Kobo Books vs NewsBlur

Kobo Books is a digital platform for buying and listening to audiobooks, with apps for iOS and Android and playback on select Kobo eReaders with Bluetooth. The mobile app lets listeners pause, fast-forward, rewind, and resume playback. Downloaded audiobooks can be played on a smartphone or tablet without an internet connection, and Bluetooth headphones or speakers can be used with the app. Kobo Plus Listen costs $7.99 a month after a 14-day free trial, plus applicable taxes. Kobo Plus Read & Listen costs $9.99 a month after the trial, plus applicable taxes. These subscriptions include audiobooks, or eBooks and audiobooks in the latter plan, but neither includes every title. Subscription credits also apply only to eligible audiobooks. Audiobooks cannot be played in the Kobo Desktop app or on a laptop or desktop computer. On iOS, audiobook purchases must be made through Kobo.com because the app does not support in-app purchases. Kobo Plus members can open up to 15 books offline in an eReader or app during a 30-day period before reconnecting and syncing. Kobo is based in Toronto and was founded in December 2009.

NewsBlur is a personal reader for RSS and web feeds, synchronized across web, iOS, Android, API, and self-hosted use. Readers can train feeds to highlight or hide stories by author, tag, and title; the Archive plan adds full-text training. Web Feeds monitor sites without RSS and present updates as custom feeds. The free plan supports up to 64 sites, real-time RSS updates, story saving, training, and mobile apps. New accounts receive a 30-day premium trial without a credit card, then retain feeds and training on the free tier. Premium costs $36 a year, Premium Pro $29 a month, and Premium Archive $99 a year. Depending on plan, features include search, larger site limits, more frequent fetching, River of News, story clustering, permanent searchable archives, Ask AI, daily briefings, and MCP tools. NewsBlur also describes IFTTT and Zapier workflows, a public API, third-party reader sync, and open-source self-hosting.