Feedreader vs ReadKit

Feedreader is a feed aggregator for reading website subscriptions in one online stream, with a desktop product that downloads updates and organizes syndicated content. Smart feeds watch for keywords or phrases and surface matching articles. Readers can choose a River of News view, group headlines by source, date, or tag, and combine feeds. It supports mainstream feed formats, nested folders, Unicode, and SSL connections, and can download article enclosures and podcasts automatically. Intelliupdate learns each feed’s update frequency and refreshes when needed. Feedreader Connect can upload feeds to a remote FTP server, forward articles by email, publish feeds to an intranet or extranet, and send articles to Windows Live Messenger users through an instant messaging gateway. The product dates to 2001 and is described as accessible to people with little technical knowledge. Listed platforms are Linux, web, and Windows. Standard Edition is free, while MySQL Edition is €29, paid once and Connect Personal Edition is €39, paid once. Connect Server editions and an OEM license are also listed; Connect Server’s free version has limits on subscriptions and archived articles.

ReadKit is a read-later and RSS client for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Its built-in engine subscribes to RSS, Atom, and JSON feeds, and it also connects to news services such as Feedly, Inoreader, and FreshRSS, or read-later services including Instapaper, Pocket, and Wallabag. The free core has no ads or data mining, but the built-in RSS service is limited to 20 feeds and does not sync. Subscriptions, articles, and read statuses can sync across Apple devices through supported aggregators or read-later services. Premium adds multiple accounts, unlimited feeds and smart folders, reader mode, folder and tag management, image caching, themes, app icons, and OPML import and export. Reader mode extracts article text from its original page without using an external parsing service. The macOS app has a Safari extension for detecting feeds on visited pages. Premium costs $2.99 a month or $9.99 a year; lifetime plans cost $19.99 as a one-time purchase for iOS or macOS, or $29.99, paid once for the universal option.