What are the best news readers?

Question

41

Options
Considered

578

User
Recs.

Mar 10, 2019

Last
Updated

News readers aggregate information from various sources.

A modern news reader will allow pulling information from RSS feeds, social networks, and even news sites and blogs that lack RSS functionality. Good news readers will allow grouping and organizing sources and offer a choice of how information is presented.

Here’s the Deal

The Best 1 of 34 OptionsWhy?

Best news readers	Price	Platforms	Search
96 Inoreader	$0-$4.99/m	Web, iOS, Android, Windows Phone	Yes
87 Feedly	$0 - $5.41/mo	Web, iOS, Android, Kindle	Yes
82 Tiny Tiny RSS	Free	Web, Android, iOS	Yes
77 NewsBlur	$0 - $24/yr	Web, iOS, Android	Yes
76 The Old Reader	$0-$3/mo	Web	-

See Full List

33 Other Options Considered

Feedly

Top Pro

Clean, easy to overview UI

Feedly has an easy to overview interface. While this interface is clean and simple, it is still full of bright colors. A great feature that adds to the clean feel is "eliminate clutter", which keeps only the text of the desired topic. See More

Top Con

Long list of paid-only features

Free features are pretty basic. It seems like all the new development goes into paid-only features. Paid features include sharing and saving options, alerts, backup, support or integrations with collaborative tools. See More

IndependentCrius's Experience

Many feeds from France See More

Specs

Platforms:Web, iOS, Android, Kindle

Search:Yes

Subscriptions in Free Plan:100

Filtering:Yes

See All Specs

Top Pro

Integrates other services for ease of use and sharing

Feedly sign-in is done with Facebook, Twitter, Google, or Microsoft credentials. It offers many ways to share a story from within the application, including social networks, e-mail, etc. See More

Top Con

No keyword filtering

Feedly has no ability to filter a feed by keyword like a lot of other RSS readers do. See More

Top Pro

Supports OPML export/import

With this feature, all subscriptions can be saved. See More

Top Con

No offline support

There is no offline support with the official client. See More

Top Pro

Seamless Google Reader migration

Feedly have made it especially easy to navigate away from Google Reader. See More

Top Con

Forces external account to log in

Users are forced to use Twitter, Facebook, Google, or Microsoft login credentials. See More

Top Pro

Choice of many different layouts

For each news source, a different layout can be chosen. Choose between showing thumbnails, titles and summaries, titles only, thumbnails with overlaid titles in a grid, or have all content inlined. See More

Top Con

No push notifications

Among the most requested features for Feedly is push notification support. The feature was officially requested in 2011 and currently has over 600 votes on Feedly's Uservoice. See More

Top Pro

Steals page views

Feedly has had issues multiple times with hijacking page views from original publishers. See: Feedly WAS (is) Hijacking Shared Links And Cutting Out Original Publishers Feedly Found a New Way to Steal Page Views From Publishers See More

Top Pro

Great article recommendations

Search a topic and Feedly will offer resources that are related to that topic. See More

Top Con

Log-in is buggy

Logging in can sometimes cause Feedly to struggle. It can become unresponsive and force close. See More

Top Pro

Browser extensions

Feedly's extension lets users add feeds directly from websites, but also lets users curate pages, save them to Evernote or Facebook, email, or Tweet pages. See More

Top Con

Organization/sorting features lacking

There is no ability to sort feeds within a folder, and moving feeds between folders is difficult with lots of content. See More

Top Pro

Open API

There are multitudes of third party clients available for many platforms. See More

Top Con

Slow interface

Top Pro

IFTTT and Zapier integration (Paid)

Feedly functionality can be extended and workflows automated with IFTTT and Zapier integrations that make it possible to connect the reader with hundreds of popular apps. See More

Top Pro

Boards for organising the content (Paid)

Feedly allows you to create unlimited Boards (folders/sets/collections) and use them to organise your saved content. See More

