Free tool

Podcast RSS feed validator

Find out why a directory is refusing your show — before you spend another week waiting on a review that was never going to pass.

What this checks, and why each one matters

Podcast directories do not publish a single definitive validation specification, but they converge on the same set of requirements in practice. These are the ones that actually determine whether your show gets listed.

Feed-level

Reachable and returns XML. The feed must respond successfully and return XML rather than a web page. Submitting a podcast website URL instead of the feed URL is one of the most common mistakes.
Well-formed XML. A single unescaped & in an episode title will break the whole feed. Special characters must be encoded.
iTunes namespace declared. Without it, every itunes: tag is silently ignored — so your artwork, category and explicit rating all vanish as far as the directory is concerned.
Title, description and language. Required, and used throughout every app that lists you.
Explicit rating. Not optional. A feed that does not declare it will be rejected.
A valid category. It must match one of Apple's defined categories. An invented or misspelled category fails.
Reachable artwork. We issue a request for the image to confirm a directory could fetch it. A Dropbox or Google Drive share link resolves to a web page rather than an image file and will fail here.
A self-referencing atom link. Best practice rather than a documented directory requirement — it declares the feed's own canonical address, which helps when a feed is mirrored or moved.
itunes:block not set. This tag explicitly tells directories not to list the show. It is a frequent leftover from a draft or private state and causes shows to silently disappear.

Episode-level

At least one episode. Directories will not review an empty feed. A trailer counts.
A working enclosure on every episode. The <enclosure> carries the audio URL. An episode without one is not an episode as far as a directory is concerned.
Unique, permanent guids. Duplicate guids make apps treat a new episode as one they already have, so it never appears. This is a genuinely confusing failure because everything else looks correct.
Publication dates that are not in the future. Most apps hide future-dated episodes with no error anywhere. A timezone mistake is the usual cause, and it is the single most common reason one episode is missing from an otherwise working show.

Two things no validator can check

Whether the email in your feed receives mail. Spotify, Amazon and YouTube verify ownership by sending a code to the address published in your feed. If nobody reads that mailbox, verification never completes and your submission sits in limbo with no error. Send a test message to it. Apple is the exception — it verifies through your Apple Account in Apple Podcasts Connect and dropped the <itunes:owner> email requirement in 2023, so this is never the reason a show is missing from Apple specifically.

Your artwork's colour profile. Apple requires RGB, and files exported from print-oriented tools are sometimes CMYK. A colour profile is not carried in HTTP headers, and this validator only checks that your artwork is reachable and of an accepted type — it does not download and parse the image. Run the file through the cover art checker, which reads the image locally, or confirm the export setting in your image editor.

TurboCast's take

Validate before you submit, not after you are stuck

Almost everyone arrives at a feed validator in the wrong order — after submitting, after waiting a week, after a rejection message too generic to act on. By then a review cycle has been burned and, on Apple, a resubmission may create a duplicate listing that is genuinely tedious to unpick. Validating takes seconds and catches the overwhelming majority of submission failures before they cost you anything. Do it before you submit, then again after any host migration or feed settings change, and once a quarter afterwards — feeds break silently when hosts change things, and nobody tells you. The other habit worth building: when a directory does reject you, believe the feed over the error message. Directory rejection copy is written to cover many cases at once and is frequently less specific than the actual fault. The feed is the ground truth.

If your feed passes but the show still is not listed

A valid feed rules out most causes but not all of them. Work through podcast not showing up on Spotify or Apple, which covers the non-feed causes — unfinished ownership verification, review windows, missing redirects after a host migration, and shows that are listed but too generically titled to find by searching.

Frequently asked questions

How do I check if my podcast RSS feed is valid?

Paste the feed URL above. The validator fetches your feed, parses it and checks the specific things podcast directories enforce — required channel tags, a valid category, reachable artwork, and a working audio enclosure and unique guid on every episode. It separates blockers, which will stop a directory accepting your show, from warnings that are worth fixing but will not block you.

What makes a podcast feed invalid?

The most common causes are a missing explicit tag or category, artwork that is unreachable or outside the accepted size range, malformed XML from an unescaped ampersand in a title, an episode with no audio enclosure, and duplicate guids across episodes. Any one of these can be enough for a directory to refuse the feed.

Why does my feed pass here but still get rejected?

This validator checks what can be determined from the feed itself. Two things it cannot see are whether the email address in your feed actually receives mail — which is how Spotify, Amazon and YouTube verify ownership, though Apple uses your Apple Account instead — and your artwork colour profile, because this tool checks that the image is reachable and of an accepted type rather than downloading and parsing the file. Both are common causes of rejection on an otherwise valid feed.

What is the difference between a blocker and a warning?

A blocker is something a directory will refuse the feed over, such as missing artwork or no episodes. A warning is something that will not stop acceptance but will degrade how your show appears — a missing itunes:type leaving apps to guess your episode ordering, for example. Fix blockers before submitting; fix warnings when convenient.

Is my feed URL stored?

No. The URL is fetched, checked and the result returned. Nothing is logged or retained.

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Podcast RSS feed validator

What this checks, and why each one matters

Feed-level

Episode-level

If your feed passes but the show still is not listed

Related reading

Podcast not showing up on Spotify or Apple?

What is a podcast RSS feed?

The podcast distribution checklist

Frequently asked questions

Host your podcast on TurboCast