Newsboat vs Newspipe
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?
Newsboat
Terminal RSS and Atom feed reader for text consoles
VS
Newspipe
Web-based news aggregator and notification service
| Feature | Newsboat | Newspipe |
|---|---|---|
| Category | RSS & News Readers | RSS & News Readers |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | C++ | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 32 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | binary, bare-metal | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,874 | ★ 7 |
| First released | 2007 | 2010 |
| Replaces | Feedly | Feedly, Google Reader |
Why pick each one
Choose Newsboat if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Active community (3.9k GitHub stars)
- Written in C++
- Tiny footprint — runs in 32 MB RAM
Choose Newspipe if…
- Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in Python
- Tiny footprint — runs in 256 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is Newsboat or Newspipe 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 Newsboat and Newspipe free and open-source?
Yes. Newsboat is licensed under MIT and Newspipe under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Newsboat and Newspipe with Docker?
Newsboat: check the project docs for container support. Newspipe: yes.