See All

Tiny Tiny RSS

Top Pro

Highly customizable via plugins

The main way to customize Tiny Tiny RSS is via functionality plugins. Some come with the basic installation, but many additional ones are available from third parties. Users can also change the way information is shown, create themes or skins using CSS or download ones created by the community. All this is possible because Tiny Tiny RSS is open-source--anyone can create modifications for it and publicly share them. You just have to look out for possible bugs and security issues with user-made content. See More

Top Con

Has to be set up manually, tech-savviness and patience required

Using Tiny Tiny RSS is not as simple as creating an account on another service. Merely completing the installation procedure will take at least a few hours. Main requirements include a physical server or a web host supporting PHP and MySQL. The know-how’s also needed, but there are several guides online that explain all the steps quite well. Anyone familiar with computers, even not being an expert, who is willing to spend some hours reading and learning should be able to set up this software. See More

Specs

Platforms:Web, Android, iOS

Search:Yes

Subscriptions in Free Plan:Unlimited

Filtering:Yes

See All Specs

Top Pro

Full control of the service

Since this reader is open-source and self-hosted, users can have full control of the service and its data when used on a private server. This means they don’t need to rely on a third party service that can be discontinued anytime. It also ensures the cost for using the reader will not increase and it protects user privacy by not giving up personal data. See More

Top Pro

Multiple users per installation

One instance of Tiny Tiny RSS can be used by as many people as necessary. See More

Top Pro

Organize by tags and labels

Browse and organize feeds and posts by tags and labels. See More

Top Pro

Android client available

An Android app is available on the Google Play store. See More

Top Pro

Integrates with a media center

Feeds can be viewed on a TV or dedicated media box. See More

Top Pro

E-mail digest

Users can request an e-mail to be sent at a set interval with news posts. See More

See All

NewsBlur

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Works on iOS, Android, and as a webapp. See More

Top Con

Freemium

This service is free, but can cost up to $24 per year for premium users. See More

Specs

Platforms:Web, iOS, Android

Search:Yes

Top Pro

Can't have unread items older than a 14 days/month

This is a premium feature. See More

Top Pro

Keyboard shortcuts for fast navigation

By default arrow keys and spacebar are used to quickly navigate stories, but they can be rebound for premium accounts. See More

Top Pro

Freemium service

Free version has a limit of 64 sites. Upgrading to unlimited sites costs $1/month. See More

Top Pro

View content the way it is originally displayed

NewsBlur offers an option of reading articles just like they are displayed on the original site. See More

Top Pro

Multiple layout & style options

NewsBlur allows users to customize the font size, line spacing, story layout, and type faces. See More

Top Pro

Organize feeds into folders

Feeds can be grouped into folders for easier management and to allow users to separate feeds for work, comics, research, etc. See More

Top Pro

Fast to use

Very fast to navigate around the UI and load articles. See More

Top Pro

Aggregates email newsletters

You can forward email newsletters to a user-specific email address to have them aggregated in your feed reader along with your RSS content. See More

Top Pro

Free / Libre software

NewsBlur is FOSS, so it can be freely modified & redistributed. See More

Top Pro

Share stories with comments

Burblog is a simple, customizable website for sharing stories with comments that people can subscribe to. See More

See All

The Old Reader

Top Con

Not free/libre

This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified, freely distributed, or trusted to be secure. Also, if the developer abandons it again, there will be no way for others to continue to update it. See More

Top Pro

Social

People from Facebook or Google can be found on The Old Reader so posts can be shared and discussed. See More

Specs

Platforms:Web

Subscriptions in Free Plan:100

Offline support:No

OPML support:Yes

Top Con

No mobile app

Lacks an official native mobile app, but the mobile version of the site is quite usable and there are apps which support syncing with The Old Reader. However, users have created many apps for a variety of platforms using The Old Reader API. You can check them out here. See More

Top Pro

Very similar to the dismissed Google Reader

Ever since Google Reader has ceased to be an option, The Old Reader has grown in popularity. See More

Top Con

Not very customizable

While the sources can be added or removed, the feed cannot be filtered in any other way. Display options are limited as well, leaving the user with the standard view. See More

