Kite vs Riffle
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Kite
A specialized web browser designed for individuals passionate about news. It offers a curated browsing experience focused on delivering news content efficiently.
- News-focused browsing
- Curated content experience
- Efficient news delivery
- Ad-free browsing
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Kite is a boutique web browser for news lovers.
Riffle
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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
Verdict
The clearest difference is iOS requirement: Kite at 14.1 against Riffle's 26.0. On price, ads, 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | Kite | Riffle |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 52.6% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 2 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 14.1 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1 MB | 10 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Kite Inc. | Nikolaj Jensen |
In-app purchases
Kite
No in-app purchases
Riffle
No in-app purchases









