Why did Upwork kill the RSS job feed, and what works now?
Short answer
Upwork switched off RSS job feeds on 20 August 2024 because automated bidding tools were using them to flood clients with low-quality AI proposals. The official API exists but is closed to almost everyone. What still works is the opposite of automation: fewer proposals, qualified by hand, sent quickly.
The deprecation is worth understanding because it tells you what the platform is optimising against. The feeds were not removed to sell a product. They were removed because the tools consuming them were degrading the client experience.
That has a direct consequence for anyone shopping for bidding software. Anything promising to find and apply to jobs for you is fighting the platform, and is aimed at the behaviour the platform has already moved to suppress. It also produces exactly the proposal that clients have learned to skim past.
What has not changed is that speed and fit still win. Responding inside a couple of hours, in a narrow category, with evidence attached, is the pattern behind consistently high reply rates. None of that needs a feed. It needs a shorter list.
Related questions
Is there an Upwork API I can use?
There is a GraphQL API, but access is granted to very few developers, and it is not a route around the closed feeds for an individual freelancer.
Are automated proposal tools against the rules?
Read the current terms before using anything that logs in on your behalf. Regardless of the rules, the strategy itself is weak: the platform removed the feeds precisely to reduce this behaviour.