Kill the Newsletter vs RSS-proxy
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted rss & news readers options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Kill the Newsletter | RSS-proxy |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 87 · Excellent | 20 · At risk |
| Category | RSS & News Readers | RSS & News Readers |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, source | docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,105 | ★ 1,923 |
| First released | 2020 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Feedly | Feedly |
What are Kill the Newsletter and RSS-proxy?
Kill the Newsletter
Kill the Newsletter is a self-hostable service that gives you an email address whose incoming messages are turned into an RSS feed. It lets you read email newsletters in your feed reader instead of your inbox.
- Newsletters to RSS
- Disposable feed addresses
- Self-contained mail handling
- Lightweight
RSS-proxy
RSS-proxy is an open-source tool that generates RSS, Atom, or JSON feeds from websites that do not offer them, by analyzing page markup to detect article lists. It runs as a self-hosted service via Docker; its successor project is feedless.
- Creates feeds from any page
- JSON and Atom output
- Self-hosted aggregation
Kill the Newsletter vs RSS-proxy: key differences
Both projects are written in TypeScript. Kill the Newsletter is the lighter option, starting around 128 MB of RAM against 256 MB for RSS-proxy.
Why pick each one
Choose Kill the Newsletter if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (3.1k GitHub stars)
- Written in TypeScript
Watch out for
- Needs inbound mail config
- Per-newsletter feed setup
Choose RSS-proxy if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (1.9k GitHub stars)
- Written in TypeScript
Frequently asked questions
Is Kill the Newsletter or RSS-proxy better?
Neither is universally better. Kill the Newsletter has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Kill the Newsletter and RSS-proxy free and open-source?
Yes. Kill the Newsletter is licensed under MIT and RSS-proxy under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Kill the Newsletter and RSS-proxy with Docker?
Kill the Newsletter: yes. RSS-proxy: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Kill the Newsletter or RSS-proxy?
Kill the Newsletter has the smaller minimum footprint at 128 MB of RAM, compared to about 256 MB for RSS-proxy. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.