Ranked by fit, not by score. Each entry says who it is genuinely the best choice for, what it costs today, and where it lets you down.
1. smry
Best for feeds that only ship a teaser
- Price
- Free (100 feeds) · Patron $6/mo or $36/yr · Pro $80/mo or $768/yr
- Platforms
- Web, iOS and Android browsers, Chrome/Firefox/Edge/Opera extensions
- Teaser feeds
- Fetches and extracts the article when the feed body is a teaser, on open.
smry treats a short feed body as a missing article rather than as the article. When an entry arrives with a teaser, smry runs its own extraction on the linked page and shows the full text inline, then layers the reading tools on top: AI summaries, chat with the article, text-to-speech, highlights and notes that export. It is a reader built around the failure everyone in the quotes above describes, rather than a feed list that happens to render whatever the publisher sent.
What it does well
- +Teaser-only entries get the full article fetched and extracted at open time, not left as a one-line stub
- +Summaries, chat, TTS, highlights and export are in the same surface as the feed, so you never leave to read
- +Free tier is a real tier: 100 feeds, cross-device sync, offline reading, and an API
Where it falls down
- −No native desktop or mobile app — it is a web app plus browser extensions
- −No rules engine to match Inoreader's filters, and no per-story training like NewsBlur
- −Extraction cannot open hard paywalls that require server-side authentication; those stay locked
The one thing it does that the others don’t: Extraction is the product, not a per-article button. The same engine behind smry's reader runs on feed entries. Pricing verified at smry pricing on 11 September 2026.
Disclosure: smry publishes this page and sells a feed reader, so we have put ourselves first on a list we wrote. The cons above are the real ones, the ranking below them is by fit rather than by who pays us, and six of the ten readers here cost nothing.
2. Inoreader
Best for rules, filters and high-volume monitoring
- Price
- Free (150 subscriptions) · Pro $7.50/mo billed annually, $9.99/mo monthly
- Platforms
- Web, iOS, Android
- Teaser feeds
- Pro can fetch full content for selected feeds; not the default everywhere.
Inoreader is the power tool of the category and the most generous free tier in this list at 150 subscriptions. Pro adds rules, filters, newsletter addresses, monitoring feeds for keyword alerts, and an API. If your problem is that 400 feeds produce 4,000 items a day and you need 40 of them, this is the reader that will actually let you write that filter.
What it does well
- +150 free subscriptions is the highest free ceiling of any hosted reader here
- +Rules and filters are genuinely programmable, and monitoring feeds turn keywords into feeds
- +Newsletters, social sources and sites without a feed all land in the same timeline
Where it falls down
- −The feature surface is large enough to be its own learning curve
- −Several everyday conveniences — filters, newsletters, API — sit behind Pro
- −Full-content fetching is per-feed configuration rather than an always-on behaviour
The one thing it does that the others don’t: A rules engine that treats your feed list like a queryable stream. Pricing verified at Inoreader pricing on 11 September 2026.
3. Feedbin
Best for newsletters and partial feeds in one inbox
- Price
- $7/mo or $70/yr · 30-day free trial
- Platforms
- Web, plus third-party iOS, Mac and Android clients
- Teaser feeds
- Advertises extracting full content for feeds that only offer partial content.
Feedbin is the quiet, well-built one. No free tier, no upsells, one price — and two features that matter disproportionately: every account gets an email address so newsletters become feed entries, and it extracts the full content of articles from feeds that only publish partial content. It is also the sync backend a lot of native apps speak, so you can pair it with NetNewsWire or Reeder and keep your own client.
What it does well
- +Full-content extraction for partial feeds is a first-class, documented feature
- +A per-account email address turns newsletters into feed entries
- +Acts as a sync service for NetNewsWire, Reeder and other native clients
Where it falls down
- −No free tier at all — it is $7/mo after the trial or nothing
- −The first-party interface is web-only; native apps come from third parties
- −No AI summarisation or chat layer
The one thing it does that the others don’t: Newsletters and partial feeds solved in the same $7 subscription. Pricing verified at Feedbin on 11 September 2026.
