Liferea vs Coldsweat
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted rss & news readers options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Liferea | Coldsweat |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 82 · Excellent | 5 · At risk |
| Category | RSS & News Readers | RSS & News Readers |
| License | GPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | C | SCSS |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | binary | bare-metal, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 922 | ★ 146 |
| First released | 2003 | 2013 |
| Replaces | Feedly, Google Reader | Google Reader, Feedly |
What are Liferea and Coldsweat?
Liferea
Liferea is a desktop news aggregator for online news feeds and weblogs. It supports RSS and Atom feeds, offline reading, and synchronization with services like TinyTinyRSS and TheOldReader.
- Long-standing GNOME reader
- Offline feed reading
- Sync with online services
Coldsweat
Coldsweat is a self-hosted, web-based RSS aggregator and reader designed as a Google Reader replacement. It implements the Fever API so that compatible mobile clients can connect.
- Fever API compatibility
- Works with mobile apps
- Lightweight aggregator
Liferea vs Coldsweat: key differences
Liferea is written in C, while Coldsweat is built with SCSS. Licensing differs — GPL-2.0 for Liferea versus MIT for Coldsweat. Liferea is the more established project (first released 2003), while Coldsweat arrived in 2013. Liferea has the considerably larger community, at 922 GitHub stars versus 146. Coldsweat lists first-class Docker deployment; Liferea does not.
Why pick each one
Choose Liferea if…
- Released under the GPL-2.0 license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- Written in C
- Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Choose Coldsweat if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in SCSS
- Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is Liferea or Coldsweat better?
Liferea is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Coldsweat if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Liferea and Coldsweat free and open-source?
Yes. Liferea is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Coldsweat under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Liferea and Coldsweat with Docker?
Liferea: check the project docs for container support. Coldsweat: yes.