RSStT: A Self-Hosted RSS-to-Telegram Bot for Rich-Text Feed Delivery
A Telegram RSS bot that cares about your reading experience (calling for new maintainers: https://github.com/Rongronggg9/RSS-to-Telegram-Bot/issues/747)
At a glance
- What is it?
- RSS-to-Telegram-Bot (RSStT) republishes feed posts into Telegram chats while preserving rich text and media. It is aimed at self-hosters who want feed reading inside Telegram, and the project is openly asking for new maintainers.
- Who is it for?
- Adopt RSStT if you already live in Telegram, want feed posts rendered with rich text and media, and are willing to run a container with its own database. Do not adopt it if you need a maintained upstream project with a guaranteed release cadence: the repository is explicitly calling for new maintainers, and the public bot is offered with no warranty.
- Can I use it commercially?
- Yes, with strict conditions. AGPL-3.0 is a network copyleft licence: if people use a modified version over a network, for example as a hosted service, you must offer them its source code under the same licence.
- Is it still maintained?
- Yes. The repository last received commits 2 days ago.
- What is it written in?
- Mainly Python, according to GitHub's language statistics.
Answers come from the project's GitHub data, last synced on September 15, 2026, and from our analysis. They are not legal advice.
DEEP OPEN-SOURCE ANALYSIS
What RSStT Solves and Who It Is Built For
Telegram is a chat client, not a feed reader. Pasting a feed URL into a chat gets you nothing, and most generic bots that bridge the two flatten articles into plain text, drop images, or compress long screenshots until they are unreadable. RSStT exists to close that gap: it subscribes to RSS and Atom feeds and delivers each post into Telegram while keeping the reading experience intact. The README lists the behaviour it cares about: rich-text format is preserved, media from both the post content and the enclosure are kept, and long images are sent as files specifically so Telegram does not compress them. Emoji shortcodes are replaced with actual emoji, emoji images are replaced with emoji or their description text, and icons that only add noise are dropped.
The target user is a self-hoster. The project is multi-user and internationalised, with English, Chinese, Cantonese, Italian and more listed, and it supports OPML import and export. That combination points at someone running one instance for a group of people, importing an existing feed collection rather than rebuilding it by hand. There is also a public bot at t.me/RSStT_Bot, but the README is blunt that it comes with absolutely no warranty. If you are evaluating RSStT as a hosted service rather than software to run, that sentence should settle the question.
How Posts Move From Feed to Chat
The pipeline is a feed poller writing into a Telegram sender, with a formatting layer in between. The README describes the output side in detail, and the details are where the design decisions live. A fetched post is not forwarded as raw HTML. It passes through a formatting stage that decides what survives: rich text is kept, media is kept subject to customisable rules, long images are demoted to file attachments, and emoji shortcodes are converted. Titles get a similar treatment. The bot automatically determines whether a feed's title is auto-filled, and if it is, it omits the title, a behaviour the README marks as customisable. Author names are shown automatically and can be turned off.
Message length is handled by splitting, since Telegram imposes its own limits, and there is an alternative delivery mode where messages are sent as Telegraph posts. The formatting settings are documented separately in docs/formatting-settings.md, which covers hashtags, custom titles and related options. On the input side, the README notes individual proxy settings for Telegram and for RSS feeds, which matters because the two traffic paths often need different egress. HTTP caching is listed among the highlights, and v2.8.0 mentions a rewritten monitor and retaining post order. The FAQ is where the project addresses performance, so anyone judging throughput should read that section rather than infer it from the feature list.
Deployment Paths: Docker Compose, Railway, or pip
The README names Docker Compose as the most recommended deployment method and says it suits virtually all VPS. A published image exists at rongronggg9/rss-to-telegram on Docker Hub, and the project builds it through a GitHub Actions workflow. Railway.app is officially supported as a PaaS option, with a deploy button in the README. For pip users there are two package sources with different tracking: rsstt on PyPI tracks the master branch, while the TestPyPI package tracks dev, which the README describes as always up-to-date. That distinction matters if you want a specific commit rather than whatever master currently is. Running from source is described as an option for developers or experienced users, framed as a dirty run rather than a supported path.
Beyond the deployment guide at docs/deployment-guide.md, the material does not spell out the environment variables or config keys in the README itself. The repository topics list both sqlite and postgres, which tells you the bot persists state in a database and supports both backends, but which one a given deployment uses is a decision the deployment documentation has to answer. Treat the guide as required reading before you pick a path, and check the release notes for version-specific changes: v2.9.0 mentions a Telegraph-related revert and skip cert verification, and v2.10.0 adds a container health check and chat-specific hashtags. Those notes are the record of what changed between the versions you might pin.
