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.
Not the right match-up?
NewsBlur
Personal news reader with training and sharing
VS
selfoss
Multipurpose RSS reader and web scraping aggregator
| Feature | NewsBlur | selfoss |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | ★ 7,577 | ★ 2,469 |
| First released | 2009 | 2012 |
| Replaces | Feedly, Google Reader | Google Reader, Feedly |
Why pick each one
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.