Liferea vs yarr
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 | yarr |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 82 · Excellent | 89 · Excellent |
| Category | RSS & News Readers | RSS & News Readers |
| License | GPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | C | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | binary | binary, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 922 | ★ 4,049 |
| First released | 2003 | 2020 |
| Replaces | Feedly, Google Reader | Feedly, Google Reader |
What are Liferea and yarr?
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
yarr
yarr is a minimal, self-contained RSS and Atom feed aggregator that runs as a single binary with an embedded web UI. It targets users wanting the simplest possible feed reader. It is deployed as a binary or via Docker.
- Single self-contained binary
- Embedded web interface
- SQLite storage
- Cross-platform
Liferea vs yarr: key differences
Liferea is written in C, while yarr is built with Go. Licensing differs — GPL-2.0 for Liferea versus MIT for yarr. Yarr is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 128 MB for Liferea. Liferea is the more established project (first released 2003), while yarr arrived in 2020. Yarr has the considerably larger community, at 4,049 GitHub stars versus 922. Yarr 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 yarr if…
- Extremely simple to run
- Tiny footprint
- No dependencies
Watch out for
- Single-user only
- Minimal feature set
Frequently asked questions
Is Liferea or yarr better?
Neither is universally better. yarr has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Liferea and yarr free and open-source?
Yes. Liferea is licensed under GPL-2.0 and yarr under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Liferea and yarr with Docker?
Liferea: check the project docs for container support. yarr: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Liferea or yarr?
yarr has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 128 MB for Liferea. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.