beehiiv RSS to Send, the API and the MCP: What Each Plan Actually Allows

TL;DR

Five different things get called "beehiiv RSS" or "the beehiiv API", and they sit on four plans. Your publication's outbound RSS feed works on every plan, as do API reads and the MCP in read-only mode, from Launch at "$0/month". "RSS to Send" — the block that pulls an external feed into a post — and the Create Post endpoint the pricing page calls the "Send API" are both Max, "$96/month". Refreshing a feed at send time with a recurring series is Enterprise; MCP write access is listed on Scale, "$43/month" (beehiiv.com/pricing, 2026-09-10).

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"RSS to Send" sounds like the feature that turns your feeds into a newsletter. It is a block in the post editor that shows items from one external feed, it needs the Max plan, and the part that refreshes at send time needs Enterprise.

This is a plan map, not a review. We make Writesy, which pushes finished issues into email platforms including beehiiv, so we had to map these gates for our own integration, and we have a stake in how you read them. Every line below came off beehiiv's own pricing page, help centre, developer docs or product blog on September 10, 2026, linked where the claim is made. Where a page doesn't say something we write "not stated" rather than a no.

The five things people mean by "beehiiv RSS" or "the beehiiv API"

Thing	What the page says it does	Plan	Source
Outbound RSS Feed	"allows you to feature posts from your beehiiv publication on your brand or company website"	All plans	help centre
API read access, incl. post stats	"API Access (excluding Send API)", plus "An array of click statistics for each URL in the post"	Launch up; no plan requirement stated on the stats endpoint	pricing, developers
beehiiv MCP	"Read Access" on Launch, "Write Access" on Scale; write creates drafts, not sends	Launch read, Scale write	pricing, help centre
RSS to Send, i.e. RSS Ingestion	"display posts from your other websites within your newsletter by adding an external RSS feed"	Max, Enterprise	help centre
Create Post endpoint, the "Send API"	"Create a post for a specific publication."	"Max and Enterprise plans"	developers
"Refresh feed on send" plus a recurring series	"automatically pull the latest posts each time the email is sent"	Enterprise for the pairing	help centre

Six rows, because the MCP splits in two. Most of the confusion lives in one word: "API" covers reading and writing, and those sit $96 apart.

What "beehiiv RSS to Send" actually is

Two beehiiv pages describe it. The feature page is headed "Automate Your Newsletter Creation Workflow": "Automatically create custom email newsletters from your RSS feed and keep your subscribers engaged, without lifting a finger" (beehiiv.com/features/rss-to-send, 2026-09-10).

The help centre puts it flatter. "RSS Ingestion (also known as RSS to Send) lets you display posts from your other websites within your newsletter by adding an external RSS feed to your publication", on the Max and Enterprise plans (beehiiv.com/support, 2026-09-10). The help article is the one that describes the mechanism.

Setup, as written there: RSS settings, "New External RSS Feed", a name and the feed URL, the feed defaults, "Create RSS Feed". Each external feed is added on its own, and the block then shows up in the post editor. Display attributes you can switch on: "image, title, publication date, categories, author, description, full article, call-to-action/CTA".

On how many feeds you can wire up, the pages don't line up. The help article states no limit on feeds or articles; the feature page says "The specific limits on the number of RSS feeds you can use may depend on your beehiiv plan." That's as far as we can take it without an account on each tier.

Then the part that's easy to miss. "Refresh feed on send" will "automatically pull the latest posts each time the email is sent", and "Enterprise users can take RSS Ingestion further by combining it with a recurring email series." Without that pairing you're still opening the editor and pressing send.

So the block puts a feed's items into a post. The article describes neither a way to choose among thirty feeds nor any awareness of what went out last week. beehiiv's own guide is blunt about the same edge: "RSS to email is just a tool for distributing content. You still need to create quality content" (beehiiv.com/blog, Feb 7 2026).

Your beehiiv publication's own RSS feed

Different feature, opposite direction, and it's free. Your beehiiv RSS feed publishes your posts outward: "RSS Feed allows you to feature posts from your beehiiv publication on your brand or company website, so readers can view them directly on your site." Available on all plans.