The Maintainer Call and What It Means for Adopters
The repository description itself carries the most important operational fact: calling for new maintainers, with a link to issue 747. That is not a footnote. A project whose own description asks for maintainers is telling prospective adopters that the bus factor is a live concern, and the README repeats the theme in a different place, stating plainly that the public bot comes with absolutely no warranty and that the author will try to maintain it but cannot guarantee it. For a self-hosted deployment this changes what you are signing up for. You are not buying a service with a support contract; you are taking on a Python application, a database, and a container, and accepting that upstream fixes may slow down or stop.
That is not an argument against the software. The release history shows real work: v2.8.0 in June 2024, v2.9.0 in September 2024, v2.10.0 in March 2025, each with a named theme. The last push recorded is 2026-08-31, so activity has not stopped. But the honest framing for an evaluation is that RSStT is a mature-looking codebase in a maintenance transition. If your team cannot absorb a stalled dependency, that risk belongs in the decision, not in a later surprise.
Where RSStT Is the Wrong Tool
RSStT is a delivery mechanism, not a reading archive. Everything it does is oriented toward putting a post into a chat at the moment it is fetched. If you want to search years of articles, tag them, or read them later in a stable interface, Telegram is a poor container for that, and the bot's feature list offers no indication that it tries to be one. The messages live in a chat, subject to Telegram's own retention and search behaviour, not in a library you control.
There is also a media trade-off hiding in the highlights. Long images are sent as files to prevent Telegram from compressing them and making them unreadable. That is the right call for legibility, but it means the chat receives attachments rather than inline previews, which is a different reading rhythm. The same applies to the Telegraph mode: sending posts as Telegraph pages is a real option, and it changes where the content lives. Anyone expecting every post to render identically inside the chat should check both modes before standardising on one. Finally, if your feeds are behind authentication schemes the bot cannot reach, or your egress requires proxy configuration you have not planned for, the individual proxy settings exist but you still have to supply them.
How It Differs From a Hosted Feed Reader
The obvious comparison is a hosted feed reader service, where you add feeds in a web interface and read them in that interface. The difference is not features, it is where the content ends up and who operates the pipeline. A hosted reader keeps articles in its own store and gives you a web or mobile client. RSStT pushes each post into a chat you already use, and the operator of the pipeline is you. That flips the cost structure: no subscription, but a container, a database, and the responsibility for upgrades.
There is a second comparison worth making, against simply using Telegram's own bot ecosystem for feed delivery. Many such bots exist, and the README's emphasis on reading experience reads as a direct response to how they behave: compressed images, flattened formatting, emoji rendered as broken image links. RSStT's formatting layer, the emoji handling, the auto-title detection, and the long-image-as-file behaviour are all attempts to fix specific failures of that category. If you have tried a plain feed bot and found the output unpleasant, this is the project addressing that complaint. If you have not, the formatting documentation is the place to judge whether the difference matters to you.
Maintenance Cost, Licence, and What to Check First
Running RSStT means running a Python service with a database behind it. The repository topics name both sqlite and postgres, so you should confirm which backend your deployment uses and how its data is backed up before you point it at feeds you care about. Upgrades come as container images and as PyPI releases, and the branch tracking is not uniform: PyPI follows master, TestPyPI follows dev. Pinning to a release tag such as v2.10.0 gives you a fixed target, but it also means you inherit the maintenance call in the repository description yourself if upstream slows down. The translation workflow runs through Hosted Weblate, so localisation updates arrive through that channel rather than through the code repository.
The licence is AGPL-3.0. That is a copyleft licence with a network clause: if you modify the software and let users interact with it over a network, the AGPL's source-availability obligations are generally understood to apply. This is a factual property of the licence, not legal advice, and how it applies to your deployment depends on what you change and how you expose it. If you plan to fork RSStT for internal or commercial use, have someone qualified read the terms. The README also links a channels-using-rsstt document, which is the project's own record of deployments, and a FAQ that covers performance. Those two files, plus the deployment guide and the changelog, are the material to read before you commit.
Editorial conclusion
Adopt RSStT if you already live in Telegram, want feed posts rendered with rich text and media, and are willing to run a container with its own database. Do not adopt it if you need a maintained upstream project with a guaranteed release cadence: the repository is explicitly calling for new maintainers, and the public bot is offered with no warranty. Before committing, verify the deployment guide for your chosen path (Docker Compose, Railway, or pip), confirm which branch your install tracks (master via PyPI, dev via TestPyPI), and read the AGPL-3.0 terms against how you intend to expose the bot.
Community notes