as examples that have completed migration or are close to it.
However, 14,000 is a count of registrations, not of apps that have finished migrating. Reddit itself acknowledges that work remains to add features still missing for moving existing apps.
For developers, this migration is not just a matter of changing endpoints or API keys.
The migration guide for the Python library PRAW explains that programs that ran continuously on your own server must be rewritten to run in Reddit's environment.
For example, a loop that constantly watches for new comments must be changed to event-driven processing that starts when a comment is posted.
Periodic tasks use a scheduler, and information previously stored in local files or custom databases must be moved to Devvit-provided storage such as per-community Redis.
When communicating with external services, the domains allowed for connections must be specified in advance in the app's settings.
Even if an app keeps offering the same functionality, how it is launched and how its data is stored must be reconsidered.
That said, connections to external servers or custom databases are not banned outright.
The migration guide also explains how to request additional capabilities and permissions, for example for connections to existing external systems or processing that spans multiple communities.
Developers will therefore need to check individually whether the functionality they offer today can be reproduced on Devvit as is, or whether additional requests or design changes are needed.
As support, a $1 million app migration program has also been set up. Eligible apps that successfully migrate under the conditions will receive $1,000.
The application deadline for the program is November 30, 2026, earlier than January 12, 2027, when access cutoffs for unregistered apps and others begin. Developers who want funding cannot put off migration until just before the API becomes unavailable.
Providing data to AI companies while limiting unauthorized bulk collection
Reddit is not prohibiting the use of its data for AI as such.
In its February 2024 expanded partnership with Google, the company said it would provide access to public posts and comments through the Data API, making it easier to use content for display and AI model training.
The partnership with OpenAI announced that May likewise includes API access so that Reddit information can be used in real time and in structured form by ChatGPT and other products.
Reddit's approach is not to stop data use itself, but to restrict unauthorized bulk collection while providing data to parties it has contracts with.
This thinking also appears in the company's Public Content Policy.
Reddit takes the position that even information published on the internet is not free for third parties to use without limits. Through license agreements, it says it identifies who uses the data and for what purpose, defines prohibited uses, and requires handling of posts and comments that have been deleted.
Prohibited uses include profiling or surveillance of individuals based on sensitive personal information.
Researchers are also envisioned as data recipients, so the end of the public API cannot simply be read as a complete shutdown of access for academic research.
However, even with contracts requiring handling of deleted posts and comments, they do not guarantee that the influence of information already used to train AI models can be fully removed.
For Reddit, consolidating public data use into contracts and its own managed runtime environment makes it easier to see who is using the data and why.
Ending mechanisms like RSS, through which general users receive information with their own preferred tools, is consistent with that policy.
But making data use easier to control is not the same issue as preserving small-scale uses by ordinary users.
On the revenue side, it would also be inappropriate to explain these changes solely by AI data licensing.
In the second-quarter 2026 results, of $805 million in revenue, advertising accounted for $762 million and other revenue for $43 million.
The entire "other" category cannot be assumed to be AI data licensing revenue, and advertising still makes up the bulk of Reddit's revenue.
Maintaining communities and reducing abuse matter to the advertising business too, but Reddit has not published figures on how much ad impressions or sales would increase by ending RSS.
Old Reddit will require use within the past six months
For Old Reddit, on top of the login requirement introduced this year, recent activity will now be required.
According to Reddit, restricting logged-out access reduced scraping and abuse. But because logged-in accounts with almost no usage history could still reach Old Reddit, the company says it will add further restrictions.
Reddit says the six-month window now being set covers the majority of existing users.
However, making usage history a condition could mean users who want to start using Old Reddit, or who have been away from Reddit for a long time, cannot use it.
Moderators get an exception, but the bar for ordinary users to start using Old Reddit gets higher.
This is not an announcement that Old Reddit will be discontinued entirely, but it is a step away from a state where anyone can freely choose between the old and new display modes.
In an August post, CEO Steve Huffman had indicated, alongside access restrictions and the migration of major use cases, the possibility of rebuilding Old Reddit on a new technical foundation.
He also expressed a wish to keep it in a form that reproduces its current look, HTML and CSS, but this announcement did not set a timeline for a rebuilt version.
The Automod change announced the same day reflects a similar approach of keeping existing users' usage while steering new use to a different mechanism.
Communities already using Automod see no change, but in newly created communities and those that have never used Automod, functions such as removing posts and comments or routing them to review will be disabled.
Instead, Rules Hub and Automations become the standard management tools. Automod itself is not being abolished.
On November 13, general subscriptions via RSS will end, and from 2027, cutoffs of public API access will proceed in stages.
Reddit says earlier access restrictions reduced abuse, but this announcement did not give figures on how much scraping and similar activity actually declined.
To judge whether these changes succeed, it will be necessary to look not only at how much abusive bulk collection is reduced, but also at how well the browsing and moderation tools used by ordinary users and small communities are preserved.
If no alternative to RSS for general subscriptions is provided, the effects of access restrictions meant to prevent abuse will reach not only businesses collecting large volumes of data, but also ordinary users who followed their favorite communities every day.