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RSS Retriever Lite icon
Actively maintained Tested with WP 7.1 #4 in autoblogging

RSS Retriever Lite

Lightweight feed importer for WordPress with support for RSS, Atom, Google Product Feed, Yandex feeds, YouTube and more.

Active installs200+100+ tier
Downloads · 30d565▲ +21% vs prev. 30d
Rating5/51 reviews
Health score80/100Excellent
All-time downloads3.7KSince Sep 2025
Support resolved1 / 1100% in last 2 months
RequiresWP 5.0PHP 7.4+
Downloads · 7d111▼ -55.1% week over week
Our verdict

Safe pick

Yes — RSS Retriever Lite is a safe, well-maintained plugin to use in 2026. It runs on 200+ sites, is rated 5/5 and was last updated 1 week ago, and scores 80/100 on our health check.

  • Actively developed — last update 1 week ago
  • Tested with the latest WordPress (7.1)
  • Momentum — downloads up 21% vs the previous 30 days
  • Small user base (200+ active installs)
  • Very few reviews so far

How does it stack up?

Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support

Daily downloads

3673110Jul 11Aug 24Oct 8
Yesterday12
Daily average (1y)10
Peak day147Jul 28, 2026
Last 12 months3.6K

Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.

Rankings

Where RSS Retriever Lite stands today

WordPress.org search rankings

Live position in the plugin search, top 100
KeywordPositionCompeting pluginsCategory
autoblogging #7 40 Best autoblogging plugins →
polylang #76 1,556 Best polylang plugins →
rss #6 1,753 Best rss plugins →
woocommerce >100 10,000 Best woocommerce plugins →
wpml >100 2,646 Best wpml plugins →

Version adoption

Share of active sites per release.

  • 1.246.4%
  • 1.330.6%
  • 1.118.9%
  • 1.04.1%

Rating breakdown

★★★★★★★★★★ 5 from 1 reviews

  • 5★100.0%
  • 4★0.00%
  • 3★0.00%
  • 2★0.00%
  • 1★0.00%

About RSS Retriever Lite

From the official readme · v1.3.0

Description

RSS Retriever Lite is a feed importer for WordPress. It allows you to import and publish content from various feed sources directly into your site.

Features:

RSS Retriever Lite is a robust, lightweight feed importer for WordPress designed to handle everything from standard blogs to complex WooCommerce product feeds.

  • Full support for RSS and Atom feeds
  • YouTube video feeds (channels and playlists)
  • Google Product Feed import
  • YML (Yandex Market Language) feed import
  • Support for compressed feeds (ZIP, GZIP, BZ2)
  • Automatic feed updates
  • Advanced post filtering
  • Scheduler with flexible intervals and delayed publication
  • Feed translation via Google, Yandex and DeepL APIs
  • Support for Polylang and WPML multilingual plugins
  • Support for custom post types and taxonomies (e.g. WooCommerce products)
  • XML tag mapping to WordPress custom fields
  • Automatic WooCommerce tag and category generation
  • Smart autotagging and categorization
  • Fully customizable HTML post templates with placeholders
  • Automatic embedding of relevant YouTube videos in posts
  • Post lifetime control to ensure content freshness
  • Post thumbnail generation
  • FIFU plugin integration for thumbnail hotlinking
  • RSS media attachment support
  • PNG image conversion to JPEG and WebP
  • WordPress media library integration
  • Optional HTML cleanup and sanitization
  • Custom HTML tag removal
  • Custom user-agent and HTTP header support

External services

This plugin connects to external translation APIs (Google Translate, Yandex Translate, DeepL)
in order to translate imported content. Requests may include text to translate and
language codes. These services are used only if the user configures an API key.

  • Google Translate API: https://cloud.google.com/translate/docs, https://policies.google.com/privacy
  • Yandex Translate API: https://yandex.com/dev/translate/, https://yandex.com/legal/confidential/
  • DeepL API: https://www.deepl.com/pro-license, https://www.deepl.com/privacy

Installation

  1. Upload the plugin files to the /wp-content/plugins/rss-retriever/ directory, or install the plugin through the WordPress plugins screen directly.
  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ screen in WordPress.
  3. Go to the plugin settings page and configure your feed sources.

