FreshRSS vs NewsBlur

Both are self-hosted feed readers projects. This page compares how well each one is actually maintained — the part you cannot see from a feature list.

FreshRSS and NewsBlur are closely matched on maintenance health (82 vs 78). Neither is the safer bet on activity alone, so choose on features, licence and the stack you already run.
FreshRSSNewsBlur
Health score 82/100 78/100
Commits (11 mo) 654 2555
Commits (last 3 mo) 183 231
Stars 16k 7.6k
Latest release 9 Sept 2026 11 Aug 2026
Licence AGPL-3.0 MIT
Built with PHP, Docker Python
Typical RAM 1 GB 1 GB

FreshRSS

Self-hostable RSS feed aggregator.

82/100
Thriving

High commit volume, frequent releases and growing activity.

Maintenance 28/40
Releases 25/25
Community 17/20
Momentum 12/15

Commit activity more than 70% of tracked projects; popularity more than 86%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

2025-10: 72 commits 2025-11: 48 commits 2025-12: 67 commits 2026-01: 56 commits 2026-02: 24 commits 2026-03: 55 commits 2026-04: 52 commits 2026-05: 97 commits 2026-06: 32 commits 2026-07: 99 commits 2026-08: 52 commits

NewsBlur

Personal news reader that brings people together to talk about the world. A new sound of an old instrument.

78/100
Healthy

Actively maintained with regular releases.

Maintenance 37/40
Releases 25/25
Community 15/20
Momentum 1/15

Commit activity more than 92% of tracked projects; popularity more than 74%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

2025-10: 199 commits 2025-11: 97 commits 2025-12: 146 commits 2026-01: 370 commits 2026-02: 499 commits 2026-03: 737 commits 2026-04: 187 commits 2026-05: 89 commits 2026-06: 57 commits 2026-07: 75 commits 2026-08: 99 commits

How to read this

Everything above is measured, not opinion: commit counts and release dates come from the public repositories, and the health score ranks each project against all 1352 projects we track. Read the full method.

What this comparison deliberately does not do is tell you which has the better feature set. Maintenance health tells you which project will still be receiving security fixes in two years. Decide that first, then compare features on the projects that survive the filter.

See every option in this category: self-hosted feed readers.