Unread vs lire
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Unread
This app is a beautifully designed RSS reader that focuses on a clean reading experience with customizable typography and themes. It offers seamless syncing across devices and integrates with various read-later services, allowing for offline access to cached content.
- Gesture-based navigation
- Customizable color themes
- Cross-device syncing
- Automatic webpage text display
- Offline access with caching
- Integration with read-later services
- Widgets for unread counts
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Rediscover the joy of reading your favorite writers and publications with Unread. Unread is an RSS reader with beautiful typography, comfortable gesture-based navigation, and a variety of color themes. Unread is available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Unread won the MacStories Selects 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award. Capabilities include: SYNCING: Our free Unread Cloud service keeps your devices in sync. Unread also syncs with Feedbin, Feedly, Fever, FreshRSS, Gobbler, Inkwell, Inoreader, Miniflux, and NewsBlur. AUTOMATIC WEBPAGE TEXT: For feeds that contain only article summaries, Unread will display the full article text from the webpage. Easily switch between feed text and webpage text for any article, and change the default for individual feeds. WEBSITE ACCOUNTS: For news websites that require an account, sign in and get full webpage text. SUBSCRIBE IN UNREAD: This share sheet extension lets you subscribe to a website’s feeds while visiting that website from Safari or any other web browser. SAVE TO UNREAD: This share sheet extension creates an article in Unread with the contents of the webpage you are visiting from Safari or any other web browser. (Subscription required.) COLOR THEMES: Unread provides a variety of color themes. Choose one theme for light mode and another for dark mode. CACHING: Unread caches webpage text and images for instant loading and offline access. (Subscription required.) READ-LATER SERVICES: Unread can save articles to Anybox, Flyleaf, GoodLinks, Instapaper, Matter, Pinboard, Plinky, Raindrop.io, Readwise, Safari Reading List, and wallabag. On a device with a hardware keyboard, assign a custom keyboard shortcut to each. (Subscription required.) SHORTCUTS: Perform shortcuts on articles and links inside articles. On a device with a hardware keyboard, assign a custom keyboard shortcut to each. (Subscription required.) --- “Most importantly, I should stress again how refreshing it feels to have such a great native experience with Unread. The app is really fast, even when it’s loaded up with hundreds of feeds.” — Niléane Dorffer, MacStories “It’s an RSS reader made with taste. It has great typography, themes, search, and compatibility with the usual suspects. I love having this app on my Mac.” — David Sparks, MacSparky “Unread is focused on eliminating chrome — it is a pure reading app. It’s like reader mode all the time, and the assortment of color themes is nicely curated.” – John Gruber, Daring Fireball --- Unread has full VoiceOver coverage. Every screen and every feature is available to users with vision impairments: • From any screen you can perform a magic tap, a two-finger double tap, to open a menu of options available for that screen. • When on an article list, there are actions available for each article in the list. After selecting an article, invoke the accessibility rotor and then select “Actions”. There is an action to mark the article read or unread, an action to share the article, and many others. • Use the VoiceOver escape gesture, a two-finger “Z”, to back out of the current screen. --- UNREAD SUBSCRIPTION Unread is a free app. Additional functionality is available with a $29.99 (USD)/year auto-renewing subscription: • Article actions for sending articles directly to supported bookmarking and read later services, and for sharing via email or iMessage. • Ability to execute shortcuts on articles and links. • Caching of webpage text and images. • Widget customization options. • Save to Unread share sheet extension. • Custom app icons. • Premium support. A subscription automatically renews unless it is canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Your account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours prior to the end of the current period. You can manage and cancel your subscriptions by going to your account settings on the App Store after purchase. Unread’s Terms of Use are available at: https://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/unread/terms-of-use/
lire
This app provides full-text RSS feeds, converting partial feeds into complete articles. Read content offline after initial caching. It offers standalone use or syncs with iCloud and various popular RSS services.