Frequently asked questions

Can I customize the layout of imported posts?

Yes. The plugin includes powerful HTML post templates for titles, slugs, content, and excerpts. You can use placeholders such as %post_title%, %post_content%, %post_excerpt%, or %xml_tags[...]% to design your own structure. This gives you full control over how imported articles or products look in WordPress – from simple layouts to complex, SEO-optimized templates that automatically include dynamic data from the feed. Examples: – To add a link back to the original source at the end of each post: Source: %link% – To display the publication date from the feed: Published on %post_date% These…

How to import content into WooCommerce products?

The plugin can import any supported feed (RSS, Google Product Feed, Yandex Product Feed) as WooCommerce products. To do this, select product in the Post type dropdown. After that, in the Custom taxonomies section you will see additional text fields: Brands, Product categories, Product tags, and Product shipping classes. You can enter values here separated by commas and/or use placeholders. For example, %xml_tags[g:price]% when importing from a Google Product Feed, or %xml_tags[price]% when importing from a Yandex Market (YML) feed. Optionally, you can enable the Categories to WooCommerce…

How do I map XML tag values into WooCommerce product fields?

If you are importing a product feed (for example, a Yandex Market / YML feed), you can save any XML tag directly into a WooCommerce product custom field using the Custom fields textarea. Each rule must follow the format: xml_tag_name->custom_field_name One rule per line. For example, Yandex Market feeds usually provide the product price in the tag. WooCommerce stores product prices in the _price meta key. To automatically save the imported price into the WooCommerce product price field, use the following rule: price->_price This tells the plugin to take the value of the XML tag and write it…

Can the plugin automatically assign tags to imported posts?

Yes. If you enable the Auto tags option, the plugin will scan the content of each imported post and automatically apply tags that already exist in your WordPress site whenever matching words are found in the text.

Can I import YouTube channel and playlist feeds?

Yes. YouTube video feeds are supported. For YouTube, you need to use the official feed URLs that Google still provides. Examples: – https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC_UqGjJSDND2t7jhKIj3PPA – https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=PL41UI99jyjP9eu9M76TIwQ-ihpvr7cs9n When adding such a feed, go to the feed settings Media handling in the dropdown Post thumbnails, select Create from media attachment. YouTube provides thumbnails via in the feed (as media attachments), so this option ensures that each imported post gets a proper WordPress featured image.

How can I import feeds with multiple language versions (WPML or Polylang)?

If you are using WPML or Polylang and have more than one language on your site, you can create translated versions of each imported post automatically. For example, if your site has English (EN) as the main language and French (FR) and German (DE) as additional languages, you need to add the same feed three times in the RSS Retriever Syndicator. We recommend adding the language code (EN, FR, DE) to the feed name so it is easier to manage. In the settings of each feed instance: 1. Select the correct language group (EN, FR, or DE). 2. Enable automatic translation into that language. This way…

How can I automatically remove outdated posts or products?

You can control this using the Post lifetime setting. It defines the period in hours after which an imported post will be automatically deleted. If you do not want to limit the lifetime, set this parameter to 0. This is especially useful when importing WooCommerce products or any other content where freshness matters, such as product feeds, time-limited offers, or news updates.

Can I control or randomize the publication dates of imported posts?

Yes, the plugin allows you to adjust publication dates using the Post date adjustment range setting. This range defines a random offset (in minutes) that will be applied to each imported post. For example, if you set [0..60], each post date will be shifted forward by a random value between 0 and 60 minutes. Negative values are also supported, so a range like [-60..-10] will backdate posts into the past. This option works together with the Base date setting, which can be either Get date from post or Use syndication date (the current time). Combined, these settings give you full flexibility…

Can I translate imported content automatically?

