WatchFeed vs lire
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
WatchFeed
This app brings the Feedly RSS reader experience to your Apple Watch. Access your feeds, mark articles as read, and save them to boards directly from your wrist. It also offers customizable complications for quick access to top stories or unread counts.
- Feedly integration
- Access All and Favourites feeds
- Mark as Read functionality
- Save to Board feature
- Top Story complication
- Unread Count complication
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WatchFeed brings the beloved news reader Feedly to the Apple Watch. With many features similar to those that the iPhone app provides like Feeds, the All feed, the Favourites feed, Mark as Read and Save to Board, WatchFeed is the best RSS reader with Feedly integration available for the Apple Watch. WatchFeed also supports all complications. There is a Top Story complication that shows a popular article on the Graphic and Modular Watch faces and an Unread Count complication on all Watch faces.
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 rating: WatchFeed at 5.0 against lire's 4.4. WatchFeed also leads on price ($0.99 vs $9.99) and in-app purchases (none vs 5). lire's advantage is update cadence (fortnightly vs every 4 months) and ratings volume (155 vs 5). On review sentiment, ads, chart position and device support 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
WatchFeed costs $0.99 and lire $9.99 up front. lire sells 5 one-off in-app purchases. WatchFeed asks for nothing beyond the download.
WatchFeed holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: lire has 155 ratings behind it against 5, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 67% of WatchFeed's written reviews are positive against 69% of lire's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
WatchFeed ships an update every 4 months, lire fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 14, 2026 and October 19, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | WatchFeed | lire |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.99 — better | $9.99 |
| Rating | 5.0 (5 ratings) — better | 4.4 (155 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 66.7% of reviews | 68.5% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 5 | 155 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Fortnightly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Paid | Free with in-app purchases — better |
| Best chart rank | #16 | #14 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, Apple Watch | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.6 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1 MB | 164 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Nienhuis Development | Kunal Sood |
Customer experience
WatchFeed
lire
Bugs and requests
WatchFeed
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
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
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- Automatic article categorization
- Sharing options
- PDF export
- Multilingual support
In-app purchases
WatchFeed
No in-app purchases
lire
- Generous Tip$0.99
- Massive Tip$1.99
- Amazing Tip$4.99
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- Humongous Tip$9.99
- Stupendous Tip$19.99