- Full-text RSS feed conversion
- Offline reading of cached feeds
- Standalone feed reader
- iCloud sync
- Sync with multiple RSS services
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Love RSS feeds? So do we!! RSS feeds are a great way to follow updates on your favorite website. However, some sites set up their feeds to only show a portion of each entry, you know, to get you to click through to their actual website. We find that really annoying, and we're sure you do too. Which is why, unlike other RSS feed readers, that either push you into a browser (in-app or otherwise), or depend on third party text parsing services and require you to be online to fetch the full text of one article at a time (which makes it no different from having to click/tap through to a website), in lire, you get your favorite RSS feeds as they should've been. You don't need to click through to any website (though, you do still have the option to, if you really wanted). It takes your favorite partial feeds, does its magic, and converts them in to full feeds, so you don't have to click/tap on those annoying 'Read more' or 'Continue reading' links. Once they're cached, you don't even need to be connected to read your full-text feeds. Use as a standalone feed reader, sync with iCloud, or, sync with any of the several services: Feedly, Feedbin, FeedHQ, The Old Reader, Inoreader, BazQux Reader, Newsblur, Feed Wrangler, FreshRSS, Miniflux, Nextcloud News, Tiny Tiny RSS.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Unread at Free against lire's $9.99. lire's advantage is chart position (#2 vs unranked) and iOS requirement (15.6 vs 18.0). On rating, review sentiment, ratings volume and update cadence there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Unread is free to download; lire costs $9.99 up front. Unread sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and lire sells 5 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Unread holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 4.4. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 442 and 151 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 72% of Unread's written reviews are positive against 68% of lire's.
Unread ships an update every 8 days, lire fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on September 21, 2026 and September 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Unread | lire |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $9.99 |
| Rating | 4.6 (442 ratings) — better | 4.4 (151 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 72.4% of reviews — better | 68.4% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 442 — better | 151 |
| Update frequency | Every 8 days — better | Fortnightly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Best chart rank | — | #2 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 15.6 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 39 MB | 160 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Golden Hill Software | Kunal Sood |
Customer experience
Unread
lire
User reviews
Unread
From 442 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Elegant and intuitive UI
- 🚀 Fast and responsive
- 🔒 Secure login integration
- 📚 Excellent article formatting and readability
- 💡 Automated full-text article retrieval
Room to improve
- 💰 Subscription model seen as too expensive
- 🔀 Inconsistent experience between iOS and iPad versions
- 🔍 Difficult to discover certain features
- 🔠 Lack of customization options (e.g., font, theme)
lire
From 151 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Fast full-text parsing
- 👍 Highly customizable
- 🔒 No data collection
- 💡 Bionic reading support
- 👍 Excellent accessibility
Room to improve
- 🐛 Frequent crashes
- 🐛 Sync issues
- 🐛 Memory management problems
- 🐛 Buggy after updates
- 🐛 Inconsistent article rendering
Bugs and requests
Unread
Reported bugs
3 issues- Occasional article duplication
- Issues with 'Keep Unread' feature
- Text formatting problems in dark mode
Requested features
4 requests- Add support for more RSS providers (e.g., Miniflux, FreshRSS)
- Implement keyboard shortcuts and power-user features
- Improve information density on iPad layout
- Introduce a one-time purchase option
lire
Reported bugs
7 issues- Crashes on launch
- Incorrect feed display
- Articles not opening
- Overlapping UI elements
- Sync errors with FreshRSS and Wallabag
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- Revert to old articles after sync
- VoiceOver issues after update
Requested features
9 requests- Bulk unsubscribe option
- Ability to add multiple feeds at once
- Custom keyword filtering
- Highlight/annotate articles
- Embedded video support
Show 4 moreShow fewer
- Automatic article categorization
- Sharing options
- PDF export
- Multilingual support
In-app purchases
Unread
- Unread Monthly Subscription$4.991 Month
- Unread Annual Subscription$29.991 Year
- Unread: Free first year$29.991 Year
Show 1 moreShow fewer
- Unread: Discounted first year$29.991 Year
lire
- Generous Tip$0.99
- Massive Tip$1.99
- Amazing Tip$4.99
Show 2 moreShow fewer
- Humongous Tip$9.99
- Stupendous Tip$19.99