- Price
- Free (64 sites) · Premium $36/yr (1,024) · Premium Archive $99/yr (4,096) · Premium Pro $29/mo (10,000)
- Platforms
- Web, iOS, Android, self-hostable
- Teaser feeds
- Original-page view renders the source site inside the reader.
NewsBlur's intelligence trainer is the oldest working answer to feed noise: thumbs-up and thumbs-down stories by author, tag or title and the reader learns what to surface. Premium Archive adds permanent archiving and full-text search over everything you have ever received, which is the feature people discover they wanted about two years in. It is open source, and you can run it yourself.
What it does well
- +Per-author, per-tag and per-title training that visibly improves the feed over weeks
- +Premium Archive keeps every story permanently and makes it searchable
- +Open source and self-hostable, so the free tier is not the only escape hatch
Where it falls down
- −64 sites on free is the tightest ceiling among the hosted readers here
- −The interface is dense and dated next to Feedly or Reeder
- −Training takes real input before it pays off
The one thing it does that the others don’t: A feed that measurably learns, with a permanent archive behind it. Pricing verified at NewsBlur on 11 September 2026.
- Price
- Free, open source
- Platforms
- macOS 15+, iOS 26+
- Teaser feeds
- Renders what the feed sends; pair it with a sync service that extracts.
NetNewsWire is what an RSS reader looks like when nobody has to monetise it. It is free, open source, native on Mac and iOS, and it syncs with iCloud, Feedbin, Feedly, BazQux, Inoreader, NewsBlur, The Old Reader and FreshRSS — so it is less a competitor to the services in this list than the client you put in front of one. There are no ads, no recommendations and no account to create.
What it does well
- +Free forever with no tier, no telemetry pitch and no upsell
- +Native Mac and iOS performance, with deep keyboard navigation
- +Syncs with eight different backends, including self-hosted FreshRSS
Where it falls down
- −Apple platforms only — no web, no Android, no Windows
- −No AI features, no newsletter ingestion, no filtering rules
- −On its own it shows exactly what the feed sends, teasers included
The one thing it does that the others don’t: The best free native client, and a front end for any backend here. Pricing verified at NetNewsWire on 11 September 2026.
- Price
- Free, AGPL-3.0 · self-host or use a community server
- Platforms
- Self-hosted web, plus any client that speaks its sync API
- Teaser feeds
- Extensions and scraping rules can pull article bodies, with setup.
FreshRSS is the default self-hosted answer and deservedly so: a single PHP app, a Docker image, feed generation by scraping sites without feeds, saved searches, and a sync API that NetNewsWire and most mobile clients already support. It costs nothing but your time, and the quote from aaravchen above is the honest framing — it gets you most of what a paid Inoreader account does, if you are willing to run it.
What it does well
- +Free and AGPL-licensed, with no account, tier or vendor to outlive
- +Can generate feeds by scraping sites that don't publish one
- +Its sync API is supported by most third-party clients
Where it falls down
- −You are the ops team: server, updates, backups, TLS
- −Full-text extraction means configuring extensions per feed, not a switch
- −Self-hosting from a VPS is exactly where bot walls bite hardest (see celsoazevedo above)
The one thing it does that the others don’t: Zero cost, zero lock-in, at the price of running it yourself. Pricing verified at FreshRSS on 11 September 2026.
7. Miniflux
Best for a minimal reader that stays out of the way
- Price
- Hosted $15/yr (15-day trial) · self-host free
- Platforms
- Self-hosted or hosted web, third-party mobile clients
- Teaser feeds
- Per-feed scraper rules fetch original content for truncated feeds.
Miniflux is deliberately small: one Go binary, a Postgres database, no JavaScript framework, and a reading view that is text and nothing else. It supports per-feed scraper rules to fetch the original article for truncated feeds, and the hosted version at $15/yr runs the identical open-source code — so moving from hosted to self-hosted is a data export, not a migration.
