To turn RSS feeds into a daily email briefing, you need a service that checks them on a schedule and emails you what's new. A plain RSS-to-email service forwards each item or a list of links. An AI briefing such as Avos reads the new items, drops duplicates and noise, and writes one summarized edition at the time you choose.
The difference matters more than it looks. Forty feeds that publish ten items a day means four hundred emails, or one digest four hundred lines long. Both move a feed reader's unread count into your inbox. A briefing removes the count: the reading happens before the email is sent. This guide compares the ways to get RSS by email, then walks through building a briefing in Avos.
What are the ways to get RSS feeds by email?
There are four, and they differ in how much work happens before the email leaves.
RSS-to-email services. Blogtrottr and FeedRabbit take a feed URL and email you new posts. Blogtrottr sends items as soon as possible or as a digest every few hours or once a day. FeedRabbit sends each post as its own email or as a daily digest, and switches a busy feed to a digest by itself. You read the posts, or the links to them, in your mail client.
A feed reader's digest. If you already use a reader, it may email you a digest of what you follow. Inoreader's email digests are built in its Automate tab from one or several sources, sent on a schedule, and can include AI summaries written from your own prompts; its pricing page shows which plans include them. Feedly sends a daily newsletter from an AI Feed on its Enterprise plan, only on days with new articles.
An automation. IFTTT can email you every new item in a feed, or only the items that contain a keyword or phrase. On Zapier, RSS by Zapier and Digest by Zapier work together: the digest collects new items and releases them daily, weekly, monthly, after a set number of entries or on demand, and you add the email step yourself.
An AI briefing. Avos reads the same feeds, decides what's worth your time against instructions you wrote, and writes an edition with sections, summaries and links to the original articles.
Checked on 2026-11-06 against each service's own pages.
| Option | What arrives | Filtering | AI summaries | Setup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RSS-to-email service (Blogtrottr, FeedRabbit) | Each new post, or a digest of posts | You choose the feeds and how often | Not mentioned on their sites | Paste a feed URL |
| Feed reader digest (Inoreader, Feedly) | A scheduled digest from the reader | The reader's rules, folders and AI filters | Inoreader digests can add them | Build it in the reader; depends on the plan |
| Automation (IFTTT, Zapier) | One email per item, or a batched digest | IFTTT can match a keyword or phrase | Not by default | Build a small workflow |
| AI briefing (Avos) | One written edition with sections | AI picks per section against your filters and drops repeats | Every story, linked to its source | Describe it to an AI editor, or start from a template |
How do you turn RSS feeds into a briefing with Avos?
The setup is a conversation with an AI editor plus a few settings. You can type each step below as a message ("add the Fed's press release feed to my Markets section") or click through the section settings; both edit the same newsletter.
- Start a newsletter. Pick a ready-made edition from the template gallery, such as The Daily Brief, or describe what you want in one sentence: "A daily briefing from my design and product blogs, plus the big tech news."
- Add your feeds. In a News section's feeds, paste any RSS or Atom feed URL, or search the feed directory. The directory is a vetted catalog with the main newspapers, broadcasters and business titles in every Avos language, many blogs and trade titles, and official feeds such as USGS earthquakes, GDACS disaster alerts, the National Hurricane Center, the FDA, the Federal Reserve, the ECB and arXiv. You can also name a site and ask the editor to find its feed.
- Group feeds into sections. A section is one question with its own feeds: "What happened in my industry", "New posts from the blogs I never miss", "What regulators published". Each section is read and written on its own, so a busy news feed can't crowd out a small blog.
- Set filters, format and tone per section. Filters are plain words: "only product launches and pricing changes", "skip opinion pieces", "nothing about sports". The format decides how the section reads: a headlines list, headlines with descriptions, bullets, an article brief that puts the bottom line first, or a custom format you describe. The tone runs from formal to humorous.
- Pick the schedule. Daily, on the weekdays you choose, or monthly, at your time and in your timezone. The edition can be written in many languages, whatever language the feeds are in.
- Preview, then let it run. Generate an issue on demand, adjust it by saying what's wrong ("shorter", "more on Europe"), and the scheduled issues take over from there.
