But for sites that have elected to show full-text, RSS readers should display the entire article, unless not having full-text is a specific feature that provides value to users (e.g., the app is designed to make it easy to skim lots of headlines). We excluded any apps that use an algorithm to determine the order in which posts are displayed (e.g., popular posts displayed first), and we also excluded tools better described as content discovery platforms (e.g., Flipboard).įull-text: When creating an RSS feed, publishers elect to show either a preview of their content or the entire article, so it's not always possible for RSS readers to display articles in their entirety. Traditional: A traditional RSS reader app does two things: displays content in reverse chronological order and lets you curate the content you want to read. The apps featured below are all web apps. This is opposed to native RSS apps that sync feeds directly to your device. Web apps: Web RSS apps let you read content online using any device by accessing a URL. There are plenty of polished, high-quality feed reader apps that let you access the content published on your favorite sites exactly how you want to read it.įor this piece, we will focus on the best free, online RSS services-the best alternatives to Google Reader-and we narrowed our recommendations using the following criteria:įree: Each featured app is either completely free or offers a free plan that rivals the features of most premium plans on the market. A good chunk of the internet is still mad about that.īut it's not all bad news. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.įor over a decade, Google Reader was the gold standard for RSS apps-at least until July 2013, when Google abruptly stopped supporting the tool. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site-we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category.

All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software.

Free mac rss reader