Which is the best RSS feed reader? With the ever advancement in the internet technology, every day many new blogs, newspapers, magazines and others sites are coming up with latest news and articles. It is very difficult for anyone to follow each and every favorite site individually to know the latest updates in respective sites.
But, with the introduction of the Feed readers, you can know easily when a site updates its contents or adds any new article in it. All that you have to do is subscribe to the feed of the website using any of the Feed readers and get updates of all your favorite websites at one place. These applications are known as feed readers, RSS readers or feed aggregators and there are varieties of feed readers are available like the Web-based and client software which are desktop applications.
Herein is the comparison of popular desktop feed readers and web-based feed readers and their analysis.
Comparison of Web-based Feed Readers
| Feed Reader/Features | ||||
| Price | Free | Free | Free | Free |
| Add subscription | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Import OPML | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Export OPML | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Feed sharing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Email a Feed | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Add tags to a Feed | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Flag, Star or Clip Feeds | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Mark Feed as Read/Unread | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sort Feeds by Date | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Keyboard Shortcuts | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Search Feeds by Keywords | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| RSS | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ATOM | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Mobile Phone Ready | No | Yes | Yes | No |
Google Reader is a popular feed reader. If you are using Gmail service which is also from Google then you would like the Google Reader since you can login to it using your Google account. Google reader interface is very simple and all the features are easily understandable. With the folders option you can read and group your subscriptions easily and the keyboard shortcuts enable you to browse through the reader on the fly. If you have come across some interesting article in the feeds, then you can easily share it or email the article to your friend via Google Reader. It’s simple yet powerful interface makes it one of the best feed readers.
Bloglines is another popular feed reader with the support to publish any of the clippings or posts to your blog. You can create a blog directly from this service and manage your feeds and blog at the same time. The user interface is simple with all the useful tools available at hand. With handy keyboard shortcuts you can browse through all of your feeds without even using the mouse. You can group all of your favorite feeds under playlist options such that you can get to the desired feed easily. If you would like to comment on an article, click on the comment link that is present at the bottom such that you will be redirected to the comments page of the article. Bloglines can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection and it is compatible with all modern web browsers.
NewsGator Online - is another popular but simple feed reader that is web based. If you are using some another feed reader and want to migrate to NewsGator you can do this easily with all of your old subscriptions by importing the OPML file. By clipping any of the posts in any of the feeds you can add tags or send the post to your friend easily within the browser. You can also rate the articles or posts such that NewsGator will bring back more related posts to you. There is also a desktop edition of NewsGator so you can sync the web edition with the desktop edition such that the changes you have made will be saved on both. [Note: Newsgator is discontinuing use of NewsGator Online at end of August and you'll need to transition your subscriptions to Google Reader].
Netvibes - is a simple feed reader and you can choose this service if you are looking for a basic feed reader. It brings you the latest updates or popular posts across the web. You can also see your friend’s subscriptions and share your favorites with your friends easily. With the help of the widgets you can do more than just viewing your feeds.
Comparison of Desktop Feed Readers
| Feed Reader/Features | ||||
| Price | Free | Free | Free | Free |
| Operating System | Windows, Mac OS X and Linux | Windows | Windows, Mac OS X and Linux | Windows |
| Add subscription | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Import OPML | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Export OPML | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Feed sharing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Email a Feed | NA | Yes | NA | Yes |
| Add tags to a Feed | Yes | Yes | NA | Yes |
| Flag, Star or Clip Feeds | Yes | Yes | Yes | NA |
| Mark Feed as Read/Unread | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sort Feeds by Date | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Keyboard Shortcuts | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Search Feeds by Keywords | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| RSS | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ATOM | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Desktop feed readers offer much more functionality than web based feed readers. Using these clients you can easily view your feeds and know the latest updates from your favorite websites. You can also get alerts when a website that you have subscribed has an update and view the update immediately. Although you cannot read the posts directly in the client, they will be opened in the browser when you click on the link of the respective post.
Blogbridge - is one of the popular desktop feed readers which allows you to manage all your favorite feeds. It is developed using Java, such that you can run this application on any platform that supports Java. This feed reader allows you to easily manage hundreds of feeds and it is very useful for you if you are a journalist or you are interested to know what is happening in the world of internet.
FeedDemon - is the client from NewsGator which allows you to use the account created on NewsGator. This is a windows only feed reader, so you can use this application when you are working on your computer and you can use the web version when you are working on other computers such that your account details will be in sync always; so you do not lose any changes that you have made.
RSSOwl - is another cross platform feed reader that can run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux computers. This is one of the special feed readers that allows you to search for the related posts across the web and you can also search using the keywords in your feeds. You can also generate PDF/RTF/HTML files of the documents of the posts in your feed easily. Easily email a post to your friend directly from this application and you can translate RSSOwl into many languages.
Feedreader – is one of the oldest feed reader application that is present from around 2001. You can create smart feeds in this application such that it will bring back all the related posts to them. If any of your feed item contains attachments or podcasts it will automatically download them such that you can view them offline. The interface of this application is very simple and you can add subscriptions easily and it also supports drag and drop. This application is fully customizable such that you can change the view or change the way feeds are displayed to meet your requirement.
