Newsboat 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?
Newsboat
Terminal RSS and Atom feed reader for text consoles
VS
selfoss
Multipurpose RSS reader and web scraping aggregator
| Feature | Newsboat | selfoss |
|---|---|---|
| Category | RSS & News Readers | RSS & News Readers |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Language | C++ | HTML |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 32 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | binary, bare-metal | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,874 | ★ 2,469 |
| First released | 2007 | 2012 |
| Replaces | Feedly | Google Reader, Feedly |
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 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 Newsboat or selfoss better?
Neither is universally better. Newsboat 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 Newsboat and selfoss free and open-source?
Yes. Newsboat is licensed under MIT and selfoss under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Newsboat and selfoss with Docker?
Newsboat: check the project docs for container support. selfoss: yes.