Newsboat vs rss2hook
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
rss2hook
Lightweight personal RSS aggregator and reader
| Feature | Newsboat | rss2hook |
|---|---|---|
| Category | RSS & News Readers | RSS & News Readers |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | C++ | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 32 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | binary, bare-metal | binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,874 | ★ 39 |
| First released | 2007 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Feedly | Zapier, IFTTT |
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 rss2hook if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- Written in Go
- Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is Newsboat or rss2hook better?
Neither is universally better. Newsboat has the larger community, while rss2hook is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Newsboat and rss2hook free and open-source?
Yes. Newsboat is licensed under MIT and rss2hook under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Newsboat and rss2hook with Docker?
Newsboat: check the project docs for container support. rss2hook: check the project docs for container support.