Comparison

Folo vs Tidings

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

Head to head
About

Folo

This AI-powered tool scans the internet to find and present information relevant to your interests. It filters out noise, delivering only the knowledge you truly care about.

Highlights
  • AI-powered content filtering
  • Surfaces relevant knowledge
  • Cuts through internet noise
  • Personalized information delivery
Features
Read full description

Folo is the AI RSS reader that brings everything you follow into one calm timeline, then helps you read it. Follow blogs, news sites, newsletters, podcasts, video channels and social feeds in one place. Let AI summarize the long reads, translate the ones in other languages and read the rest aloud, so you stay informed without drowning in tabs. ONE TIMELINE FOR EVERYTHING YOU FOLLOW • Subscribe to any RSS, Atom or JSON feed, or search for sources by name • Follow sites without a feed through thousands of RSSHub routes • Explore trending feeds and curated lists to find new favorites • Import your subscriptions from any other reader with OPML • Keep things tidy with folders, stars and lists AI THAT READS WITH YOU • AI summaries: the key points of any article in seconds • AI translation: read in English, Chinese, Japanese or French, side by side with the original or on its own • Text-to-speech: listen to any article in a natural voice • Actions: summarize, translate, star or filter new entries automatically with your own rules MADE FOR EVERY FORMAT • A clean reader view that fetches the full text of articles • Dedicated layouts for social posts, pictures, videos and podcasts • Background playback for podcasts and picture-in-picture for videos YOUR READER, YOUR WAY • Light and dark themes, reading fonts, text size and line spacing • Spotlight highlights the keywords you care about • Subscriptions, read status and stars sync across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows, Android and the web OPEN SOURCE, NO ADS Folo is open source and ad-free, built in the open with a community of readers and developers. FREE TO START Create a free account to follow feeds and sync them across your devices. Basic, Plus and Pro plans add more subscriptions, higher AI limits and automations. Subscriptions are billed monthly or yearly and renew automatically unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. Manage or cancel your subscription anytime in your App Store account settings. Privacy Policy: https://folo.is/privacy-policy Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Tidings

Features
Read full description

Take back control of what you read. Tidings turns the sources you choose into a calm, focused daily news feed—without an account, ads, or cross-app advertising tracking. TODAY'S BRIEF Catch up quickly with a concise digest of the stories most worth your time. Use the built-in offline summary or connect an OpenAI-compatible service for smarter summaries. KEYWORD RADAR Follow topics, companies, and people—not just publications. Tidings gathers matching stories from all your feeds and can notify you when something new appears. YOUR PERSONAL NEWSPAPER Turn today's subscriptions into a beautifully typeset morning or evening front page. Share it as one polished image, complete with a QR code that helps friends discover Tidings. SHARE ANY ARTICLE Turn a worthwhile story into a polished portrait card with its headline, excerpt, source, reading time, and an App Store QR code—perfect for sharing with friends. READ LATER Save articles to a dedicated inbox without mixing them with favorites. Saved items survive feed refreshes and automatic cleanup, while bilingual reading-time estimates help you pick the right article for the moment. READ YOUR WAY Fetch full text when a feed only provides an excerpt, keep it available offline, listen with text-to-speech, resume long articles where you stopped, and move through your unread queue without distractions. ALSO INCLUDED RSS and Atom discovery, batch subscription import, folders, full-text search, article thumbnails, OPML import and export, broken-feed detection, light and dark themes, background refresh, and local-first storage. Your subscriptions and article reading history stay on your device. Optional usage analytics is off by default. If enabled, it sends a random installation identifier and limited usage/error-count events, never article content, subscriptions, searches, URLs, API keys or error details. You can turn it off at any time in Settings.

Screenshots

Folo4 screens
Tidings4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Tidings at none against Folo's 6. On price, update cadence, ads 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

Both are free to download. Folo sells 6 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Tidings asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Folo ships an update fortnightly, Tidings every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 4, 2026 and October 29, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference · 9 level
Folo versus Tidings: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterFoloTidings
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.1 (61 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews40.8% of reviews—
Number of ratings61 — better—
Update frequencyFortnightly — betterEvery 3 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS16.4 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size65 MB2 MB
Age rating17+4+
DeveloperNatural Selection LabsBeijing Pengcheng Technology Co., Ltd.

Bugs and requests

Folo

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Unable to open app on Mac
  • Images not loading in articles
  • Horizontal videos not playable
  • Unresponsive click issues

Requested features

4 requests
  • Change text size option
  • Add language support
  • Improve notification system
  • Enhance sharing functionality

Tidings

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

6 purchases

Folo

Subscriptions6
  • Folo Basic (Monthly)7 Days trial$4.991 Month
  • Folo Plus (Monthly)7 Days trial$9.991 Month
  • Folo Basic (Annual)7 Days trial$49.991 Year
Show 3 more
  • Folo Pro (Monthly)7 Days trial$99.991 Month
  • Folo Plus (Annual)7 Days trial$99.991 Year
  • Folo Pro (Annual)7 Days trial$999.991 Year
None

Tidings

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Folo free?
Folo is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Tidings free?
Tidings is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Folo or Tidings have ads?
Neither Folo nor Tidings shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Folo or Tidings?
Folo ships an update fortnightly, and Tidings every 3 weeks. Most recently, Folo was updated on November 4, 2026 and Tidings on October 29, 2026.

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