You generate it in Settings under RSS, with "New RSS Feed". "A unique RSS Feed URL will be generated for your publication", and "All RSS feed URLs will end with .xml" (beehiiv.com/support, 2026-09-10). Delete it and generate another and a new URL is created, so anything pointed at the old one needs the new address.

This is the feed other tools read when they follow your archive. To see what any feed carries, our RSS feed finder fetches it and shows what's in the items.

The Send API, and why "API access" on Launch is not the same thing

The pricing page gives Launch "API Access (excluding Send API)" and puts "Send API" on Max, "$96/month" or "$1,151 billed annually". Behind that name in the developer docs is the Create Post endpoint, gated in its first line — "This endpoint is available to publications on the Max and Enterprise plans" — and doing what it says, "Create a post for a specific publication" (developers.beehiiv.com, 2026-09-10).

It takes structured blocks, or raw HTML through body_content. Send HTML and expect it back changed: "beehiiv processes all HTML content through a sanitization pipeline", stripping <style> and <link> tags while keeping inline styles. Style inline, ship no stylesheet.

It's asynchronous too. "Post creation is processed in the background. This endpoint returns 201 immediately with the post's id" — a 201 means accepted, not rendered.

Reading sits at a much lower gate. Listing posts uses the posts:read scope, and with stats expanded the response carries "An array of click statistics for each URL in the post", each entry holding url, base_url, clicks, unique_clicks, verified_clicks, total_clicks and total_unique_clicks across email, web and aggregated (developers.beehiiv.com, 2026-09-10). No plan requirement is stated there, and the pricing page grants "API Access (excluding Send API)" from Launch. We're reading those two together, not quoting a rule that says it outright.

The beehiiv MCP is a second write path, on Scale

The pricing page lists "beehiiv MCP (Read Access)" on Launch and "beehiiv MCP (Write Access)" on Scale, "$43/month" or "$517 billed annually". The help article splits it by payment rather than by tier: "Free plans have read-only access to the MCP", and "Write actions — creating, editing, and managing content — require a paid beehiiv plan" (beehiiv.com/support, 2026-09-10).

What write access buys: "You can create and edit post drafts, post templates, automation emails, and other content types via the MCP." What it doesn't: "Publishing posts and activating automations must be done from the beehiiv app", and "Sending posts via the MCP is not currently available."

The June 2026 product note draws the same line — "Create and edit posts", "Build multi-step automations", then "The MCP can create and edit content, but you're always in control of publishing", and "Write access is limited to users on our paid plans" (product.beehiiv.com, June 16 2026).

Setup is documented for "Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex" and any remote MCP client. So Scale does have a real write path in. It runs from an AI client you drive by hand, and it stops at the draft. Separate from all of it, beehiiv lists "beehiiv Agent", which lives "inside your beehiiv account" (beehiiv.com/features/copilot, read 2026-09-08).

What this means on each plan if you want outside content or an outside tool in your newsletter

Launch, "$0/month"

"Up to 2,500 subscribers" and "Unlimited Email Sends", which is a lot for nothing. The pages describe no write path into your publication on Launch. What works is pasting HTML into the post editor, and reading data out through the API's read scopes, post stats included.

Scale, "$43/month"

Up to 100,000 subscribers, the "Ad Network", and MCP write access, meaning drafts from an AI client you drive by hand. No Send API and no external feeds in the editor, so a tool that pushes issues in over REST won't reach you here either.

The Ad Network matches your newsletter with advertisers, a marketplace that brings you demand. Selling your own sponsors direct is a different job with different economics, and the sponsorship calculator puts a number on the direct route from your open counts.

Max, "$96/month"

Both of the features people came for: the external-feed block in the editor, and the Create Post endpoint so an outside tool can write the post directly. If getting outside content in automatically is why you're reading this, the beehiiv Max plan is the line item.

Enterprise, "Custom Pricing"

All of that, plus the pairing that makes RSS Ingestion behave the way the feature page describes — "Refresh feed on send" combined with a recurring email series.

Where a brief tool fits, and where it doesn't

Ours, so weigh it accordingly. Writesy sits before the send: it builds the issue, your provider mails it.

