Feedly
The RSS reader for professionals, with AI summaries and team boards.
Free, paid from $6.99/mo
- Largest feed catalog and discovery directory
- Leo AI for summarisation and trigger alerts
- Team boards for collaborative research
Compare Feedly and Instapaper side by side on features, pricing, and the workflows each one is designed for.
The RSS reader for professionals, with AI summaries and team boards.
Free, paid from $6.99/mo
A classic read-later app with clean text extraction and distraction-free reading.
Free, paid from $5.99/mo
Here's how Feedly and Instapaper compare across the features people actually look for. They share 11 core capabilities; the differences show up in what each tool focuses on.
| Feature | Feedly | Instapaper |
|---|---|---|
| Capture and save | ||
| Browser extension | Chrome, Firefox | Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge |
| Mobile apps | iOS, Android | iOS, Android |
| Save from email | Unique save-by-email address | |
| Save tweets | ||
| Save YouTube videos | Via channel feed | URL only |
| Save GitHub stars | ||
| Save PDFs | Premium | |
| Save files (docs, spreadsheets) | ||
| Save audio files | ||
| Save via API | ||
| Auto-sync sources | ||
| RSS auto-sync | ||
| YouTube channel sync | ||
| X bookmarks sync | ||
| GitHub stars sync | ||
| Newsletter inbox sync | Pro | Forward-to-save, not a dedicated inbox |
| Library and reading | ||
| Reader view | ||
| Offline reading | ||
| Full-text search | Pro | Premium |
| Semantic / AI search | Pro+ (Leo) | |
| Highlights | ||
| Notes | ||
| Tags | Boards | |
| Collections | Boards | Folders |
| Public sharing | ||
| Full-text RSS extraction | Pro | |
| AI and agents | ||
| Markdown export for AI agents | ||
| Bulk markdown export | ||
| MCP server | ||
| CLI tool | ||
| Claude Code skill | ||
| AI summaries | Pro+ (Leo) | |
| Public API | ||
| Import and export | ||
| OPML import / export | ||
| Pocket import | ||
| Instapaper import | ||
| CSV / JSON export | Partial | HTML + CSV |
| Send to Kindle | Premium |
Feedly is free, paid from $6.99/mo and Instapaper is free, paid from $5.99/mo. The tier that fits best usually comes down to how many items you save each month.
Free
Up to 100 feeds, basic reader.
Pro
Unlimited feeds, newsletters, OPML, full-text search. Annual billing.
Pro+
Leo AI, boards with notes and highlights, web alerts, Zapier/IFTTT. Annual billing only.
Enterprise
Threat Intelligence, Market Intelligence. Custom pricing.
Free
Unlimited saves, folders, tags, sync across web/iOS/Android, API access.
Premium
Full-text search, permanent archive, PDF reader, unlimited notes, Kindle send, AI voices, speed reading, ad-free.
Both tools do their category well, but the specifics differ. Here's what each one is good at and where it tends to fall short.
Feedly is the largest RSS reader on the web, with a free tier capped at 100 feeds and Pro/Pro+ plans that layer on AI summaries (Leo), team boards, web alerts, and enterprise intelligence. Pro is $6.99/mo, Pro+ is $12.99/mo (annual billing only), and Enterprise covers the threat and market intelligence verticals at custom pricing. The product has spent the last several years pivoting from consumer RSS to a serious monitoring and research platform. The free tier is still a legitimate RSS reader; the paid tiers are increasingly aimed at analysts, PR teams, and security researchers who need to track topics across thousands of sources.
Instapaper is one of the original read-later apps, still going strong after Betaworks took it back from Pinterest in 2020. The product has always been sharp on one thing: save a web page, read it later in a clean typographic view. Free tier gets you unlimited saves, folders, tags, sync across iOS/Android/web, and a public API. Premium at $5.99/mo or $59.99/yr layers on full-text search, permanent archive, PDF reader, Kindle send, AI voices, and speed reading. Most of the product has shipped in a long tail of small updates rather than big reinventions. The recent wave added tags across every platform, highlights on the open web via the browser extensions, and send-to-Kindle right from the extension.