RSS readers
What an RSS reader is, and how to choose one
A feed is a file a site publishes listing what it just put out. A reader checks those files for you and puts the results in one place. The rest of this page is what to look for, including where this product is the wrong answer.
What a feed actually is
A feed is a file a website publishes alongside its pages, listing what it has put out recently. Most sites have had one for twenty years, usually without mentioning it. It holds the headline, a summary or the whole article, the author and the time it went up, in a format built for software rather than for a browser.
A reader is the software that checks those files. You give it the addresses of the sites you care about, it fetches each one on a schedule, and it puts what came back in one place. There are three formats and the difference does not matter to you: RSS is the oldest and the one the category is named after, Atom is the tidier revision, and JSON Feed is the modern one. A reader worth using takes all three without asking.
- There is no account with the publisher
- You are not signing up for anything. The file is public, your reader fetches it, and the site is not told who you are or that you subscribed.
- Nothing decides the order but you
- A feed is a list in the order things were published. Whatever sorting happens after that is your reader's doing, and a good one lets you see what rule it used.
- The list is yours to take
- Every reader exports your subscriptions as OPML, which is one file that every other reader imports. It is the reason switching is cheap, and the reason a reader that makes it hard is telling you something.
Why people still use them in 2026
Feeds went quiet for about a decade while social platforms did the same job worse, and the people coming back are mostly coming back for the same four things.
- You choose the list
- Nothing arrives that you did not subscribe to. No suggested accounts, no because-you-read-this, no post from a stranger with high engagement.
- Nothing is ranked by a model
- What a publisher put out is what you get, in the order they put it out. The reader may sort it, and you can see how.
- It works across the whole web
- A newspaper, a video channel, somebody's newsletter, a weblog nobody has heard of, the release notes of a project you depend on. Anything that publishes a feed is the same kind of object.
- Nobody is selling your attention inside it
- A publisher may put a sponsored item in their own feed, and some do. What is absent is a second party inserting things between them, which is what a platform is for.
The problem every reader has
Feed readers fail the same way, and it is worth knowing before you pick one, because it is the thing that will decide whether you are still using it in six months.
A reader is built to miss nothing. It fetches everything your sources published and holds it until you deal with it, which is correct and is also why a subscription list that grows past about thirty sources turns into a pile. Twelve papers publishing forty items a day is five hundred items a day. The number beside each source goes up while you sleep, and the product's central promise, that nothing escapes you, becomes the reason you stop opening it.
The category's answer has been better tools for the pile: folders, rules that file things automatically, saved searches, and more recently a model that reads ahead of you and pushes down what it thinks you will skip. These work, and for some people they work well. They are also a second job, and the pile is still there underneath them.
The other answer is that a day's reading should have an end in it. That is what Taper does, and section five is the honest version of where that helps and where it costs you.
Five questions worth asking before you pick one
Most comparisons in this category are feature tables. These are the five that actually change how a reader feels after a month, and none of them are usually on the pricing page.
- Does it count your sources?
- Most free tiers do. A hundred is common, a hundred and fifty at the generous end. If you are arriving with an export from a reader you already use, check the number before anything else, because it is the one that decides whether you can move at all.
- What sets the order?
- Recency, a folder structure you maintain, rules you write, or a model. All four are defensible. What matters is whether you can find out, and whether you can change it.
- What happens to what you do not read?
- It either accumulates with a figure attached, or it does not. This is the single biggest difference between products in this category and it is almost never on a comparison table.
- Can you get everything back out?
- OPML, free, without closing the account or writing to support. Every reader worth using does this. Check it on the day you sign up rather than on the day you leave.
- What does the paid tier take away?
- A paid tier that adds capability is fine. A paid tier that raises a number the free one was holding down is a different arrangement, and worth recognising as one.
Where Taper fits, and where it does not
Taper is an RSS reader. It takes the same feeds as everything else here, imports the same OPML, and uses Google Reader's keys unchanged. What is different is one decision: you set how many items an edition holds, it fills that number from your sources, and then it ends. There is nothing underneath the last item and no figure anywhere for what you did not read.
That decision costs something real, and it is better said here than found later:
- There is no search over old items
- Taper keeps no copy of an article you did not save, so Saved is the only thing there is to search. If searching everything you have ever received is how you work, this is the wrong product and Inoreader is probably the right one.
- There is no automation
- No rules that file, tag or forward. Per-edition filters, and that is the whole of it.
- There is no app in a store yet
- It is a web app that installs to the home screen and holds down to 320px, which is not the same thing as a native app.
What it does instead: sources are never counted, on either tier, so a list of two hundred is fine on the free plan. Three tiers you assign by hand decide what rises, so a source posting forty times a day cannot crowd out one that posts weekly. And a day's reading has a bottom to it.
The questions people actually ask
Four of these have nothing to do with this product, which is rather the point.
Is RSS dead?
No, and the confusion is worth clearing up: Google Reader closed in 2013, not the format. Almost every newspaper, magazine, weblog and podcast still publishes a feed, YouTube publishes one per channel, Substack publishes one per newsletter, and GitHub publishes one per project's releases. What died was the single dominant client, which is why there are now a dozen readers instead of one.
Do I need an account with every site I follow?
No. A feed is a public file. Your reader fetches it the way a browser fetches a page, and the publisher is not told who you are or that you subscribed. That is also why a reader cannot show you anything behind a paywall that the publisher has not put in the feed themselves.
What is OPML, and why does everyone mention it?
It is the one file format every reader in this category agrees on. Your subscriptions and the folders they sit in, exported as a single file, importable anywhere else. It is what makes leaving a reader cheap, so it is worth confirming a reader exports it freely before you spend an evening setting one up.
Will a reader show me the whole article?
That is the publisher's choice, not the reader's. Some feeds carry the full text, most carry a headline and a summary and expect you to follow the link. Any reader claiming to give you the full article for every source is either extracting it from the page or reprinting it, and both are worth understanding before you rely on them.
So which one should I use?
It depends on the failure you would rather have. If you want to miss nothing and you are willing to maintain the machinery that makes that survivable, Inoreader is the most capable thing here and Feedly is the most polished. If your reading keeps turning into a backlog you feel guilty about, a reader that ends is the other answer, and that is what Taper is.
What does Taper cost?
The free tier is the whole app, with no number on the source list, in up to fifteen editions. Pro adds filter expressiveness and lifts the edition ceiling. Nothing behind the paid tier ever removes an article from your view, which is one of three constraints published so that breaking one is visible.
Decide how much news is enough.
Bring the sources you already read. Set a size. Reach the end of it, and find nothing underneath.
Free. No card, and bring every source you follow.