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title: "Podcast RSS Feed Validator — Free Tool | The Podcast App"
description: "Validate your podcast RSS feed against Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and RSS 2.0 requirements. Check artwork, episodes, and metadata instantly. Free, no sign-up."
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# Podcast RSS Feed Validator — Free Tool | The Podcast App

# Is Your Podcast Feed Ready for Every Player?

Paste your RSS feed URL and get instant checks against Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Podcasting 2.0 requirements.

We fetch your feed server-side. Nothing is stored.

## What Makes a Podcast RSS Feed Valid

A podcast feed is, underneath everything else, a standard RSS 2.0 XML document. The RSS Advisory Board's specification requires exactly three elements on the channel itself -- title, link, and description -- everything else layered on top is either optional in the base spec or added through a namespace like Apple's itunes: tags. Each episode is an item, and the piece that actually makes it a podcast rather than a blog feed is the enclosure element, which needs three attributes: url (where the audio file lives), length (its size in bytes), and type (its MIME type, such as audio/mpeg). Get any of those three wrong and podcast apps can fail to find, size, or play the episode at all, even if the rest of the feed looks fine.

Apple Podcasts layers its own requirements on top of bare RSS 2.0. Feeds need an itunes:category, an itunes:author, and other iTunes-namespace tags, plus a valid channel-level artwork reference. Apple is also strict about formatting details that are easy to get wrong in an automated export: dates must follow the RFC 2822 format (day of week, day, month, year, then 24-hour time with a time zone offset), filenames and URLs should stick to plain ASCII characters, and XML tags are case-sensitive, so a category written as "kids & family" instead of "Kids & Family" can fail validation. Every episode also needs a GUID -- a globally unique identifier that must never change once it is published, since apps use it to track what a listener has already heard.

The errors that break feeds most often are small and mechanical rather than dramatic. A missing or duplicated GUID makes apps think an old episode is new again, or a new episode is one you have already played. An enclosure with a length of 0 or a placeholder value confuses download progress and file-size displays. Dates that do not conform to RFC 2822 -- a common byproduct of some CMS and hosting-platform exports -- can cause an episode to sort incorrectly or vanish from a "recent episodes" view entirely. Ampersands written as a bare & instead of the XML entity & are one of the most common ways an entire feed becomes invalid XML rather than just one bad episode, since an unescaped character breaks the parser at the point it appears and everything after it can fail to load.

Validation matters because no two podcast apps and directories parse a feed with exactly the same tolerance for errors. Apple's own submission pipeline will reject a feed outright for missing required tags, while some third-party apps parse more forgivingly and just silently drop a malformed episode or fall back to a blank title. That inconsistency is exactly why a feed can look fine in one directory and be broken in another -- the show "works" where a listener already found it, but new listeners on a different app or platform run into missing artwork, garbled titles, or episodes that never appear at all. Catching these problems before publishing an episode is far less costly than fielding listener reports of a broken feed after the fact.

A practical validation routine starts with a general-purpose tool like the W3C Feed Validation Service to catch outright XML errors, then checks the feed against Apple and Spotify's specific requirements, since a feed can be technically valid RSS 2.0 and still fail platform-specific rules. It is also worth re-validating after any hosting migration, CMS update, or feed-redirect change, since these are the most common moments a previously clean feed picks up an encoding bug or a broken enclosure URL. Once the RSS 2.0 core and platform requirements pass cleanly, Podcasting 2.0 tags -- transcript, chapters, funding, and person credits, all championed by the open-podcasting Podcast Standards Project -- are worth adding on top, since they are additive and do not put an otherwise valid feed at risk.