What it does well
- +$15/yr hosted is the cheapest paid option in this roundup
- +Per-feed rewrite and scraper rules handle truncated feeds
- +Hosted and self-hosted are the same codebase — no proprietary fork
Where it falls down
- −Intentionally minimal: no recommendations, no discovery, no AI
- −No first-party mobile app; you pick a third-party client
- −Scraper rules are per-feed configuration, so a big feed list is real setup
The one thing it does that the others don’t: The smallest possible reader that still solves truncated feeds. Pricing verified at Miniflux hosting on 11 September 2026.
- Price
- Included in Readwise Full: $9.99/mo billed annually, $12.99/mo monthly
- Platforms
- Web, iOS, Android, browser extensions
- Teaser feeds
- Saves and parses the full article for anything you add, feeds included.
Reader is a read-it-later app that happens to take feeds, rather than a feed reader that happens to save. Its centre of gravity is the highlight: everything you mark flows into Readwise and out to Obsidian, Notion, Logseq and the rest, with spaced-repetition review on top. If your reading ends in a note-taking system, nothing else here comes close.
What it does well
- +Best-in-class highlighting with exports to every major notes app
- +Feeds, newsletters, PDFs, EPUBs, YouTube and saved articles in one queue
- +30-day trial and a 50% academic discount
Where it falls down
- −The most expensive option here, and RSS is a feature of a larger bundle
- −Only sold as part of Readwise Full — no reader-only tier
- −Overkill if you just want to read feeds and not build a knowledge base
The one thing it does that the others don’t: Reading is the front half of a highlights-to-notes pipeline. Pricing verified at Readwise pricing on 11 September 2026.
9. Reeder
Best for one timeline for feeds, video and podcasts
- Price
- Free to download · $1/mo or $10/yr
- Platforms
- iOS 17+, iPadOS 17+, macOS 14+
- Teaser feeds
- Shows the feed body; open-in-browser is the fallback.
The current Reeder dropped the unread count entirely and rebuilt itself as a timeline: RSS, YouTube, podcasts, Mastodon and Bluesky in one chronological river you dip into rather than clear. It syncs over iCloud with no account, and at $10/yr it is the cheapest polished native app in this list. Whether you love it depends entirely on whether the unread badge was motivating you or oppressing you.
What it does well
- +One timeline for feeds, video, audio and social, with custom filters
- +iCloud sync with no account to create, and $10/yr is very cheap for the craft
- +Genuinely beautiful, fast, native reading on Apple platforms
Where it falls down
- −Apple platforms only
- −The no-unread-count model is divisive and cannot be switched back on
- −Reeder Classic, the older unread-count app, is a separate $9.99 purchase
The one thing it does that the others don’t: A chronological timeline instead of an inbox to clear. Pricing verified at Reeder on the App Store on 11 September 2026.
10. Feedly
Best for the most familiar starting point
- Price
- Free tier plus Pro and Pro+ subscriptions — figures unverified, see note
- Platforms
- Web, iOS, Android
- Teaser feeds
- Renders the feed body; AI features sit in the paid tiers.
Feedly is still the name most people reach for after Google Reader, and for a first feed list it remains the shortest path from zero to reading. But its centre of gravity has moved: the company's growth is in enterprise threat and market intelligence, and consumers increasingly meet the free tier's ceiling, the AI features behind the higher tier, and recommendations they did not ask for. It is on this list because it is genuinely the easiest start, not because it is where most people stay.
What it does well
- +The fastest onboarding in the category and the largest user base
- +Solid mobile apps and broad integrations with team tools
- +Topic and keyword following works without you finding feed URLs
Where it falls down
- −AI features are gated to the higher consumer tier
- −Product attention has shifted to enterprise intelligence customers
- −Algorithmic recommendations in a tool people chose to escape algorithms
The one thing it does that the others don’t: Ubiquity and the lowest-friction start, at the cost of focus. Pricing verified at Feedly pricing on 11 September 2026.
Feedly is the one price we are not printing. feedly.com/i/pricing renders entirely in the browser and returned "Feedly failed to load" to every request we made on 11 September 2026, so we could not confirm a figure at the source. Aggregator sites quote numbers for it; we would rather you check Feedly's own page than repeat one we could not verify.