Top Pro

Great UI

A clean, easy to use interface. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Intuitive, easy to overview service. See More

Top Pro

OPML import

Allows for easy migration from any service that supports OPML. See More

Top Pro

Freemium

Free version has a limit of 100 sites, upgrade to unlimited sites costs $25/year. Being freemium is a nice option for those that would like to try the app out without putting down any money first. See More

See All

Press

Top Pro

Works offline

Once articles are synced, all of the information is cached and can be viewed while offline. See More

Top Con

Unreliable after being installed a while

After about a week, this app stops working as intended. Features like syncing and caching are the most common features to break. See More

Specs

Platforms:Android

Top Pro

Lots of integrations

Works as a front-end for Feedly, Feedbin, Fever or Feed Wrangler. See More

Top Con

Lack of updates may cause compatibility issues

The last update to the Google Play Store was January 2014. It looks like it's been abandoned, so will likely have increasing issues with bugs and compatibility concerns with newer Android versions. See More

Top Pro

Gorgeous UI

Beautiful app, and a great user experience. Press is able to take info from other readers and present it in a more manageable fashion. See More

Top Con

Android only

You are limited to only using the app on an Android device. See More

Top Pro

Customizable themes

Light and dark themes are available to accommodate users in high or low light environments. See More

Top Pro

Readability support

Press is compatible with Readability; a service that stores online articles for reading later. See More

Top Pro

Great widget

Press has a widget available for easier reading. See More

See All

Flipboard

Top Pro

Very polished UI that is organized like a magazine

This app has a very polished, magazine-style layout, that is flipped through by swiping. Because of its layout, Flipboard is especially nice on tablets. See More

Top Con

Excessive ads with no way to remove them

Flipboard doesn’t offer subscription plans, having only the completely free full version. However, it does feature ads that appear between articles and there’s no way of removing this function. See More

Specs

Platforms:Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows, Web

Top Pro

Personalized magazines

Magazines is a features by Flipboard that can allow anyone to create their own personalized magazine by collecting the content from various websites and collate them into a magazine that can also be shared to other readers. Magazines can be set to either public or private access and anyone can follow the magazine. See More

Top Con

Needs better organization of topics, mags, users followed

When you follow 3-5 magazines per topic (sometimes more) it would be nice to be able to group some of these together in a way that constricts the 'fire hose' of content. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Flipboard is available on Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows and web app. See More

Top Con

Low quality news sources

The default content is from low quality sources such as Mashable. See More

Top Pro

Free

Top Pro

Google Reader import

There is also a simple import from Google Reader. See More

Top Pro

Social network integration

Flipboard pulls information from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. Everything is aggregated in one app, which can then be flipped through and shared, either directly on Flipboard or on social networks. See More

Top Pro

Easily discover stories based on topics

Flipboard has millions of Magazines that anyone can follow, covering various subjects. Some cover general topics like home decoration, while others are immensely specific: for example, there’s one just about technological advances that extend human lifespan. All users can create their own Magazines and share them publicly, with friends, or keep them for private use. See More

See All

Feedbin

Top Pro

Clean UI

Uncluttered and intuitive to use. See More

Top Con

No Team Integration

No ability to share information with others within the native app. See More

WorthyCinteotl's Experience

Tried Everything, stayed with Feedbin. See More

Specs

Search:Yes

Night Theme:Yes

API:Yes

Keyboard shortcuts:Yes

Top Pro

Classy interface

The web interface is nice, and the apps give a great native experience regardless of what platform you're on. See More

Top Con

There is no free plan

One of the few news readers that does not offer a free plan. They have a 14 day trial, after that a subscription is $3/month. See More

Top Pro

Supported by many other apps

Works with Reeder, ReadKit, Mr Reader, SubToMe and many, many other apps. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Licensed under MIT. Code available on GitHub. See More

