Website & Channel Content Freshness Checker
Paste any RSS or Atom feed URL — a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel — and see instantly whether it's active, slowing down, stale, or inactive.
Check a feed
Works with any RSS 2.0 or Atom feed — blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels (youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=…), Substacks, and more.
Last updated: September 2026
How it works
The tool fetches the feed via the CreatorAiHub RSS worker, sorts the items newest-first, then computes days since the latest pubDate. Combined with the gap between the last ten items (roughly the "recent cadence") this becomes a verdict: Active if the last update was within one typical publishing cycle, Slowing down if the last update is 2× the cadence, Stale after 30 days of silence, and Inactive after 90 days.
How to use this tool
- Paste an RSS/Atom feed URL. For YouTube, use
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC…. - Click Check freshness. The tool fetches, parses, and grades the feed.
- Read the verdict chip and the "days since last update" metric — the two numbers you'll cite in a report.
- Check the recent-items list to see whether the drop-off is a genuine pause or just noise.
- Use Copy Results to paste a plain-text summary into your CRM, sponsor pitch, or content log.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as "stale" vs "inactive"?
Stale is 30+ days without an update — long enough to notice, short enough to still be recovering. Inactive is 90+ days — the point where most audiences assume the show or blog has quietly ended. These thresholds are fixed constants in the tool so you get consistent readings across different feeds.
What does "Slowing down" mean exactly?
The tool looks at the average gap between the last 10 posts to establish a baseline cadence. If the gap since the most recent post is more than twice that baseline (but still under 30 days) the verdict flips to "Slowing down". A weekly blog that hasn't posted in 16 days would land here.
Can I use this on a YouTube channel?
Yes — every YouTube channel exposes an RSS feed at https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<CHANNEL_ID>. Paste that URL and you'll get the last 15 uploads, which is enough to gauge freshness. Note that YouTube caps this feed at 15 items regardless of channel size.
Why is my podcast reported as "inactive" when I just released?
Most likely a caching issue at your host or a feed that lists episodes with future pubDate values. Refresh in a minute or two, and confirm your latest episode is showing at the top of your feed's XML in a browser tab. If pub dates are in the future, the tool still uses the newest one — so a mis-set date can throw off the read.
Does this need to be a podcast feed?
No. Any valid RSS 2.0 or Atom feed works. If you want deeper podcast-specific stats (durations, episode counts, cadence) use the Podcast RSS Feed Analyzer instead.