Comparison

Instapaper vs Unread

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

Head to head
About

Instapaper

Save articles from the web for later reading, with a clean, clutter-free experience. Access your saved content offline, anywhere, anytime. Features include text-to-speech narration and customizable reading options.

Highlights
  • Save web articles for offline reading
  • Clutter-free reading experience
  • Text-to-speech narration
  • Customizable fonts and themes
  • Highlighting and note-taking
  • Article organization with folders
Features
Read full description

Instapaper is the simplest way to save and store articles for reading: offline, on-the-go, anytime, anywhere, perfectly formatted. Instapaper for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch provides a mobile-optimized text view that makes reading Internet content a clean and uncluttered experience. Instapaper also enhances the standard reading experience with features like text-to-speech. Instapaper has been inducted into the iPhone and iPad Hall of Fame, received Macworld Editor's Choice Award, and has also been featured in publications including Wired, TIME, Daring Fireball, and The Verge, among others. Core Features: - Strip away all clutter and save the content of web pages into iOS-optimized formatting. - Read anywhere! No internet, no problem: access your articles on airplanes, subways, elevators, or Wi-Fi-only devices away from Internet connections. - Save to Instapaper from other iOS applications with one tap. Additional Features: - Control every aspect of your reading experience with a variety of font, color themes, and spacing options. - Find that great quote you want to remember and share? Instapaper makes it easy to highlight and add notes to text in any article. - Have your Instapaper articles narrated to you with text-to-speech. Just turn up the volume on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and relax! - Sort your list of articles by popularity, date, and article length. - Folders for easy organization. Instapaper also offers an optional Instapaper Premium subscription for $5.99/month or $59.99/year. With Instapaper Premium you receive: - Full-text search for articles in your account - Unlimited highlights and notes. - Text-to-speech Playlist to seamlessly listen to multiple articles. - Unlimited use of the speed reading feature to help you get through articles up to 3x faster. On sign up for Instapaper Premium, payment will be charged to your Apple ID account at the confirmation of purchase. The 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 App Store account settings after purchase. Terms of service: https://www.instapaper.com/terms Privacy policy: https://www.instapaper.com/privacy

About

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.

Highlights
  • 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
Features
Read full description

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/

Screenshots

Instapaper4 screens
Unread4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is chart position: Instapaper at #149 against Unread's unranked. Instapaper also leads on ratings volume (3.5K vs 442). Unread's advantage is review sentiment (72% vs 64%) and iOS requirement (18.0 vs 26.0). On price, rating, update cadence and ads 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

Both are free to download. Instapaper sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $5.99 per month and Unread sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.6 for Instapaper against 4.6 for Unread. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Instapaper has 3.5K ratings behind it against 442, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 64% of Instapaper's written reviews are positive against 72% of Unread's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Instapaper ships an update every 2 weeks, Unread every 8 days. The most recent releases landed on October 15, 2026 and October 13, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 7 level
Instapaper versus Unread: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterInstapaperUnread
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.6 (3.5K ratings)4.6 (442 ratings)
Positive reviews64.2% of reviews72.4% of reviews — better
Number of ratings3.5K — better442
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeksEvery 8 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
Best chart rank#149 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, MaciPhone, iPad, Mac
Requires iOS26.018.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size49 MB40 MB
Age rating4+17+
DeveloperInstant Paper, Inc.Golden Hill Software

Customer experience

Instapaper

All ratings3,537 ratings
Positive89.8%
Neutral3.3%
Negative6.8%
Written reviews1,367 reviews
Positive64.2%
Neutral9.1%
Negative26.8%

Unread

All ratings442 ratings
Positive89.8%
Neutral2.7%
Negative7.5%
Written reviews170 reviews
Positive72.4%
Neutral8.2%
Negative19.4%

User reviews

Instapaper

From 3.5K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Efficient reading experience
  • 👍 Clean, minimalist design
  • 💡 Useful features like highlighting and notes
  • 🚀 Seamless integration with various platforms
  • 👍 Reliable and stable app

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Bugs and crashes
  • 🔒 Concerns about data privacy and GDPR compliance
  • 💰 Subscription price increase
  • 🔍 Unreliable search functionality
  • 🚫 Inability to delete account

Unread

From 442 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 👍 Elegant and intuitive UI
  • 🚀 Fast and responsive
  • 🔒 Secure login integration
  • 📚 Excellent article formatting and readability
  • 💡 Automated full-text article retrieval

Room to improve

  • 💰 Subscription model seen as too expensive
  • 🔀 Inconsistent experience between iOS and iPad versions
  • 🔍 Difficult to discover certain features
  • 🔠 Lack of customization options (e.g., font, theme)

Bugs and requests

Instapaper

Reported bugs

5 issues
  • Speak feature freezes on most articles
  • Pagination issues causing text to be cut off
  • Folders and archives disappearing
  • Inability to save articles from certain websites
  • Subscription not unlocking premium features

Requested features

5 requests
  • Add support for tables and charts
  • Improve text-to-speech quality
  • Implement a 'go back to beginning of article' feature
  • Add support for EPUB files
  • Introduce a 'random article' feature

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

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Instapaper

Subscriptions2
  • Instapaper Premium$5.991 Month
  • Instapaper Premium$59.991 Year
4 purchases

Unread

Subscriptions4
  • Unread Monthly Subscription$4.991 Month
  • Unread Annual Subscription$29.991 Year
  • Unread: Free first year$29.991 Year
Show 1 more
  • Unread: Discounted first year$29.991 Year

Questions

Is Instapaper free?
Instapaper is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Unread free?
Unread is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Instapaper or Unread?
Instapaper and Unread are both rated 4.6 out of 5 on the App Store, from 3.5K and 442 ratings respectively.
Do Instapaper or Unread have ads?
Neither Instapaper nor Unread shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Instapaper or Unread?
Instapaper ships an update every 2 weeks, and Unread every 8 days. Most recently, Instapaper was updated on October 15, 2026 and Unread on October 13, 2026.

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