Every setting stays readable in its section, so the instructions your briefing runs on are written down, not inferred from your clicks. That's the case we make in Escape the algorithm by making your own.
What does the AI do with your feeds each morning?
On schedule, Avos runs the same steps for every section, the work a feed reader leaves to you:
- Reads. It collects what each feed published in the section's time window and reads the full articles, not only the snippet in the feed.
- Drops repeats. The same story from several feeds becomes one story. A section remembers what it ran in recent issues and won't repeat it, and a story that already ran earlier in the same issue isn't printed twice.
- Filters. It keeps what meets the section's filters and ranks the rest against your stated interests.
- Summarizes. It writes each story in the format and tone you set, with a link back to the original article, so you can check any line.
- Writes the edition. The sections become one designed newsletter that lands in your inbox and can be read on the web. When a section's feeds had nothing new, that section is left out of the issue instead of being padded with old news.
If a feed published thirty items and three matter, you read three. For the model behind this, see What is an agentic RSS reader?
What happens when a feed stops working?
Feeds die quietly: a site is redesigned, a blog moves, a URL starts returning errors. With a plain forwarder you notice weeks later, if at all, because a dead feed simply stops sending. Avos checks the RSS feeds in your sections and alerts every day. When one stops working, its section's settings mark it with the date it last worked, and a feed that still answers but has gone silent for months is marked too. If the feed is in a newsletter or alert that's running, you get one email about it with a link straight to the section, and the AI editor offers to find a working replacement. The feed directory gets the same care: a weekly check takes dead feeds out of the search and brings them back when they recover.
What else can a briefing read besides RSS?
RSS is usually the start. The same sections can add a news search on any topic, in any language and region, live web search, an AI search you describe in plain words, X accounts and X searches, YouTube channels (with what's said in the videos), podcast episodes, research papers from arXiv and PubMed, startup funding rounds, and company news by stock ticker. Financial sections add market data for stocks, ETFs, commodities and forex from Alpha Vantage, crypto from CoinGecko, and US economic indicators. Our guide to where an AI news briefing gets its facts covers each one.
A site with no feed at all can still be covered: add a web search or a news search that names it.
When is a plain RSS-to-email service the better choice?
- You follow a few quiet feeds and want every post. A blog that publishes twice a week doesn't need summarizing.
- You want items as they publish. Blogtrottr's "as soon as possible" option and IFTTT's per-item emails come close. An Avos briefing arrives once per edition by design; for topics that can't wait, Avos has news alerts.
- You want no AI between you and the text. A forwarder sends the publisher's words. Summaries can lose nuance, which is why every Avos summary links to the original.
- You want to route items to other tools. Zapier and IFTTT can send an item to a spreadsheet, a chat app or a task list. Avos delivers by email and on the web.
If you'd rather keep reading item by item in a proper reader, our comparisons of Avos and Feedly and Avos and Inoreader cover that choice, and Agentic briefing or feed reader? helps you work out which kind of reader you are. For a weekly edition built around one industry, see Track your industry and competitors in ten minutes a week.
FAQ
Can I get my RSS feeds by email for free?
Yes. IFTTT has a free plan that can email you new feed items, and Avos has a free plan, with ads, that turns your feeds into a written briefing. Paid Avos plans read more feeds per section and add features such as Anchor Mode; the pricing page has the current details.
Does Avos work with Atom feeds and feeds in other languages?
Yes. A section reads any RSS or Atom feed URL, and the edition is written in the language you choose, whatever language the feeds are in. You can set the language per newsletter or per section.
What if a site I follow has no RSS feed?
Add a web search or a news search that names the site or its topic, and the section covers what's published about it. Avos reads new stories from feeds and searches; it doesn't watch a page for changes.
Can I send my RSS briefing to colleagues?
Yes. Add their email addresses to the newsletter's audience and every issue goes to them too; they can unsubscribe at any time. You can also share the newsletter, which gives it a public page anyone with the link can read.
How is this different from an RSS reader?
A reader shows you every item and leaves the reading to you. A briefing reads the items for you and sends the result. If you have no feeds yet and just want the news that matters to you, How to get a daily news summary by email starts from a template instead.