Feedbin
A minimal, design-led RSS reader with a first-class API and newsletter inbox.
About
Feedbin is a paid, design-focused RSS reader created by San Francisco developer Ben Ubois in the 2013 Google Reader exodus. It is deliberately small and uncluttered: a clean web interface, no free tier to subsidize, and a product philosophy that treats the API as a first-class citizen. Third-party clients — Reeder, NetNewsWire, Unread, Fiery Feeds — sync against Feedbin's API, so many people use Feedbin as the backend while reading in a native app of their choice. At roughly $3/month with a 14-day trial, it is one of the cheapest ways to get a maintained, independent sync service.
Standout features include a personal email address for newsletters (forward any newsletter and it lands in your feeds, stripped of tracking pixels and marketing clutter), full-content extraction for truncated feeds, JSON Feed support, full-text search, keyboard shortcuts, and sharing/saving to read-later services. The entire stack is MIT-licensed on GitHub (about 3,800 stars) with commits shipping through October 2026 — though Feedbin's own docs are candid that the hosted service, not self-hosting, is the supported path. Honest tradeoffs: no free plan at all, no team or sharing features built in, and refresh rates historically lag the fastest readers.
What it can do
- Clean, minimal web interface with keyboard shortcuts and night theme
- Personal newsletter email address: forwards become feed items with tracking stripped
- Full-content extraction for truncated feeds; JSON Feed support
- Full-text search across all subscriptions
- Free, fully documented REST API used by Reeder, NetNewsWire, and Unread
- Share to read-later and bookmarking services
- OPML import/export; MIT-licensed codebase on GitHub
- Read/starred state syncs across all connected clients
Setup
Sign up at feedbin.com for the 14-day trial, then subscribe at roughly $3/month. Add feeds by URL or OPML import. To get newsletters inside Feedbin, forward them to your personal Feedbin email address. Connect a third-party client (Reeder, NetNewsWire, Unread) using your Feedbin credentials for native mobile/desktop reading. Developers can integrate with the free REST API.
Prerequisites
A web browser; about $3/month after the 14-day trial; a third-party client for native mobile reading.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 8/10
Scored 8/10 (verified tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: founded 2013 by Ben Ubois with continuous operation since; MIT-licensed on GitHub with 3,777 stars and commits pushed October 15, 2026; newsletter-ingestion, API, and pricing (~$3/mo, 14-day trial) corroborated by multiple independent reviews. Strengths: sustainable paid-only model, genuine openness, best-in-class API ecosystem. Docked for: (1) no free tier at all; (2) no team/sharing features; (3) feed refresh has historically been slower than competitors. License: MIT.
★ 3,777 GitHub stars
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 7.0/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 8.0/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 9.0/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 8.0/10
- · 3,777 GitHub stars (Oct 16, 2026 snapshot), commits pushed Oct 15, 2026; MIT; founded 2013 by Ben Ubois
- · No free plan: 14-day trial, then ~$3/month; personal newsletter email address; JSON Feed; free REST API used by Reeder/NetNewsWire/Unread
- · Hosted service is the supported path (docs discourage production self-host); feed refresh historically slower than competitors
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.