Yes, the plugin supports automatic translation via Google, Yandex, and DeepL APIs. For Yandex Translate, you can use API keys from both versions – v1.5 and v2 are supported. For DeepL, both free and paid API keys work. If you enter a free API key on the Accounts page, make sure to also enable the Use DeepL API Free option in the translator settings so the plugin knows which API endpoint to use.

When would I need to set a custom User-Agent or HTTP headers?

Some websites restrict access to their feeds or content depending on the client making the request. By setting a custom User-Agent and additional HTTP headers, the plugin can mimic a regular browser or pass required authorization data. This helps when importing from sources that block default WordPress requests, require API keys, or expect specific headers in order to deliver the feed correctly.

How does the plugin handle automatic feed updates?

You can choose between two modes for pulling feeds automatically: Auto – uses the built-in WordPress scheduler (WP-Cron). This option works out of the box and does not require any server configuration. Cron job or manually – lets you run imports via a real server-side cron job or by triggering the process manually. This mode is recommended if you want more reliable scheduling or full control over when and how often feeds are updated. With both options available, you can decide whether to rely on WordPress’s internal scheduler or configure a system-level cron job for maximum precision and…

How to enrich imported posts with relevant YouTube videos?

You can automatically embed YouTube videos into your imported posts using the %youtube_video[keyword]% placeholder. Example: %youtube_video[%post_title%]% The value inside the brackets can be any text string or another supported placeholder such as %post_title%, %xml_tags[name]%, etc.

Why does the featured image appear twice in posts?

This usually happens because the plugin automatically sets a featured image (taken from the RSS enclosure, the first image in the post, or another source), and at the same time your WordPress theme is programmed to display the featured image above the post content. As a result, the same image is shown twice. How to fix it: 1. Check your theme settings – many themes provide an option to hide the featured image on single post pages. 2. If your theme does not have such an option, you can create a child theme and remove the call to the_post_thumbnail() (or get_the_post_thumbnail()) from the…

Changelog

Added "Delete data on uninstall" setting option.

1.3.0

  • Added “Delete data on uninstall” setting option.

1.2.3

  • Minor improvements.

1.2.2

  • Enhanced Atom feed parser reliability: fixed conflict with existing CDATA tags inside content blocks to prevent XML parsing errors.

1.2.1

  • Improved support for Atom feeds containing raw HTML content.

1.2.0

  • Improved compatibility with social auto-posting. Featured images now attach correctly.

1.1.1

  • Fixed warning

Full changelog on WordPress.org →

For developers

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FAQ

RSS Retriever Lite: quick answers

Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.

Live data from WordPress.org · checked Oct 9, 2026

Is RSS Retriever Lite free?

Yes. RSS Retriever Lite is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.

Is RSS Retriever Lite safe to use in 2026?

Yes — RSS Retriever Lite is a safe, well-maintained plugin to use in 2026. It runs on 200+ sites, is rated 5/5 and was last updated 1 week ago, and scores 80/100 on our health check.

How many websites use RSS Retriever Lite?

RSS Retriever Lite is active on 200+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 3,734 times since it launched in September 2025. It was downloaded 565 times in the last 30 days.

Does RSS Retriever Lite work with WordPress 7.1?

Yes. The developer has tested RSS Retriever Lite up to WordPress 7.1.3, the latest release. It requires WordPress 5.0 or newer.

What PHP version does RSS Retriever Lite need?

RSS Retriever Lite requires PHP 7.4 or higher. Most hosts run PHP 8.x today, so it works on any modern WordPress hosting.

When was RSS Retriever Lite last updated?

The latest version, 1.3.0, was released on September 29, 2026 (1 week ago).

Who makes RSS Retriever Lite?

RSS Retriever Lite is developed and maintained by RSS Retriever Team.

What are the best alternatives to RSS Retriever Lite?

The most popular alternatives to RSS Retriever Lite are WP RSS Aggregator (40K+ installs), RSS Aggregator by Feedzy (40K+ installs) and Arvow AI SEO Writer (1K+ installs).

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