Top Pro

Full API

Feedbin has a fully-featured, free, REST-style API. See More

Top Pro

Paid

This won't disappear in a year or two if ad revenue falls off. See More

Top Pro

Supports JSON Feed

JSON Feed is a new syndication format that uses JSON instead of XML to store its data. JSON is generally considered easier to read and write than XML, making for less error-prone data structuring and broken feeds. See More

See All

Pocket

Top Pro

Allows tagging bookmarks

Bookmarks can be tagged for search accuracy later on. See More

Top Con

Chrome addon doesn't allow you to add tags with keyboard only (have to use mouse) while saving page

Specs

Platforms:Android, iOS, Kobo, web, macOS, Windows

Software Type:Google Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari extension, desktop app

Top Pro

Well-finished GUI and UX

Top Con

Correct and open export of bookmarks and tags are not possible

This means that Pocket is (currently) a total lock-in. This is very sad, unfortunate and creates a no go decision for any seasoned user. Too many bookmarking and tagging companies have stopped or have gone bankrupt these last years (e.g. Kippt, Spingpad, Delicious (to some extent), etc...). So, if you are going to invest a lot of your personal time and energy in curating your Internet findings (i.e. your bookmarks and tags), it is essential that a total, fair and open export (including all tags) functionality is provided. Personally tested the export "feature" and the resulting .html file that Pocket generates currently included only the URLs themselves, i.e. no save dates nor any of your personally curated tags, nor any other useful meta-data. This is deplorable, because otherwise, Pocket is a very polished and well-functioning piece of multi-platform and multi-device software/app/web service, with a very easy and well-designed and implemented user interface... Please fix this, Pocket ! These days of open and inter-operable web services, users are only attracted by valuable functionality, clean UX design and no lockins. See More

Top Pro

Works well across Google Chrome on macOS and iOS

Top Con

Can't import Firefox bookmark tags

When importing bookmarks from Firefox, Pocket doesn't include the tags. See More

Top Pro

Ability to filter by content type

Top Con

Can't rename the title of links

If the page title isn't correct/good for a link, there is no way for you to fix it. See More

Top Pro

Highlighting available on iOS

Top Con

Only the paid version allows to search by tag

Top Pro

Included in Firefox

Pocket is now integrated into the Firefox web browser, and you can login using your firefox/mozilla login, instead of having to create a separate account. This login method can even be used natively on their website, regardless what browser is being used. See More

Top Con

Chrome addon doesn't let you open your library without saving current page first

Top Pro

The Pocket plugin for Google Chrome is very stable

Top Pro

Allows reading saved content in offline mode

Instead of only saving the link, the content is saved for offline use. See More

Top Pro

Integrates with over 500 apps

A key advantage of Pocket is that it is integrated in over 500 apps as a way to save the link, including Twitter, Flipboard, Pulse and Zite. See More

Top Pro

Available on the web and mobile devices

Pocket is available on iOS, Android, Kobo eReader and on the web. See More

See All

Circa News

Top Con

No web version yet

Circa News is not available on the web, but this feature is coming soon. See More

Top Pro

Makes it effortless to stay on top of the news

Circa lets users follow a selected story and get alerts to breaking news. See More

Top Pro

Beautifully designed

Everything displayed on Circa News is meant to be clear, concise, and easy to navigate. See More

Top Pro

Articles are to the point

Circa News uses curators to provide summaries of stories, not fluffy narratives. See More

Top Pro

Ability to Follow favorite stories

Top Pro

Android Wear compatible

This app pushes breaking news to Android Wear devices so alerts are never missed. Colors and animations can be chosen to make the notifications interesting. See More

See All

NewsTab Reader

Top Pro

Smart

It finds the best stories in the feeds. See More

Top Con

No keyword filtering

Specs

Platforms:Android, iOS, Web

Top Pro

Combination of design and functionality

Design is beautiful and really easy to use. Options to save and read later, to add any rss url, to follow by #. See More

Top Con

Lacks customization and features

Top Pro

Simplicity of reading articles without distracting content around

The ability to read an article directly in the app in a simplified view without having to load each article in a separate browser again is very convenient. See More

