Comparison

NewsBlur vs Unread

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

Head to head
About

NewsBlur

This app is a personal news reader that allows users to follow unlimited RSS subscriptions, share stories with friends, and discover new people with shared interests. It offers offline reading, full text extraction, and customizable reading preferences.

Highlights
  • Unlimited RSS subscriptions
  • Offline story and image support
  • Full text story extraction
  • Share and comment on news
  • Meet people with shared interests
  • Autoscrolling for hands-free reading
  • Saved stories with tagging
Features
Read full description

NewsBlur is a personal news reader bringing people together to talk about the world. A new sound of an old instrument. NewsBlur is popular for a reason. While also being the oldest surviving RSS news reader, it is used by many news organizations, popular blogs, editors, and individual readers to keep up with the world. Let's talk about major features: * Read an unlimited number of RSS subscriptions * Offline support for stories and images * Full text extracts the whole story and is sticky per-feed * Gestures and long presses for feeds and stories * Share and comment on the news with friends * Meet new people who share the same interests * Autoscrolling of text for hands-free reading * Collapsible folders * Saved stories with tagging * Mark stories as unread * Read by oldest/newest first * Filter by unread/all stories * Search for stories by feed or folder * Send to Facebook/Twitter/Instapaper/Pocket/Evernote/email/etc * Landscape view * Customizable offline sync settings You can also optionally subscribe with a NewsBlur Premium Subscription * Subscribe to an unlimited number of sites * Sites you subscribe to are updated up to 10x more often * Read by folder with the river of news * Search sites and folders * Save stories with searchable tags * Privacy options for your blurblog (shared stories) * Custom RSS feeds for folders and saved stories * Use the Text view which conveniently extracts the full original story The subscription is auto-renewable which means that once purchased it will be auto-renewed every year until you cancel it 24 hours prior to the end of the current period. Duration of the subscription is 1 year. Your iTunes Account will be charged for renewal within 24-hours prior to the end of the current period. Manage your Subscription and Auto-Renewal by going to your Account Settings. You may access the privacy policy at https://www.newsblur.com/privacy, and the terms of use at https://www.newsblur.com/tos.

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 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, 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.) --- “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 is focused on eliminating chrome — it is a pure reading app. It’s like reader mode all the time, and the assortment of color themes is nicely curated.” – John Gruber, Daring Fireball --- 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

NewsBlur4 screens
Unread4 screens

Verdict

The call

NewsBlur and Unread both sit at 4.7 stars, but that hides the real split: 72% of Unread's written reviews are positive against 57% of NewsBlur's. Unread also leads on iOS requirement (18.0 vs 26.0). On price, rating, ratings volume and update cadence 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. NewsBlur sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $29.99 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 — 4.7 for NewsBlur against 4.6 for Unread. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 502 and 442 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 57% of NewsBlur's written reviews are positive against 72% of Unread's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

NewsBlur ships an update every 9 days, Unread every 8 days. The most recent releases landed on September 22, 2026 and September 21, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
NewsBlur versus Unread: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterNewsBlurUnread
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (502 ratings) — better4.6 (442 ratings)
Positive reviews57.3% of reviews72.4% of reviews — better
Number of ratings502 — better442
Update frequencyEvery 9 daysEvery 8 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemiumFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, MaciPhone, iPad, Mac
Requires iOS26.018.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size26 MB39 MB
Age rating4+17+
DeveloperNewsBlur, Inc.Golden Hill Software

Customer experience

NewsBlur

All ratings502 ratings
Positive92.8%
Neutral3.0%
Negative4.2%
Written reviews192 reviews
Positive57.3%
Neutral9.4%
Negative33.3%

Unread

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

User reviews

NewsBlur

From 502 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Fast and reliable
  • 👍 Excellent news reader
  • 🔒 Great privacy policy
  • 💡 Useful training and filtering features
  • 👍 Seamless sync across devices

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Crashes and bugs, especially on iPad
  • 👎 Paywall for basic features
  • 👎 Outdated and cluttered UI
  • 👎 Difficult to manage feeds and folders

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

NewsBlur

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Crashes on launch for some users
  • Incorrect feed display and article loading issues
  • Syncing problems between web and mobile apps

Requested features

4 requests
  • Customizable font sizes
  • Offline reading mode
  • Improved sharing options
  • Ability to delete feeds and folders

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

3 purchases

NewsBlur

Subscriptions3
  • NewsBlur Premium Pro$29.991 Month
  • NewsBlur Premium Subscription$35.991 Year
  • NewsBlur Premium Archive$99.991 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 NewsBlur free?
NewsBlur 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, NewsBlur or Unread?
NewsBlur is rated higher. NewsBlur averages 4.7 out of 5 from 502 ratings, while Unread averages 4.6 from 442 ratings.
Do NewsBlur or Unread have ads?
Neither NewsBlur nor Unread shows ads.
Which is updated more often, NewsBlur or Unread?
NewsBlur ships an update every 9 days, and Unread every 8 days. Most recently, NewsBlur was updated on September 22, 2026 and Unread on September 21, 2026.

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