The brief is anchored to when you last shipped, not a rolling seven days. A story carried by four sources collapses into one row through a fingerprint, and the last 500 things you marked used or skipped stay out of the next one. Ranking is arithmetic — weight × recency × pillar × novelty × engagement — and it never picks for you; every row keeps the source link, a verbatim quote off the page, and a take box that starts empty. Sources go past RSS: YouTube channels, subreddits, Google News topics, podcasts, a per-newsletter inbox address you forward newsletters to, and a Chrome clipper that's an unpacked extension you load yourself. The free section builder is the same block, no account needed.

You connect beehiiv in Settings with an API key, validated before it's stored, so a bad key fails where you paste it. Coming the other way, we read per-link clicks out of beehiiv (and Mailchimp) and attribute each to the source that published the story. Counts are aggregate, never per-subscriber, and with no click data the ranking is unchanged.

Push into beehiiv works only on Max and Enterprise, because it uses the Create Post endpoint. On Launch or Scale, Writesy gives you the issue as HTML and you paste it; it does not use the MCP path. That's beehiiv's gate, and it stands in front of every tool that writes over REST.

Scheduling is opt-in per newsletter. Where a plan can hold a draft but can't schedule it, we save the draft and email you a reminder instead of reporting a send that didn't happen.

Free is one lifetime brief plus 5 feeds, Solo is $19/mo, and Professional at $39/mo carries the provider push and the click stats. The loop is on the curated newsletter page; the general routes from a feed to an email are compared here; and if the plan ladder is what's pushing you off beehiiv, the alternatives are priced here.

FAQ

Does beehiiv have an RSS feed?

Yes, on every plan, and it points outward. Settings, RSS, "New RSS Feed", and "A unique RSS Feed URL will be generated for your publication" — one that ends in .xml and exists to "feature posts from your beehiiv publication on your brand or company website" (beehiiv.com/support, 2026-09-10).

Is beehiiv RSS to Send free?

No. RSS to Send, which the help centre also calls RSS Ingestion, is on the Max and Enterprise plans, and Max is "$96/month" (beehiiv.com/pricing, 2026-09-10). The outbound RSS feed is the free one, and the names invite the mix-up.

What is the beehiiv Send API?

The pricing page's name for post creation over the API. In the developer docs it's the Create Post endpoint, "available to publications on the Max and Enterprise plans", taking structured blocks or raw HTML in body_content and returning 201 immediately while the post builds in the background (developers.beehiiv.com, 2026-09-10).

Can I create beehiiv posts with the API on the Launch or Scale plan?

Not over REST — the Create Post endpoint is Max and Enterprise only. Scale gets MCP write access, which creates and edits drafts from an AI client, though "Publishing posts and activating automations must be done from the beehiiv app" and "Sending posts via the MCP is not currently available." On Launch the MCP is read-only, so the issue goes in by paste.

Can an outside tool read my beehiiv click stats?

The endpoint is there. Listing posts with stats expanded returns "An array of click statistics for each URL in the post", split across email, web and aggregated (developers.beehiiv.com, 2026-09-10). No plan requirement is stated on that page, and the pricing page gives Launch "API Access (excluding Send API)".

How this article was verified

Every claim above was read off beehiiv's own pricing page, help centre, developer documentation or product blog on September 10, 2026, and linked at the point it is made. The exception is the beehiiv Agent line, read on September 8, 2026 during a competitor sweep. Where a page doesn't state something — the plan requirement on the post-stats endpoint, the feed limits the feature page hints at — we wrote "not stated", which isn't the same as "no".

We didn't test the RSS Ingestion block, the MCP write path, the Create Post endpoint or the stats reads on a live beehiiv account; we read the documentation, so this map is only as accurate as beehiiv's pages on the day. Writesy's own beehiiv code targets the Create Post endpoint and the post-stats read, which is why we needed the map, and we make Writesy.

beehiiv, Claude, Cursor and Codex are trademarks of their respective owners, named here only to identify the products described. None of these companies is affiliated with or endorses Writesy. If a price or a plan boundary has moved, the links are the fastest correction.