Comparison

An Otter RSS Reader vs lire

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

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.

Highlights
  • 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
Features
Read full description

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

About

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.

Highlights
  • Full-text RSS feed conversion
  • Offline reading of cached feeds
  • Standalone feed reader
  • iCloud sync
  • Sync with multiple RSS services
Features
Currently charting
Read full description

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

An Otter RSS Reader4 screens
lire4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: An Otter RSS Reader at Free against lire's $9.99. An Otter RSS Reader also leads on update cadence (every 3 days vs fortnightly). lire's advantage is rating (4.4 vs 4.1) and chart position (#9 vs unranked). On ratings volume, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

An Otter RSS Reader is free to download; lire costs $9.99 up front. An Otter RSS Reader sells 6 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month and lire sells 5 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

lire holds the better App Store score, 4.4 against 4.1. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 73 and 155 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 60% of An Otter RSS Reader's written reviews are positive against 69% of lire's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

An Otter RSS Reader ships an update every 3 days, lire fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 12, 2026 and October 15, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 5 level
An Otter RSS Reader versus lire: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAn Otter RSS Readerlire
PriceFree — better$9.99
Rating4.1 (73 ratings)4.4 (155 ratings) — better
Positive reviews60.0% of reviews68.5% of reviews — better
Number of ratings73155 — better
Update frequencyEvery 3 days — betterFortnightly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
Best chart rank—#9 — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, MaciPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS17.015.6 — better
Further details — not scored
Size45 MB164 MB
Age rating17+17+
DeveloperJosh HoltzKunal Sood

Customer experience

An Otter RSS Reader

All ratings73 ratings
Positive75.3%
Neutral8.2%
Negative16.4%
Written reviews110 reviews
Positive60.0%
Neutral10.0%
Negative30.0%

lire

All ratings155 ratings
Positive80.6%
Neutral7.7%
Negative11.6%
Written reviews178 reviews
Positive68.5%
Neutral13.5%
Negative18.0%

User reviews

An Otter RSS Reader

From 73 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 👍 Elegant and convenient
  • 👍 Great app
  • 👍 Cute RSS reader in every way
  • 👍 Works Great, syncs on all iOS Devices
  • 👍 More than an 'okay minimalistic app'

Room to improve

  • 🐛 It does not work
  • 🐛 Abandoned app
  • 🐛 Bug list view dark mode
  • 🐛 Only shows a couple of entries
  • 🐛 Missing keyboard shortcuts

lire

From 155 App Store ratings

What 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

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
Show 5 more
  • 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
Show 8 more
  • 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

lire

Reported bugs

7 issues
  • Crashes on launch
  • Incorrect feed display
  • Articles not opening
  • Overlapping UI elements
  • Sync errors with FreshRSS and Wallabag
Show 2 more
  • 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 more
  • Automatic article categorization
  • Sharing options
  • PDF export
  • Multilingual support

In-app purchases

6 purchases

An Otter RSS Reader

Subscriptions2
  • Otter Pro Monthly$0.991 Month
  • Otter Pro Annual7 Days trial$9.991 Year
One-time4
  • Small Tip2 variants$0.99
  • Medium Tip2 variants$2.99
  • Large Tip2 variants$5.99
Show 1 more
  • Mega Tip2 variants$12.99
5 purchases

lire

One-time5
  • Generous Tip$0.99
  • Massive Tip$1.99
  • Amazing Tip$4.99
Show 2 more
  • Humongous Tip$9.99
  • Stupendous Tip$19.99

Questions

Is An Otter RSS Reader free?
An Otter RSS Reader is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is lire free?
lire costs $9.99, and also offers in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, An Otter RSS Reader or lire?
lire is rated higher. An Otter RSS Reader averages 4.1 out of 5 from 73 ratings, while lire averages 4.4 from 155 ratings.
Do An Otter RSS Reader or lire have ads?
Neither An Otter RSS Reader nor lire shows ads.
Which is updated more often, An Otter RSS Reader or lire?
An Otter RSS Reader ships an update every 3 days, and lire fortnightly. Most recently, An Otter RSS Reader was updated on October 12, 2026 and lire on October 15, 2026.

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