Top Pro

All in one

It is totally FREE, easy and fun to use, and with amazing feed catalog. See More

Top Pro

Allows users to find and follow any RSS feed

See All

Google Play Newsstand

Top Pro

Combines news from free and paid blogs, print magazines and websites in one app

The app makes it easy to select from a variety of different news sources. See More

Top Con

Inability to mute sources

While it may be desirable for Newsstand to blend both paid and free news sources, it means that their curated headlines are only partially accessible for those who do not have subscriptions for all the various paid sources. See More

Specs

Platforms:iOS, Android

Top Pro

Offers a comfortable reading experience for print media

There is a huge selection of print media available to you (some sources are free, some are paid). They layout makes it very easy to browse through and read. See More

Top Pro

Has a system for subscribing to topics of interest

See All

Yahoo News Digest

Top Pro

Beautiful UI design

Great look and feel to the app as you swipe though stories or scroll down on a headline to read more details. Most stories come with custom designed graphs tailored for the story. See More

Top Con

No customization of news headlines or categories

You only get the top 8-10 headlines of the day regardless of news category or source. See More

Top Pro

Great for a casual reader of the News

Rather than give you full articles, the app creates "Atoms". It's a short summary of the news event, generated from a variety of different sources. It provides infographs, images, videos and more to help you quickly understand the news event. This means you are able to read through all of the news stories in minutes. See More

Top Con

Meager sharing options

You can share any article in the digest, but it doesn't give many options for tailoring the message that is sent. See More

Top Pro

Only shows top few stories

Hard to get lost in reading news when you only get 8-12 stories at a time. See More

See All

News Explorer

Top Pro

Built-in support for Twitter feeds

You can subscribe to feeds of Twitter accounts and hashtags. News Explorer has a built-in download engine for Twitter and features realistic rendered tweets, including images, movies, replies etc. See More

Top Con

No Feedly support

News Explorer relies on iCloud synchronisation and doesn't offer support for other synchronisation solutions. See More

Specs

Platforms:macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS

Top Pro

Syncs your news and read status via iCloud

News Explorer syncs RSS, JSON, Atom and Twitter subscriptions, folder setup, news items, read statuses and favorites across all your Apple devices via iCloud. See More

Top Pro

Available on all Apple platforms

News Explorer has native apps for Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV. See More

See All

Paperoak

Top Pro

Supports multiple languages like English, German, Portuguese at the same time

Top Con

No import from other readers (OPML/XML)

DebonairPhilotes's Experience

One of the best Feedly and Inoreader alternatives, Its got a beautiful UI, Supports multiple languages and has all the sources that I usually follow. See More

Specs

Platforms:Web, Android

Search:Yes

Subscriptions in Free Plan:Unlimited

Filtering:Yes

See All Specs

Top Pro

It's free

Top Con

Not available on iOS

PaperOak does not have an iOS version yet. See More

Natali Smith's Experience

Hat eine wirklich nette Benutzeroberfläche, lässt Sie Artikel auf Deutsch lesen See More

Top Pro

Doesn't contain ads

Top Con

Does not have an import option

Feedly can import a file with RSS feeds Google Reader, and with PaperOak you'd have to browse a zillion sources to again find what you like. See More

Top Pro

It's fast

Top Pro

Can save articles offline by adding them to your bookmarks

Top Pro

Website and Android application for reading

See All

Feedbro

Top Pro

Configurable feed scanning intervals

As frequently as every minute if you want. See More

Top Pro

Built-in Rule Engine for filtering

Top Pro

Supports IFTTT

Top Pro

Readability-style full article fetching

Top Pro

Can access any feed sources - also in your company's intranet

Top Pro

Supports embedded Youtube video viewing

Top Pro

Free

Completely free to use! See More

Top Pro

Built-in social media plugins

Supports at least Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+, Youtube. See More

Top Pro

Opera RSS Reader style reading view, magazine view plus many others

Top Pro

Built-in Readability-style "partial feed to full feed" engine

See All

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