Kill the Newsletter 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.
| Feature | Kill the Newsletter | selfoss |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 87 · Excellent | 68 · Good |
| Category | RSS & News Readers | RSS & News Readers |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | HTML |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | docker, source | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,105 | ★ 2,470 |
| First released | 2020 | 2012 |
| Replaces | Feedly | Google Reader, Feedly |
What are Kill the Newsletter and selfoss?
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
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
Kill the Newsletter vs selfoss: key differences
Kill the Newsletter is written in TypeScript, while selfoss is built with HTML. Licensing differs — MIT for Kill the Newsletter versus GPL-3.0 for selfoss. Selfoss is the more established project (first released 2012), while Kill the Newsletter arrived in 2020.
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 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)
Frequently asked questions
Is Kill the Newsletter or selfoss better?
Neither is universally better. Kill the Newsletter has the larger community, while selfoss is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Kill the Newsletter and selfoss free and open-source?
Yes. Kill the Newsletter is licensed under MIT and selfoss under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Kill the Newsletter and selfoss with Docker?
Kill the Newsletter: yes. selfoss: yes.