Inkstead vs Gather
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Inkstead
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Inkstead is a calm RSS reader for iPhone, iPad and Mac. Follow the websites and people you care about without turning reading into another noisy timeline. Today keeps the day's posts close, Saved keeps pieces worth returning to, and All holds your whole library. Group feeds into a lens and see the stories that matter once, not five times. Miss a day, and a short recap catches you up. Import OPML, save articles, sync through iCloud, and read comfortably with a quiet, content-first interface. Inkstead has no separate reader account, no advertising and no third-party analytics SDKs. When you want to write something of your own, Inkstead can connect to your website through Inkstead Writer, an optional companion for creating and managing posts from the app. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://inkstead.app/privacy
Gather
This app provides a calm, local-first RSS reader to follow trusted publications and read clean full articles. It offers customizable reading experiences, offline access, and privacy-focused features without requiring an account.
- Local-first RSS reader
- Offline article reading
- Customizable reading views
- No account required
- On-device processing
- OPML export
- Optional article translation
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Read what you choose, without turning every subscription into another inbox. Gather is an RSS and Atom reader built around your sources. Follow trusted publications, blogs, and independent sites. No Gather account is required. A feed that fits you Use Browse for a relaxed chronological stream and Keep up for the few sources you want to finish. Group coverage of the same story, discover new sources, and organize focused views. Comfortable reading Open clean reader views when available or switch to the publisher’s live page. Adjust type and appearance, save favorites, search downloaded articles, and prepare a reading queue for offline use. Listen to articles and translate supported text on your device after a language pack downloads. Summaries, your choice Get a plain title and five clear points in the standard summary style, or choose another summary voice. Optional cloud summaries send the article title and text through CodeNest’s service on Cloudflare and OpenRouter only after you explicitly allow them in Settings. Turn them off anytime. On-device summaries remain available with Apple Intelligence on supported iPhones or a downloaded model. Keep your data Subscriptions, reading history, and saved articles live on your device. Article titles, text, links, sources, searches, and topics are excluded from analytics. Import and export subscriptions with OPML, make a Gather backup, or use optional sync with iCloud. Core reading and offline tools do not require a subscription. A one-time purchase removes in-feed sponsored cards. Supporting Gather is optional and does not unlock core reading features. Publisher sites, paywalls, and JavaScript-heavy pages can limit extraction. Gather offers retries or a live-page fallback when a clean view is unavailable. Privacy: https://codenestllc.org/gather/privacy/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: Inkstead at none against Gather's shown. Gather's advantage is update cadence (every 2 days vs every 3 weeks) and iOS requirement (16.4 vs 26.0). On price, in-app purchases 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
Both are free to download. Inkstead sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $12.99 per year and Gather sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Inkstead ships an update every 3 weeks, Gather every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on November 5, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Inkstead | Gather |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | — | 3 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | — | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 16.4 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 21 MB | 102 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 12+ |
| Developer | Ivo Nunes | CodeNest LLC |
In-app purchases
Inkstead
- Inkstead Plus$12.991 Year
- Inkstead Plus Lifetime$49.99
Gather
- Support Gather$1.99
- Remove Ads$3.99









