morss vs Newsboat

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?
FeaturemorssNewsboat
CategoryRSS & News ReadersRSS & News Readers
LicenseAGPL-3.0MIT
LanguagePythonC++
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM128 MB32 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, sourcebinary, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 776★ 3,874
First released20132007
ReplacesFeedlyFeedly

Why pick each one

Choose morss if…

  • Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Written in Python
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
morss details

Choose Newsboat if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Active community (3.9k GitHub stars)
  • Written in C++
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 32 MB RAM
Newsboat details

Frequently asked questions

Is morss or Newsboat better?

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

Are morss and Newsboat free and open-source?

Yes. morss is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Newsboat under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run morss and Newsboat with Docker?

morss: yes. Newsboat: check the project docs for container support.

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