NewsBlur 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.
NewsBlur
Personal news reader with training and sharing
VS
selfoss
Multipurpose RSS reader and web scraping aggregator
| Feature | NewsBlur | selfoss |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 91 · Excellent | 68 · Good |
| Category | RSS & News Readers | RSS & News Readers |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Language | Python | HTML |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 2,048 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | docker | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 7,627 | ★ 2,470 |
| First released | 2009 | 2012 |
| Replaces | Feedly, Google Reader | Google Reader, Feedly |
What are NewsBlur and selfoss?
NewsBlur
NewsBlur is a personal news reader that brings together feeds with intelligent training to highlight stories you care about. It targets readers who want a smart, social feed reader. It is deployed via Docker Compose.
- Story training and filtering
- Social sharing of stories
- Original site view
- Mobile apps
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
NewsBlur vs selfoss: key differences
NewsBlur is written in Python, while selfoss is built with HTML. Licensing differs — MIT for NewsBlur versus GPL-3.0 for selfoss. Selfoss is the lighter option, starting around 128 MB of RAM against 2,048 MB for NewsBlur. NewsBlur is the more established project (first released 2009), while selfoss arrived in 2012. NewsBlur has the considerably larger community, at 7,627 GitHub stars versus 2,470.
Why pick each one
Choose NewsBlur if…
- Smart story highlighting
- Good mobile apps
- Social features
Watch out for
- Complex multi-service stack
- Heavy to self-host
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 NewsBlur or selfoss better?
Neither is universally better. NewsBlur 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 NewsBlur and selfoss free and open-source?
Yes. NewsBlur is licensed under MIT and selfoss under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run NewsBlur and selfoss with Docker?
NewsBlur: yes. selfoss: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, NewsBlur or selfoss?
selfoss has the smaller minimum footprint at 128 MB of RAM, compared to about 2,048 MB for NewsBlur. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.