FreshRSS vs Miniflux vs Tiny Tiny RSS — Best Self-Hosted Feed Reader Compared

RSS is quietly the best way to keep up with the sites you actually care about — no algorithm shuffling your timeline, no endless scroll, just the feeds you chose, in the order you want them. The catch is choosing a reader. If you want to self-host one, three names keep coming up: FreshRSS, Miniflux and Tiny Tiny RSS. All three are free and open source, all three run on your own hardware, and all three gather your feeds into one clean place. But they take very different approaches to get there, and the right pick depends on how you like to read.

1. FreshRSS — Feature-Rich and Extensible

FreshRSS is the most feature-complete of the three. It is written in PHP and pairs with MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite, and its web interface feels immediately familiar to anyone who has used an RSS reader. You get categories and tags, fine-grained filter and scoring rules, sharing buttons, and an API layer that works with the major mobile reader apps. It is also genuinely multi-user: a single install can serve a whole family or team, each with their own feeds and settings.

What really sets FreshRSS apart is its extension and theme system. Dozens of community extensions add digests, feed anonymisation, or custom actions, and themes let you restyle the entire interface. It is the kind of project where, if you can imagine a feature, someone has probably already built it as an extension. For most people, it is the easiest reader to live with day to day.

2. Miniflux — Minimalist and Blazingly Fast

Miniflux is the anti-feature-creep choice, and it is proud of it. It ships as a single Go binary with no database except PostgreSQL and no extension system — just a fast, focused reader. The interface strips everything back to the text, with keyboard-first navigation and a clean, uncluttered reading view.

Because it is so spare, Miniflux sips memory and responds instantly even on a modest Raspberry Pi. It has a pay-what-you-want download option on its site, but the source is fully open under the Apache 2.0 licence, so you are never locked in. If your feeds are plentiful and your patience for settings is not, Miniflux simply gets out of your way.

3. Tiny Tiny RSS — The Veteran With a Plugin Ecosystem

Tiny Tiny RSS (tt-rss) has been around since 2005, and it shows maturity rather than age. It is PHP-based and web-first, with a dense, information-rich interface that power users tend to love. Its real draw is the plugin ecosystem and the depth of its filtering: you can score articles, write custom filters, set up email digests, and even serve generated sub-feeds off your main one. Themes cover most tastes, and there is an API for third-party mobile clients.

It is released under the GPL-3.0 licence and, thanks to its decades on the scene, has a large community and plenty of how-tos. The trade-off is that it is the heaviest of the three to maintain — more moving parts, more to configure. But for anyone who wants full control over their reader, Tiny Tiny RSS delivers.

Head-to-Head Comparison

UI and UX

• FreshRSS: Modern and polished out of the box, easy for newcomers.
• Miniflux: Deliberately bare — speed and focus over chrome.
• Tiny Tiny RSS: The most desktop-dense; powerful once you learn it, but there is more to learn.

Mobile Support

None of the three ships an official mobile app, but all expose APIs. FreshRSS supports the Google Reader and Fever APIs, Miniflux supports the same pair, and Tiny Tiny RSS offers its own API plus Fever — so excellent Android and iOS clients like FeedMe and Reeder can drive all three as a backend. FreshRSS’s responsive web UI is also genuinely usable in a phone browser without any app.

Extensibility

• Tiny Tiny RSS: The richest plugin ecosystem of the three.
• FreshRSS: Strong extension and theme library, close behind.
• Miniflux: No extensions at all — minimalism is the point.

Resource Usage

Miniflux wins on footprint: a single Go binary with PostgreSQL uses a fraction of the RAM a PHP reader does. FreshRSS runs comfortably on small servers and supports SQLite for genuinely lightweight installs. Tiny Tiny RSS is the most resource-hungry of the three, though still modest by modern standards.

Which One Should You Pick?

Choose FreshRSS if you want a feature-rich, multi-user reader with extensions and a polished out-of-the-box experience.

Choose Miniflux if you value speed and minimalism, run a small server, and want configuration kept out of the way.

Choose Tiny Tiny RSS if you want the deepest plugin ecosystem, article scoring and filters, and do not mind a bit more setup.

The Bottom Line

There is no wrong answer here — all three are excellent, genuinely free and self-hosted. FreshRSS is the best all-rounder and the easiest recommendation for most people. Miniflux is the pick for minimalism and performance. Tiny Tiny RSS rewards power users willing to invest in configuration. If you are unsure, start with FreshRSS and import your OPML file — you can migrate to either of the others later without losing your feeds.

Looking for more tools to take back control of your online reading? Browse our Feed Readers directory for more free software you can run yourself.