Flipboard vs NewsBlur
We give Flipboard a 3.8 GPA and NewsBlur a 3.6, out of 4.0. Flipboard grades higher on value for money and the free plan. NewsBlur grades higher on features. They get the same grade on ease of use and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
NewsBlur
Open-source RSS reader with trainable story filters
Free plan · from $36/yr
How we grade them
| 3.8GPAFlipboardExcellent | 3.6GPANewsBlurExcellent | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | AIt costs nothing. The US App Store lists it as Free with no in-app purchases, and it's free on the web and Android as well. You pay with your attention instead, since it's supported by advertising. | BPremium is $36 a year for 1,024 sites, search and text view, about what feed readers usually charge. But web feeds, Ask AI and the permanent archive need Premium Archive at $99 a year, and Premium Pro is $29 a month. |
| Free plan and trial | AThe whole app is free: the personalised feed, following and Magazines, with no paid tier above it. Nothing is held back. The flip side is there's no way to pay for an ad-free version either. | BFree covers 64 sites with real-time updates, training and the phone apps, and every new account gets a 30-day Premium trial with no card. But search, text view and River of News are paid. Or run the open-source code on your own server for nothing. |
| Features | BA For You feed you tune by asking for more or less of something, Magazines you can keep private, share or open to a group, a Daily Edition, topic newsletters, and following for Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky accounts. Reviewers say muted subjects can come back, though, which undercuts the tuning. | AYou train it by author, tag and title, and it highlights or hides stories to match. Add search, newsletters by email, a permanent story archive, feeds built for sites without RSS, and Ask AI on the top plans. Few readers go this deep. |
| Ease of use | A4.66 from about 329,000 App Store ratings. Pick some topics and you've got a feed, with nothing to set up. Not everyone's happy, mind: the reviews we read complain about ads that cover the article or slow the page down. | A4.7 from 507 App Store ratings. Training is a thumbs up or a thumbs down, nothing more technical than that. |
| Platforms and integrations | AWeb, iPhone, iPad, Android and Apple Watch, and you can follow Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky accounts from inside it. No desktop app is listed, so on a computer it's the website. Site owners get an embeddable Magazine widget, and there's a Flip it browser button for saving links. | AWeb, iPhone and Android, with IFTTT and Zapier, and an open API that Reeder, ReadKit, Unread and others plug into. There's no desktop app of its own, so on a computer it's the browser or one of those. |
| Best for | browsing the news by topic, for free | training your own news filters |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Flipboard and NewsBlur. How we grade
Where they differ
- Flipboard is free. NewsBlur starts at $36 per year (Premium).
- NewsBlur is open source and self-hostable, according to its own site.
- Flipboard also covers bookmarks.
- NewsBlur also covers rSS reader.
In commonFree planWebiOSAndroidRead later
At a glance
| NewsBlur | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free | Free plan |
| Starts at | Free | $36 per year (Premium) |
| Free plan | The whole app is free: the US App Store lists Flipboard as Free with no in-app purchases, and the Google Play listing notes that it contains ads. | Follow up to 64 sites with real-time updates, training by author, tag and title, saved stories, a public blurblog, and the iOS and Android apps. |
| Free trial | None listed | 30-day premium trial on every new account, no credit card required |
| Web | ||
| iOS | ||
| Android | ||
| Made by | Flipboard Inc. | NewsBlur, Inc. |
| Price read from | apps.apple.com | newsblur.com |
| Checked | Oct 5, 2026 | Oct 5, 2026 |
Who each one suits
- Browsing news and magazine-style stories by topic rather than by feed
- Curating articles into Magazines to share with a group or the public
- Following Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky accounts next to news sources
NewsBlur
- Readers who want to train their own filters rather than rely on an algorithm
- People who prefer open-source software or want to self-host
- Professionals who need feeds polled every few minutes
Worth knowing
- Flipboard is supported by advertising; the Google Play listing notes that the app contains ads.
- No paid tier is listed, so there is no option to pay for an ad-free version.
- No desktop app is listed: the App Store shows iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, with the website for computers.
NewsBlur
- The free plan is limited to 64 sites.
- Search, River of News and text view start at Premium; web feeds, Ask AI and the archive need Premium Archive.
- Premium and Premium Archive are priced per year only, while Premium Pro is priced per month.
- Native apps are listed for iOS and Android; desktop use is through the web app or third-party clients.
Key features
- Personalized For You feed
- Follow topics, Magazines and people to build a feed that updates in real time, then tune it by asking for more or less of a kind of story or muting sources.
- Magazines
- Save stories into your own Magazines for a project, a hobby or later reading. A Magazine can be made public, and Group Magazines let others contribute.
- Fediverse following
- Follow people who post on Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky so their stories appear alongside what you follow on Flipboard.
- Daily Edition and Explore
- The Daily Edition shows the day's news, the Explore tab browses by category and Magazine, and a Community tab features curators to follow.
- Topic newsletters
- Flipboard sends email newsletters on its most popular topics, such as the Tech Briefing, the Climate Briefing and Wanderlust.
- Site and curator tools
- The tools page offers an embeddable Magazine and storyboard widget, follow and share buttons for websites, and a Flip it browser button for saving links.
NewsBlur
- Intelligence Training
- Mark authors, tags and title keywords with a thumbs up or down to highlight matching stories or fade them out. Full-text training needs Premium Archive.
- Web Feeds
- On Premium Archive, NewsBlur builds a feed for a web page that has no RSS by monitoring the page for changes.
- Search and story archive
- Premium adds full-text search across subscriptions. Premium Archive keeps every story indefinitely and back-fills the history of newly added feeds.
- Ask AI and Daily Briefing
- Premium Archive can ask questions about a story using Claude, GPT, Gemini or Grok, and receives an AI-written daily summary of top stories.
- Email newsletters
- Forward newsletters to a personal NewsBlur email address and they appear as a feed that can be trained, tagged and searched like any other.
- Open source and open API
- The server and both mobile apps are open source on GitHub, and the API supports third-party clients such as Reeder, ReadKit and Unread.
Plans
Free$0
The personalized feed, following, and Magazine curation on the web, iOS and Android. Supported by advertising.
NewsBlur
Free$0
Follow up to 64 sites, with real-time updates, training by author, tag and title, saved stories, a public blurblog, and the mobile apps.
Self-Hosted$0
The open-source code from GitHub, run on your own server with a single Docker command. Hosting is your own responsibility.
Premium$36
per year
1,024 sites, feeds updated up to 5x more often, River of News, search, text view, tagged saved stories, and blurblog privacy options.
Premium Archive$99
per year
4,096 sites, web feeds for sites without RSS, a permanent searchable archive, Ask AI, daily briefing, story clustering, and the MCP server and CLI.
Premium Pro$29
per month
10,000 sites, every feed fetched every 5 to 15 minutes, training with regular expressions, and priority support.
