NewsFlash vs An Otter RSS Reader
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.
An Otter RSS Reader
A minimalistic RSS reader that synchronizes your subscribed feeds across Apple devices via iCloud. It allows for automatic feed discovery, organization into folders, and reading articles in a standard web view. Integrates with Shortcuts and offers home screen widgets for unread counts.
- iCloud feed synchronization
- Auto-discover RSS feeds
- Group feeds into folders
- Read articles in web view
- Shortcuts integration
- Home screen widgets
- Import/Export with OPML
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An Otter RSS Reader is a simple RSS reader for following news, blogs, and personal sites without another account. Subscribe to feeds, organize them into folders, and let iCloud keep everything in sync across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Otter keeps the experience intentionally calm: quick refreshes, native navigation, readable article views, and just enough personality to make checking your feeds feel pleasant. New in 2.0, the iPad edition grew up. The Front Page opens to today's stories while native adaptive columns keep feeds and the story list side by side when there’s room, then collapse cleanly on smaller screens. Articles set in a real serif with a comfortable reading measure, on iPad and iPhone alike. Features: - Subscribe to RSS, Atom, JSON Feed, and XML feeds - Sync subscriptions and reading state with iCloud - The Front Page: a daily opening spread across iPhone and iPad - Smart Folders that fill themselves — long reads, quick reads, podcasts, videos - A serif reading view with adjustable typography - Reading Insights: streaks, reading calendar, and when-you-read patterns - Organize feeds into folders - Import and export subscriptions with OPML - Keyboard shortcuts and menu commands on iPad - Refresh feeds in the background or manually - Shortcuts actions, Home Screen widgets, and alternate app icons Otter Pro, the optional subscription, adds ad-free reading, custom Smart Folders, TL;DR article summaries, and the full Reading Insights dashboard. Otter is not trying to be a social network, inbox, or power-user dashboard. It is a practical little RSS reader for people who still like the open web. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://anotterrss.com/privacy
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: NewsFlash at 4.8 against An Otter RSS Reader's 4.1. An Otter RSS Reader's advantage is update cadence (every 3 days vs monthly) and ratings volume (73 vs 6). On price, review sentiment, 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 An Otter RSS Reader sells 6 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per year. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
NewsFlash holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.1. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: An Otter RSS Reader has 73 ratings behind it against 6, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 67% of NewsFlash's written reviews are positive against 60% of An Otter RSS Reader's.
NewsFlash ships an update monthly, An Otter RSS Reader every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on November 11, 2026 and November 7, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | NewsFlash | An Otter RSS Reader |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (6 ratings) — better | 4.1 (73 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 66.7% of reviews — better | 60.4% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 6 | 73 — better |
| Update frequency | Monthly | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Paid | Free with in-app purchases — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.6 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 16 MB | 45 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Michael Steurer | Josh Holtz |
Customer experience
NewsFlash
An Otter RSS Reader
Bugs and requests
NewsFlash
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
An Otter RSS Reader
Reported bugs
10 issues- It does not work
- Articles flicker in and out of existence and about 30 of them don't show at all
- The list views are messed up with many black spaces where a feed item should appear but is completely black
- Reader mode seems to not work
- Articles show up in duplicated often, articles had been marked as read will show up again as unread
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- Feeds disappear after closing the app
- Feeds don't refresh
- Crashes when importing OPML files
- Crashing when importing opml files
- Crashes when trying to import an OPML file
Requested features
13 requests- Encripted iCloud backups would be welcome
- Mark articles read on scrolling past them
- Option to hide read articles by default instead of manually hiding all the time
- When clicking on a top level folder it expands the folder clicking the arrow should expand the folder
- Needs swipe gestures example swipe right mark read/unread swipe left add to favorite
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- Need to add an option to sort by oldest and newest first
- If in reader mode hitting the safari button should open in the in app browser instead of leaving the app
- Under notifications there should be an option to show badge count with unread articles
- Should be an option to see favicons to the left of the headline to quickly see at a glance which site posted the story as well as an option to enable images if there is one in the story
- MiniFlux Sync would be nice
- Offline reading?
- Dark mode option
- Advanced analytics dashboard
In-app purchases
NewsFlash
- Espresso$0.99
- Cappuccino$2.99
- Specialty Coffee Aeropress$4.99
An Otter RSS Reader
- Otter Pro Annual7 Days trial$9.991 Year
- Small Tip2 variants$0.99
- Medium Tip2 variants$2.99
- Large Tip2 variants$5.99
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- Mega Tip2 variants$12.99
- Otter Pro Lifetime$19.99








