Both readers emerged from the post-Google Reader era. NewsBlur has continued evolving with intelligence training, AI, and a full open source platform.
| Feature | NewsBlur | The Old Reader |
|---|---|---|
| Intelligence Training | ✓ Train by author, tag, title, text, URL, regex | ✗ |
| Ask AI | ✓ Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok | ✗ |
| Full-Text Search | ✓ Elasticsearch-powered | ✓ Premium only |
| Track Changes / Diffs | ✓ | ✗ |
| Web Feeds (Any Website) | ✓ Follow sites without RSS | ✗ RSS only |
| Email Newsletters | ✓ | ✗ |
| Story Archive (Forever) | ✓ Archive plan | ✗ |
| Social / Sharing | ✓ Public blurblog with comments | ✓ Follow friends, shared items |
| Original Site View | ✓ Renders original website | ✗ |
| Text View (Full Story) | ✓ Extracts full text from truncated feeds | ✗ |
| Native Mobile Apps | ✓ iOS and Android | ✗ Web only |
| Third-Party App Support | ✓ Reeder, ReadKit, Unread, etc. | Limited |
| Open Source | ✓ Fully open source (MIT) | ✗ Proprietary |
| Self-Hosted | ✓ Docker install | ✗ |
| Dark Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free Plan | 64 sites | 100 feeds |
| Paid Plan | $36/year (Premium), $99/year (Archive) | $30/year (Premium) |
The Old Reader was created to recreate the Google Reader experience, and it does that well. The interface is intentionally simple and familiar. NewsBlur also started before Google Reader shut down (founded in 2009), but has evolved continuously since then. Intelligence training, AI-powered reading, web feeds, story clustering, and a full API ecosystem have been added over the years. If you want a simple, no-frills Google Reader clone, The Old Reader delivers. If you want a reader that has kept pace with how the web has changed, NewsBlur is the more complete choice.
The biggest feature difference is NewsBlur's intelligence training. Instead of reading every story in every feed, you can train NewsBlur to highlight authors and topics you care about and hide the rest. Stories are color-coded so you can scan your feeds at a glance. Over time, the reader adapts to your interests. The Old Reader has no filtering or training system, so managing a large number of feeds means more manual work.
NewsBlur has native iOS and Android apps, plus full sync with popular third-party readers like Reeder, ReadKit, Unread, and NetNewsWire. The Old Reader is primarily a web application with limited third-party integration. For mobile reading, NewsBlur provides a significantly better experience with native apps built specifically for each platform.