Unread vs content
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 Birchfeed, 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, Quick Reads, 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.) --- “Just a gorgeous app.” – John Gruber, Daring Fireball “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 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/
content
This app provides a clean, chronological feed of articles from any website or service that publishes an RSS or Atom feed. It offers a distraction-free reading experience, offline access, and organizes content into customizable categories. The app prioritizes user privacy with no accounts or tracking.
- Chronological feed display
- Supports RSS, Atom, YouTube, Reddit
- Distraction-free reader view
- Offline reading capabilities
- Customizable categories
- Save articles for later
- No account or tracking
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The internet used to feel different. You picked the sites you loved, and you read them. content brings that back. content is a calm, beautiful RSS reader for people who want to read articles — not scroll comments, fight algorithms, or chase engagement metrics. NO ALGORITHM. NO COMMENTS. NO NOISE. Your feeds appear in one place, in the order they were published. Chronological, always. No ranking, no "trending," no recommendations, nothing deciding for you what matters. FOLLOW ANYTHING WITH A FEED News sites, personal blogs, magazines, newsletters, YouTube channels, subreddits — if it publishes an RSS or Atom feed, you can follow it. Found something good in Safari? Add it straight from the share sheet. Import your existing subscriptions via OPML in seconds. A READER THAT RESPECTS THE ARTICLE Articles open in a clean, distraction-free reader view: no pop-ups, no interstitials, no comment sections. Typography-first design in dark or light mode. Even sites that only publish headlines get the full article extracted for you. ORGANIZED YOUR WAY Group feeds into categories and read them as one chronological stream. Save articles for later. Tag anything. Your library, your structure. ON IPHONE AND IPAD On iPad, your list sits beside the article you're reading, so finishing one and starting the next never changes the screen. Your library opens as a sidebar. Attach a keyboard and the arrow keys move through the list. SYNCS ACROSS YOUR DEVICES Your feeds, categories, tags, arrangement, and everything you've read or saved follow you between your iPhone and iPad over iCloud. Nothing to turn on, no account to create. PICKS UP EXACTLY WHERE YOU LEFT OFF content remembers your place in every list and every article. Close the app mid-paragraph, come back tomorrow, keep reading. READS OFFLINE Articles and their images prefetch quietly in the background on Wi-Fi. Open the app on the subway, on a flight, in a dead zone — everything's already there. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account. No sign-up. No analytics, no tracking, nothing promoted — ever. Your articles are stored on your device, and syncing runs through your own private iCloud storage. Nothing is sent to our servers, because there are no servers. PAY ONCE, KEEP EVERYTHING No subscription. No premium tier. No locked features, no in-app purchases, no upsell. You buy the app, you own the app. Stay informed. Not hooked.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Unread at Free against content's $2.00. Unread also leads on rating (4.6 vs 4.0) and ratings volume (443 vs 1). content's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 4) and review sentiment (100% vs 72%). On update cadence, ads, device support and iOS requirement 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; content costs $2.00 up front. Unread sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. content asks for nothing beyond the download.
Unread holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 4.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Unread has 443 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 72% of Unread's written reviews are positive against 100% of content's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Unread ships an update every 8 days, content every 6 days. The most recent releases landed on October 26, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Unread | content |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $2.00 |
| Rating | 4.6 (443 ratings) — better | 4.0 (1 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 72.4% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 443 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 8 days | Every 6 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases — better | Paid |
| Best chart rank | — | #102 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 40 MB | 9 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Golden Hill Software | Keith Norman |
Customer experience
Unread
content
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
content
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Unread
- Unread Monthly Subscription$4.991 Month
- Unread Annual Subscription$29.991 Year
- Unread: Free first year$29.991 Year
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- Unread: Discounted first year$29.991 Year
content
No in-app purchases








