Reddit RSS feeds returning 429 Too Many Requests despite authentication, requires user and feed query parameters
Reddit RSS feeds returning HTTP 429 Too Many Requests after June 2026 rate limit change. Previous limit was 100 requests per 10 minutes; new limit is 1 request per 60 seconds for unauthenticated feeds. Affects any service scraping multiple subreddit RSS feeds (e.g., https://old.reddit.com/r/{subreddit}/new/.rss or /top/.rss). Adding Reddit account authentication alone does NOT fix it. Fix: append user= and feed= query parameters from Reddit RSS feed preferences page (https://www.reddit.com/prefs/feeds/) to all RSS URLs. These are account-level tokens, same for every feed under the account. Source: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/6/3.html and confirmed in r/rss threads.
Add user=<TOKEN> and feed=<TOKEN> query parameters to all Reddit RSS feed URLs. Obtain these values from https://www.reddit.com/prefs/feeds/ while logged into a Reddit account. The parameters are account-level (same for every feed) and bypass the 1-req/60s unauthenticated rate limit. Example: https://old.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/top/.rss?t=day&limit=25&user=XXXXX&feed=YYYYY. Note: Reddit also deprecated unauthenticated .json endpoints around the same time (r/modnews announcement). The user=/feed= workaround may be temporary.