## Sources and further reading

- [RSS 2.0 Specification (RSS Advisory Board)](https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification) The authoritative RSS 2.0 spec defining required channel elements (title, link, description) and the enclosure element's url/length/type attributes.
- [Apple Podcasts for Creators -- Podcast RSS feed requirements](https://podcasters.apple.com/support/823-podcast-requirements) Official Apple requirements: enclosure attributes, GUID, RFC 2822 dates, ASCII filenames, XML case-sensitivity, HTTP HEAD/byte-range hosting support.
- [Podcast Standards Project](https://podstandards.org/) Coalition driving adoption of Podcasting 2.0 tags (transcript, chapters, funding, person, podroll) across RSS feeds.
- [W3C Feed Validation Service](https://validator.w3.org/feed/) Free W3C tool that checks the syntax and structure of RSS/Atom feeds -- the general-purpose first check before platform-specific validation.
- [Apple Podcasts for Creators -- Show Cover template and specs](https://podcasters.apple.com/support/5514-show-cover-template) Official artwork spec referenced by feed validation for the channel-level image element.
- [Spotify Support -- Cover art requirements](https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/cover-art-requirements/) Official Spotify artwork spec relevant to feeds distributed through Spotify.
- [Edison Research](https://www.edisonresearch.com/) Leading US audio/podcast audience research firm
- [Podnews](https://podnews.net/) Daily global podcast-industry news of record
- [The Podcast Academy (The Ambies)](https://www.thepodcastacademy.com/) Membership body behind the Ambies awards
- [Podcast Index](https://podcastindex.org/) Open, independent podcast index and API
- [Media RSS Specification](https://www.rssboard.org/media-rss) media namespace supplementing RSS enclosures
- [Apple Podcasts](https://www.apple.com/apple-podcasts/) Apple's official podcasts app/platform homepage
- [Spotify](https://www.spotify.com/) Spotify homepage (podcasts + music listening)
- [Pocket Casts](https://pocketcasts.com/) Cross-platform podcast player (Automattic)
- [Listen Notes](https://www.listennotes.com/) Podcast search engine and API

## Frequently asked questions

### What does the RSS Feed Validator check?

It checks your podcast RSS feed against five categories: **RSS 2.0 compliance** (required elements like title, description, enclosure), **Apple Podcasts** requirements (artwork, categories, explicit tag), **Spotify** requirements (email, episode format), **Podcasting 2.0** tags (chapters, transcripts, funding), and general **feed health** (episode count, publish frequency, HTTPS usage).

### Is my feed URL stored or shared?

No. We fetch your feed server-side to run the validation checks, but we do not store the URL, the feed content, or any results. Nothing is logged or shared with third parties.

### What are Apple Podcasts' RSS feed requirements?

Apple requires a valid channel title, description, language, artwork (minimum 1400×1400px, recommended 3000×3000px, JPEG or PNG), at least one `itunes:category` , an `itunes:explicit` tag, and an `itunes:author` tag. Each episode needs a title, enclosure with audio URL, and a GUID. Our validator checks all of these.

### Why does my artwork fail validation?

Common reasons: dimensions below 1400×1400px, non-square aspect ratio, file size over 512 KB, non-RGB color space, or the image URL returns a 404. Apple recommends 3000×3000px JPEG or PNG. Use our [Cover Art Checker](https://thepodcastapp.dev/tools/cover-art-checker) for detailed artwork analysis.

### Can I validate a private or password-protected feed?

Not currently. The validator fetches your feed from our server, so it needs to be publicly accessible. If your feed requires authentication, you will see a "feed unreachable" error. For private feeds, check your hosting platform's built-in validation tools.

## You might also like

### Cover Art Checker

Check your podcast artwork against Apple and Spotify size, format, and quality requirements.

### Podcast Launch Checklist

Work through a practical launch checklist for equipment, branding, hosting, and distribution.

### Podcast Website Generator

Turn your feed into a starter podcast website with episode pages, subscribe links, and show details.

### OPML Viewer & Editor

View, search, and edit your podcast subscriptions. Export a cleaned OPML file or see subscription stats.

## Validate your feed, then claim your show

Fix feed issues, claim your show, and start getting weekly listener intelligence from Brain.

## Explore the closest podcast app guides.

These related pages cover the nearest listening workflows, app features, and comparison paths.

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