Reference

The YouTube playlist RSS feed

Every public YouTube playlist has an RSS feed. It isn't linked from anywhere in the interface and YouTube doesn't document it, but it works. It's free and needs no account or API key.

The URL

Take the playlist ID and drop it in here:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=PLAYLIST_ID

Finding the playlist ID

Open the playlist and look at the address bar. The ID is the value of list=, and it usually starts with PL:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw9Wuw7IfIEv5HZjym6i12JqNyoQ2Fwis
                                      └─────────── this part ──────────┘

If you opened the playlist from a video, the URL has a watch?v=…&list=… shape instead. The list= value is still the one you want.

What comes back

You get an Atom feed. Every entry has the video ID, its title, a link, the publish date and a thumbnail, which is enough for any reader to show it properly:

<feed xmlns:yt="http://www.youtube.com/xml/schemas/2015" …>
  <yt:playlistId>PLw9Wuw7IfIEv5HZjym6i12JqNyoQ2Fwis</yt:playlistId>
  <title>Eğitim</title>
  <author><name>Global Menkul Değerler</name></author>
  <entry>
    <yt:videoId>oBVlWhX7iNk</yt:videoId>
    <title>Eğitim | #VİOP'ta Akşam Seansı</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBVlWhX7iNk"/>
    <published>2025-03-13T14:00:57+00:00</published>
    <media:thumbnail url="https://i4.ytimg.com/vi/oBVlWhX7iNk/hqdefault.jpg" …/>
  </entry>
  …
</feed>

There's a channel feed too

It uses the same endpoint with a different parameter. It's useful if you want a whole channel rather than one playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNEL_ID

The feed's limits

The feed works well, but it has limits, and it helps to know them before you start:

• About 15 entries, and no way to page further

  The feed carries only the most recent videos. There is no pagination parameter, so a playlist with hundreds of videos gives you a small window onto the end of it.

• Ordered by publish date, not by when it was added

  A video uploaded in 2019 and added to the playlist this morning does not appear at the top. If the playlist curates older material, the feed will not show you what just changed.

• It's a pull format

  Nothing is pushed to you. Something has to fetch the URL on a schedule and notice what changed, so your feed reader has to keep running and checking it.

• Public playlists only

  Unlisted and private playlists return nothing, which is the correct behaviour but worth knowing before you debug it.

• It isn't documented

  YouTube does not list this endpoint anywhere official. It has worked for many years and is widely relied on, but nobody has guaranteed it will keep working.

When RSS is the right answer

If you already run a feed reader, this is the best option and you can stop here. It costs nothing and doesn't depend on a third party, and YouTube is unlikely to remove it.

It stops being the right answer when you want an email or a phone notification instead of somewhere to go and look, when you'd rather not keep something running, or when the playlist is long enough that a 15-entry window can miss things between checks. That's where Listabell helps. It checks the same public data around the clock and sends you an email or a Telegram message. It's free, and here's how it compares to the other options.

See also: the YouTube channel RSS feed, with how to find a channel's ID from its @handle.