NewsFlash vs Ruby
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
NewsFlash
A fast, modern RSS reader designed for a clean, distraction-free news experience. Organize articles with tags, filter content, and search your entire feed. Offers custom push notifications and developer-friendly features.
- Clean, distraction-free reading experience
- Customizable tags and filtering
- Full-text search across articles
- Keyword blocking for unwanted topics
- Custom push notifications
- iCloud Sync for private data backup
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Your sources. Less noise. NewsFlash is an independent RSS reader for people who want to choose what they read, without an algorithm, ads, tracking, or a separate account. Bring the websites, blogs, and links you care about into one organized library on iPhone and iPad. Filter out what doesn't interest you and keep what does. FOLLOW YOUR SOURCES Subscribe to RSS, Atom, and JSON feeds. Paste a website or feed address, preview its articles, or start with suggested feeds. Import and export your subscriptions with OPML. CONTROL THE NOISE Hide articles that match words or phrases in their title, summary, or URL. Apply a filter to one feed or your whole library, and preview what it matches before you save it. The source stays; only the stories you don't want disappear. KEEP MORE THAN A BOOKMARK Save articles for later, add tags and personal notes, and organize feeds in nested folders. Search across titles, sources, tags, and notes to find things again. SAVE LINKS FROM ANYWHERE Share a page from Safari or any other app straight into NewsFlash, even if you don't follow its source. READ IT YOUR WAY Choose Hero, Full, Compact, or Text Only layouts, with separate settings for each feed. Light and Dark Mode, larger text, and Safari Reader on supported websites help you read comfortably. Seen and read are tracked separately. YOUR READING, WITHIN REACH Your library syncs through your own iCloud account. Get to headlines and saved articles with widgets, Siri, Shortcuts, Control Center, and Spotlight, and choose which feeds may notify you. On iPad, a sidebar keeps your folders and tags in view. Good to know: saved articles are kept when older articles are removed automatically, but saving doesn't store an offline copy of the full webpage. Feed alerts depend on refresh timing, and iOS manages background refresh. An independent RSS reader, made by Michael Steurer.
Ruby
A beautifully designed news reader app offering a personalized home feed based on your chosen topics. Easily discover trending articles, bookmark content for later, and customize your reading experience with language and region settings. Enjoy ad-free content across multiple Apple devices.
- Personalized topic feeds
- Explore trending articles
- Bookmark articles for later
- Customizable region and language
- Ad-free reading experience
- iCloud syncing across devices
- Apple Watch app integration
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Ruby is a beautifully designed news app for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision. It's built with a familiar design, so it's simple and easy to use and understand. Ruby works great with your devices, and supports iCloud syncing for a seamless experience across all of them. The app itself has a lot of distinct features, such as being able to choose the topic you want to view on your home feed. If you only want to view technology without the politics, you can. Only interested in sports? There's an option for that too. With the explore page, you can also keep up with the latest trends in your region, or make a quick search for whatever you're interested in. Ruby also offers bookmarks, so you can find an article and come back to it later. We also offer customization. You can easily change the country you're in, or the language you prefer to read. The built in news reader is easy to understand, and provides content from your favorite websites, but without the advertisements and other nonsense. Ruby also offers an Apple Watch app, where you can quickly view headlines on your wrist. The Apple Watch app has the same functionality as the iPhone app, so you can easily read headlines of a specific topic, and more. If you want to suggest features for Ruby, contact me on X (Twitter) @mbrkhrdt. I'm open to suggestions, and want to create the best user experience possible!
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: NewsFlash at monthly against Ruby's every 5 months. NewsFlash also leads on review sentiment (67% vs 50%) and iOS requirement (18.6 vs 26.0). Ruby's advantage is rating (5.0 vs 4.8) and monetization model (free with in-app purchases vs paid). On price, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases 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
Both are free to download. NewsFlash sells 3 one-off in-app purchases and Ruby sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $5.99 per year. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Ruby holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 6 and 4 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 67% of NewsFlash's written reviews are positive against 50% of Ruby's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
NewsFlash ships an update monthly, Ruby every 5 months. The most recent releases landed on November 11, 2026 and November 3, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | NewsFlash | Ruby |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (6 ratings) | 5.0 (4 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 66.7% of reviews — better | 50.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 6 — better | 4 |
| Update frequency | Monthly — better | Every 5 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Paid | Free with in-app purchases — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Vision Pro — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.6 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 16 MB | 8 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 12+ |
| Developer | Michael Steurer | MBRKHRDT LLC |
Customer experience
NewsFlash
Ruby
In-app purchases
NewsFlash
- Espresso$0.99
- Cappuccino$2.99
- Specialty Coffee Aeropress$4.99
Ruby
- Ruby Premium - Annual$5.991 Year
- Ruby Premium - Lifetime$17.99









