Byline 5 vs RSS Wear
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Byline 5
Access your favorite news sources and blogs, even without an internet connection. Subscribe to thousands of RSS feeds and stay updated with automatic syncing across all your devices. Enjoy a streamlined reading experience with offline access and quick navigation.
- Offline reading with cached content
- Syncs across devices and web
- Quick article navigation
- Background app refresh for syncing
- Discover new feeds and search articles
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Read the latest news from the websites that matter to you most, even when you’re offline. Simply sign in with a free Feedly account and subscribe to your favourite blogs, magazines, and news sources. Byline automatically stays in sync and brings you new content, putting thousands of RSS feeds at your fingertips. FEATURES: - Stay in sync across devices and the web via feedly.com. - Move between articles quickly with a simple swipe gesture. - Read offline with cached images and (optionally) full web pages. - Find new feeds and search for articles in the app or with Spotlight. - Sync and cache articles automatically with Background App Refresh.
RSS Wear
Stay updated with your favorite news sources directly on your iPhone and Apple Watch. Easily search for topics, subscribe to feeds, and enjoy a clean reading experience with sharing options.
- Apple Watch support
- Clean reading experience
- Over 100 top RSS feeds
- User-friendly search
- Add new feeds
- Sharing options
- Drag to reorder feeds
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RSS Wear lets you follow all your favourite news feeds on your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Just search for a topic that interests you, subscribe, and start reading – right on your iPhone and on your wrist. It's that simple. Rebuilt from the ground up for iOS 26 and watchOS 26, RSS Wear 2.0 has a fresh Liquid Glass design and a faster, cleaner reading experience. Features: - Apple Watch app – browse your feeds and read article summaries on your wrist, even when your iPhone isn't nearby - Clean reading experience – read articles in full and share them with one tap - Side-by-side Feeds, Articles and Reader on iPad - Search for feeds by keyword, or browse suggested topics like Tech, Design, Food, Travel and Photography - Read articles are marked with a checkmark, so you always know what's new - Articles follow your iPhone's text size setting - Drag to reorder your feeds - Landscape support - Your subscriptions and read history carry over from earlier versions
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Byline 5 at 4.3 against RSS Wear's 2.8. Byline 5 also leads on ratings volume (73 vs 5) and iOS requirement (9.0 vs 26.0). RSS Wear's advantage is update cadence (every 2 months vs every 5 months). On price, review sentiment, ads and in-app purchases 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. Byline 5 sells 2 one-off in-app purchases and RSS Wear sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Byline 5 holds the better App Store score, 4.3 against 2.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Byline 5 has 73 ratings behind it against 5, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 41% of Byline 5's written reviews are positive against 46% of RSS Wear's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Byline 5 ships an update every 5 months, RSS Wear every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and November 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Byline 5 | RSS Wear |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.3 (73 ratings) — better | 2.8 (5 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 40.9% of reviews | 46.2% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 73 — better | 5 |
| Update frequency | Every 5 months | Every 2 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch |
| Requires iOS | 9.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 8 MB | 2 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Phantom Fish | Espressoft Technologies |
Customer experience
Byline 5
RSS Wear
Bugs and requests
Byline 5
Reported bugs
20 issues- App freezes after opening articles
- App attempts to paste from clipboard on opening
- Paid version still shows ads
- Unable to sign in via Google account
- Google login error: 'This browser or app may not be secure'
Show 15 moreShow fewer
- Cannot login to Feedly
- App freezes when initiating sync
- Offline page caching broken
- Offline reading only works for text, no images/diagrams
- Cannot link into websites when offline
- Cached items number in settings seems static
- Syncing is too slow
- Swipe sensitivity decreased
- Swipe gestures are difficult to use
- Swipe to mark as read is slow
- Mark all as read function moved to categories
- Cannot open items to Chrome
- Offline saving of web pages not working
- App crashes when trying to sign in with Feedly
- Doubling of some headlines
Requested features
12 requests- Add progress indicator for downloads
- Add dark mode
- Add widgets
- Improve swipe sensitivity
- Allow reordering of feeds
Show 7 moreShow fewer
- Add 'mark all as read' when scrolling
- Improve offline caching for images/diagrams
- Add option to expand groups to see sites within them
- Add font size adjustment
- Make scrolling mark as read
- Move to top article after manual refresh
- Allow opening items in Chrome
RSS Wear
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Byline 5
- Byline Premium$2.99
- Byline Premium$5.99
RSS Wear
- Unlimited RSS Feed$0.99
