RSS to Lemmy Communities: Auto-Post Link Posts From Your Feed

Updated: 2026-09-28

Short answer: open Accounts → Add new Lemmy / PieFed account in PostRSS and log in once to your server — any Lemmy or PieFed server on the Fediverse works, and your password is not stored. Then open Cibles → Add feed, choose Lemmy / PieFed in Target settings, pick the community, and add your feed under Add source (Type = RSS feed, Link = your feed address). Each new item is posted as a link post in that community. Lemmy / PieFed is included from the Ultimate plan.

Lemmy is the Fediverse's link aggregator — the shape of Reddit, built on ActivityPub, spread across independent servers. PieFed is a newer implementation of the same idea that federates with it. Communities on either can be followed from the other, and from Mastodon, which is why one connected account reaches further than a single server's user count suggests.

Before the setup: this is the destination that needs permission

Every other destination in this series is yours. A Lemmy community usually is not, and that changes what "automate it" means.

Link aggregators exist to be curated by their members. A community that finds an account posting its own links on a schedule, without ever commenting, will remove them and ban the account — not because automation is forbidden, but because self-promotion at volume is exactly what the moderation exists to prevent. This is the same dynamic that makes Reddit hostile to feed bots, and it applies here with fewer moderators and smaller communities to absorb it.

There are two arrangements where automating it is straightforward:

• A community you run. Your project's own community, your product's support community, a topic community you moderate. Feeding it releases and articles is exactly what members subscribed for.
• A community that has agreed. Plenty of niche communities welcome a reliable source of on-topic links, and moderators will say so if you ask. Asking takes one message and prevents the alternative.

Outside those two, the honest advice is to post by hand and to take part in the replies. No configuration substitutes for that.

Setting it up, step by step

1. Have an account on the Lemmy or PieFed server the community lives on — or, if you run the community, on your own server.
2. In PostRSS, open Accounts and choose Add new Lemmy / PieFed account. You log in once to connect the account. The password is not stored; the connection is what persists.
3. Open Targets and click Add feed. One feed going to one destination is one Target.
4. In Target settings, choose Lemmy / PieFed and the account you just connected. Choose the community new posts should go to.
5. Click Add source. Set Type to RSS feed and paste your feed address into Link. Save.
6. Check the first item that arrives. PostRSS checks the feed every 5 minutes (every minute on Enterprise plans), so the wait is short.

Link posts, and why that shape matters

Each item is posted as a link post: a title pointing at your article, which is the native format of a link aggregator. Members see the title in the community listing, click through if it interests them, and discuss it in the comments underneath.

The consequence is that your title carries the entire post. There is no image to rescue a weak headline and no excerpt to explain it — just the words in the listing. Titles written to work next to a hero image on your own site frequently land flat here. If a feed is going to a community, it is worth reading a few of your own headlines as they would appear in a plain list.

Choosing the community, and the server it lives on

Because the network is federated, the same topic often has several communities on different servers, with different sizes and different moderation cultures. Posting into the largest one is not automatically right: a smaller community whose members actually discuss the subject usually produces more meaningful engagement than a large one where your link scrolls past in an hour.

It is also worth checking whether the server your account lives on is federated with the server hosting the community. Defederation between instances happens, and when it does, posts simply do not appear for people on the other side.

Lemmy next to Reddit

The comparison is unavoidable and mostly favours Reddit on raw audience. What Lemmy offers instead is an open API with no negotiation, no app review, no rate-limit repricing and no risk of the rules changing under you — and, on the PostRSS side, a destination that is working today, while Reddit sits on the same plan tier but is temporarily unavailable.

The communities are smaller and more technical, and they are markedly less tolerant of marketing. For an open-source project, a developer tool or a niche publication, that is a reasonable trade. For a consumer brand, it usually is not.

What it does not do

PostRSS publishes items that appear in the feed after the Target starts running. Connecting an established feed does not import its back catalogue, which is deliberate — the alternative is a destination flooded with years of archive on day one.

It does not comment, vote, read replies or moderate. Posting is one direction only, which is exactly why the community question above has to be settled before you connect anything.

Which plan includes it

Lemmy / PieFed is included from the Ultimate plan. Each destination you connect counts as one Target, and your plan sets how many Targets and how many posts a month you get. An annual subscription is cheaper than paying monthly. The current limits for every tier are on the pricing page, and the full list of 66 networks is on the supported networks page. The Lemmy / PieFed page has the short version.

When posts stop appearing

• The account was banned from the community. This is the most common cause, and it is a moderation decision rather than a technical fault. Talk to the moderators.
• The community was closed or restricted. Some communities allow posting by moderators only.
• The servers defederated. Your account's server and the community's server must still federate with one another.
• The connection expired. Reconnect the account under Accounts.
• Nothing new in the feed. Items that appear after the Target starts running are the ones that get posted.

Running a community you feed yourself

If you moderate the community, the feed becomes infrastructure rather than promotion, and a few decisions make it read well.

• Say what the account is. A sidebar line explaining that release notes are posted automatically removes any suspicion, and members stop wondering whether a person is spamming them.
• Use a category feed, not the site feed. Most communities want releases and major articles, not every blog post. Feeding the narrow thing keeps subscriptions alive.
• Leave the comments to humans. The value of a link aggregator is the thread under the link. An automated post that nobody from your side ever returns to is a missed opportunity, not a distribution win.
• Pin the important ones. Automation posts; a moderator decides what stays at the top. The two work well together.

Federation, and why a post sometimes does not appear where you expect

Lemmy and PieFed servers each decide who they federate with. If your account's server and the community's server have defederated — which happens over moderation disputes — your post is created but never propagates to the people you were trying to reach.

This is not something an integration can detect for you, and it is worth knowing before you conclude something has broken. The practical defence is to hold the posting account on a server with broad federation, or on the same server as the community you are posting to, which sidesteps the issue entirely.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does PostRSS store my Lemmy password?

No. You log in once to connect the account, and the password is not stored. What persists is the connection itself, which you can remove at any time.

Can I post to any Lemmy server, or only the big ones?

Any Lemmy or PieFed server on the Fediverse. You connect the account on the server it lives on, and posting reaches communities that server federates with.

Is automating posts to a community I do not run acceptable?

Usually not without asking. Link aggregators are curated by their members, and an account that posts its own links on a schedule and never replies tends to be banned. Automate communities you run, or ones whose moderators have agreed — asking takes one message.

What does the post look like?

A link post: your title pointing at the article. There is no image or excerpt to lean on, so the headline does all the work, which is worth remembering if your titles are written for a page with a hero image above them.

How is this different from Reddit?

Lemmy's API is open with no review or negotiation, and the integration is working today, while Reddit is on the same plan tier but temporarily unavailable. The communities are smaller, more technical and less tolerant of marketing.

Which plan includes Lemmy and PieFed?

The Ultimate plan, alongside Mastodon, Bluesky, Pixelfed, Matrix and the other Fediverse destinations.

The bottom line

Lemmy and PieFed are easy to connect and easy to get wrong, and the difficulty is social rather than technical. Connect the account, pick a community you run or have permission to post in, and every new article arrives as a link post where people will actually discuss it. It is included from the Ultimate plan.