Comparison

Lecto vs Riffle

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

Head to head
About

Lecto

This application offers a beautifully designed reader for RSS feeds, podcasts, YouTube, and Telegram channels. It features AI summaries, offline reading, and a built-in podcast player, all within a clean, ad-free experience.

Highlights
  • RSS feed reader
  • Podcast player
  • YouTube channel reader
  • Telegram channel reader
  • AI summaries
  • Offline reading
  • Customizable design
Read full description

Lecto, just a Reader for privacy. 100% free. No ads. No subscriptions.

About

Riffle

Features
Read full description

Riffle is an RSS reader for iPhone, iPad and Mac. It keeps your reading on your device and syncs it with a server you choose — or with no server at all. OFFLINE FIRST Articles download as they arrive, so your unread list works on a flight, on the metro, and anywhere the signal gives out. Marking something read or starring it works offline too: those actions queue up and reach your server the moment you are back, in the order you made them. Nothing is lost because you were in a tunnel. WORKS WITH YOUR SERVER Connect FreshRSS, Miniflux or Feedbin, or any server that speaks the Fever or Google Reader API. Subscriptions, folders, read state and stars stay in step across every device you read on. Credentials go to your server and nowhere else. OR NO SERVER AT ALL Riffle can fetch feeds itself, with no account and nothing in between. Paste a website and it finds the feed. YouTube channels, subreddits, GitHub releases and Medium writers work as they are. BUILT FOR READING A reader view set in Apple's New York serif, with the face, size and line width under your control. Feeds that publish only a summary can be opened in full. Swipe to mark read or to star, search everything you have downloaded, and switch between the article, the full text and the live page whenever you want. DRIVEN FROM THE KEYBOARD Vim-style keys throughout: j and k to move, n for the next unread, s to star, m to toggle read, / to search, ? for the list. Menu commands and shortcuts on the Mac for everything else. ON YOUR HOME SCREEN Widgets for your unread count and your newest articles. Share a page from Safari and Riffle finds the feed behind it. PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION No Riffle account and no Riffle server. No tracking, no analytics, no advertising, no third-party services. Passwords and API keys live in the Keychain, never in the database. Riffle talks to your server and to the sites you subscribe to, and to nothing else. POLITE TO YOUR SERVER Riffle will not poll more often than every fifteen minutes, whatever the settings say, and it never runs a full sync just to tell your server you read something. A self-hosted instance is usually one small machine, and it is treated like one. Native on all three platforms: three columns on Mac and iPad, a navigation stack on iPhone, and one library underneath them all.

Screenshots

Lecto4 screens
Riffle4 screens

Verdict

The call

Lecto and Riffle are too close to call on the numbers: across 5 compared parameters — price, ads, in-app purchases and device support among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.

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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ScorecardNo meaningful differences
Lecto versus Riffle: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLectoRiffle
PriceFreeFree
Rating3.7 (6 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews50.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings6 — better—
Update frequencyFortnightly—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS26.126.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size79 MB10 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperYuefeng ZhuNikolaj Jensen

In-app purchases

None

Lecto

No in-app purchases

None

Riffle

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Lecto free?
Lecto is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Riffle free?
Riffle is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Lecto or Riffle have ads?
Neither Lecto nor Riffle shows ads.

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