How do private RSS feeds work?

When a subscriber signs up, Benecaster generates a unique, cryptographically random URL for them:

yoursite.com/podcast-feed/?token=abc123xyz

That URL is theirs alone — and it never changes. Their podcast app polls it like any other podcast feed. In the background, every request is validated: is this token active? What tier is this subscriber on? What episodes are they entitled to today? The RSS XML returned is compiled on the fly based on those answers.

For you as the podcaster: there is one feed per subscriber, not one feed per tier. You don’t manage a “Premium feed” and a “Basic feed” as separate URLs. You don’t turn off a subscriber’s access to a feed when they downgrade — the same URL continues to work, it just returns the episodes their new tier is entitled to. There’s no churn to manage when someone moves from one paid tier to another, or from paid to free. The subscriber keeps their URL regardless of where they sit.

For your listeners: because the URL never changes, their podcast app never loses track of what they’ve already heard. Podcast apps record played status, download history, and in-progress timestamps against the feed URL. If the URL changed — as it does on platforms that issue a separate feed per tier — the app would treat it as a brand new podcast and lose that history entirely. With Benecaster, a subscriber who upgrades from free to premium sees new episodes appear in the same feed they’re already subscribed to. They don’t need to re-add anything, and they won’t be re-prompted to listen to episodes they’ve already heard.