FreshRSS — Self-Hosted RSS News Aggregator

What it is

FreshRSS is a free, self-hosted RSS feed aggregator. It provides a modern web interface for subscribing to RSS and Atom feeds, organizing them into categories, and reading articles. It supports multiple users, the Fever and Google Reader APIs (for mobile app compatibility), and extensions for additional functionality.

FreshRSS targets developers, researchers, and information workers who want to control their news consumption without relying on third-party services. Self-hosting means your reading history and subscriptions stay private.

How it saves time or tokens

Monitoring multiple news sources, blogs, and project releases manually means visiting dozens of websites daily. FreshRSS consolidates all feeds into a single interface with unread counts, search, and filters. The Google Reader API compatibility means you can use mobile RSS apps (Reeder, FeedMe, ReadYou) with your self-hosted instance, making it accessible everywhere.

How to use

1. Run FreshRSS with Docker:

docker run -d --name freshrss -p 8080:80 \
  -v freshrss-data:/var/www/FreshRSS/data \
  -e CRON_MIN=*/15 \
  -e TZ=America/New_York \
  freshrss/freshrss:latest

1. Open http://localhost:8080 and complete the setup wizard.

1. Add your first RSS feeds from the subscription management page.

1. Enable the Google Reader API in settings if you want to connect mobile RSS apps.

Example

# Docker Compose for production with PostgreSQL
version: '3'
services:
  freshrss:
    image: freshrss/freshrss:latest
    ports:
      - '8080:80'
    volumes:
      - freshrss-data:/var/www/FreshRSS/data
    environment:
      CRON_MIN: '*/15'
      TZ: America/New_York
    depends_on:
      - db
  db:
    image: postgres:16
    volumes:
      - db-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: freshrss
      POSTGRES_USER: freshrss
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: changeme

volumes:
  freshrss-data:
  db-data:

Related on TokRepo

• Self-Hosted Solutions -- Self-hosted tools for personal infrastructure
• Research Tools -- Tools for information gathering and research

Common pitfalls

• The default SQLite database works for single users but slows down with many feeds. Switch to PostgreSQL or MySQL for multi-user setups or large feed collections.
• Feed refresh intervals affect server load. Setting CRON_MIN too aggressively (every minute) can strain both your server and the feed sources.
• Some feeds require authentication or are behind paywalls. FreshRSS supports HTTP basic auth for feeds but cannot bypass login walls.