SHSelfHostIndex

FreshRSS vs RSS Guard

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted rss & news readers options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
FR FreshRSS Free, self-hostable RSS feed aggregator VS RS RSS Guard Cross-platform desktop feed reader with plugin support
FeatureFreshRSSRSS Guard
CategoryRSS & News ReadersRSS & News Readers
LicenseAGPL-3.0GPL-3.0
LanguagePHPC++
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM256 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metalbinary
GitHub stars★ 15,716★ 2,711
First released20132013
ReplacesFeedly, Inoreader, Google ReaderFeedly

Why pick each one

Choose FreshRSS if…

  • Lightweight and fast
  • Works with many mobile apps
  • Actively maintained
FreshRSS details

Choose RSS Guard if…

  • Released under the GPL-3.0 license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Active community (2.7k GitHub stars)
  • Written in C++
RSS Guard details

Frequently asked questions

Is FreshRSS or RSS Guard better?

Neither is universally better. FreshRSS has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are FreshRSS and RSS Guard free and open-source?

Yes. FreshRSS is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and RSS Guard under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run FreshRSS and RSS Guard with Docker?

FreshRSS: yes. RSS Guard: check the project docs for container support.

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