Comparison

NewsBlur vs lire

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

Follow the sites you care about with NewsBlur, a personal RSS news reader that brings your reading together. Keep up with news, blogs, newsletters, and more, with your subscriptions and reading progress synced across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the web. READ YOUR WAY Browse stories from individual sites or bring a folder together in one reading list. Choose a comfortable theme, adjust the text, and use gestures to move through your stories. Download stories for offline reading and pick up where you left off. STORIES AT A GLANCE Add widgets to your Home Screen. Each widget can show All Site Stories, a folder, or one site. Choose its source with Edit Widget. FIND YOUR FOCUS Train NewsBlur on authors, tags, and words in headlines to highlight stories you want and hide ones you don't. You decide what matters. DISCOVER AND KEEP Find new sites, preview their latest stories, and try reading before subscribing. Save stories for later, organize them with tags, and search your reading. Share stories with comments on your NewsBlur blurblog and follow what friends are reading. GO DEEPER Use Text view to read an extracted article. Ask AI for a summary, background, or answers to questions about a story. Availability and usage limits depend on your account plan. IN YOUR LANGUAGE Use NewsBlur's interface in 21 languages, including right-to-left layouts for Arabic and Hebrew. Choose your language in Preferences or follow your device settings. Stories stay in the language they were published in. A NewsBlur account is required. Free accounts and optional paid subscriptions are available. Some features require a paid plan. SUBSCRIPTIONS If you purchase a subscription through the App Store, payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation. Subscriptions renew automatically unless canceled at least 24 hours before the current period ends. Your account is charged for renewal within 24 hours before the period ends. Manage or cancel your subscription in your Apple Account settings. Terms of use: https://www.newsblur.com/tos Privacy policy: https://www.newsblur.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

NewsBlur4 screens
lire4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: NewsBlur at Free against lire's $9.99. NewsBlur also leads on rating (4.7 vs 4.4) and update cadence (weekly vs fortnightly). lire's advantage is chart position (#5 vs unranked) and review sentiment (69% vs 57%). On ads, in-app purchases, monetization model 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

NewsBlur is free to download; lire costs $9.99 up front. NewsBlur sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $29.99 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

NewsBlur holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.4. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 511 and 157 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 57% of NewsBlur'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.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

NewsBlur ships an update weekly, lire fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard7 real differences · 4 level
NewsBlur versus lire: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterNewsBlurlire
PriceFree — better$9.99
Rating4.7 (511 ratings) — better4.4 (157 ratings)
Positive reviews56.7% of reviews68.5% of reviews — better
Number of ratings511 — better157
Update frequencyWeekly — betterFortnightly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemiumFree with in-app purchases
Best chart rank—#5 — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, MaciPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS26.015.6 — better
Further details — not scored
Size32 MB164 MB
Age rating4+17+
DeveloperNewsBlur, Inc.Kunal Sood

Customer experience

NewsBlur

All ratings511 ratings
Positive92.8%
Neutral2.9%
Negative4.3%
Written reviews194 reviews
Positive56.7%
Neutral9.8%
Negative33.5%

lire

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

User reviews

NewsBlur

From 511 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

lire

From 157 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

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

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

3 purchases

NewsBlur

Subscriptions3
  • NewsBlur Premium Pro$29.991 Month
  • NewsBlur Premium Subscription$35.991 Year
  • NewsBlur Premium Archive$99.991 Year
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 NewsBlur free?
NewsBlur 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, NewsBlur or lire?
NewsBlur is rated higher. NewsBlur averages 4.7 out of 5 from 511 ratings, while lire averages 4.4 from 157 ratings.
Do NewsBlur or lire have ads?
Neither NewsBlur nor lire shows ads.
Which is updated more often, NewsBlur or lire?
NewsBlur ships an update weekly, and lire fortnightly. Most recently, NewsBlur was updated on October 24, 2026 and lire on October 25, 2026.

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