SHSelfHostIndex

Fusion vs selfoss

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?
FU Fusion Lightweight self-hosted RSS reader with full-text fetch VS SE selfoss Multipurpose RSS reader and web scraping aggregator
FeatureFusionselfoss
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score86 · Excellent68 · Good
CategoryRSS & News ReadersRSS & News Readers
LicenseMITGPL-3.0
LanguageTypeScriptHTML
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM128 MB128 MB
Deploymentdocker, binarydocker, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 2,184★ 2,470
First released20242012
ReplacesFeedly, InoreaderGoogle Reader, Feedly

What are Fusion and selfoss?

Fusion

Fusion is a lightweight, self-hosting-friendly RSS reader with a fast reading workflow, unread tracking, bookmarks, and full-text search. It can extract full article content and deploys as a single binary or Docker container.

  • Full-text article extraction
  • Unread tracking and bookmarks
  • Built-in search
  • Single-binary or Docker

selfoss

selfoss is a multipurpose RSS reader and aggregation web application. It pulls in content from feeds, Twitter, and other sources, presenting them in a clean unified stream.

  • Unified content stream
  • Mobile-friendly interface
  • Plugin sources beyond RSS

Fusion vs selfoss: key differences

Fusion is written in TypeScript, while selfoss is built with HTML. Licensing differs — MIT for Fusion versus GPL-3.0 for selfoss. Selfoss is the more established project (first released 2012), while Fusion arrived in 2024.

Why pick each one

Choose Fusion if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Active community (2.2k GitHub stars)
Fusion details

Choose selfoss if…

  • Released under the GPL-3.0 license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Active community (2.5k GitHub stars)
selfoss details

Frequently asked questions

Is Fusion or selfoss better?

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

Are Fusion and selfoss free and open-source?

Yes. Fusion is licensed under MIT and selfoss under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Fusion and selfoss with Docker?

Fusion: yes. selfoss: yes.

Related comparisons