Feedly Pro is $8/month, forever, for software that's architecturally a poller plus a database. Feedloft is the same core product — folders, OPML import/export, full-text extraction, instant full-text search — running on hardware you control. One Node process, one SQLite file, zero telemetry, $24 once.
This is the full pricing breakdown: what Feedly actually costs over one, two and three years, what Feedloft gives you for $24 paid once, and the honest cases where the subscription is still the right call.
What Feedly actually costs you
At $8/mo, one Feedly subscription adds up to $96 every year — $288 over a three-year window, for software you stop owning the day you cancel. Feedloft is $24 the day you buy it, and the meter never runs again.
| Feedloft | Feedly | |
|---|---|---|
| Sticker price | $24 once | $8/mo |
| Cost after 1 year | $24 | $96 |
| Cost after 2 years | $24 | $192 |
| Cost after 3 years | $24 | $288 |
Three years in, the gap is $264 — and every year after that adds another $96 to the subscription side of the ledger.
Feedloft vs Feedly, feature by feature
Price is only half the story — here's how the two line up on the things that decide day-to-day use:
| Feedloft | Feedly | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $24 once | $8/mo ($96/yr, forever) |
| Hosting | Self-hosted — your data, your box | Their cloud |
| Telemetry | None | Vendor analytics |
| Full-text search | Yes (SQLite FTS5) | Yes |
| Full-text extraction | Yes (Readability) | Yes |
| Keyboard shortcuts | Full vim-style set | Partial |
| Desktop app | Yes (Electron) | Web only |
| Source code | MIT, on GitHub | Closed |
What you get for $24, once
Self-hosted Feedly alternative — folders, OPML, full-text search, one SQLite file. The highlights:
- 📡 Add feeds from any URL — Automatic feed discovery from any webpage (), rename, move to folders, unsubscribe.
- 📂 OPML import/export — Import preserves your folder structure; export produces valid OPML 2.0 you can take anywhere.
- ⏱️ Smart polling — Conditional GET (ETag / Last-Modified, honors 304s), per-feed interval overrides, automatic backoff for failing feeds.
- ⌨️ Keyboard-first — Full vim-style set: j/k to move, o to open, m read, s star, / search, ? for the cheat sheet, Shift+A mark all read.
Break-even vs Feedly Pro is 3 months. By month 12 you're $72 ahead — and it compounds forever, because there's no recurring fee.
Switching is 3 steps
- Buy once on Whop. One-time $24 for the packaged Windows desktop build — no npm install, no terminal, lifetime updates.
- Run it your way. Desktop app for personal reading, or docker compose up on a $5 VPS. One SQLite file to back up.
- Import your OPML, start reading. Your Feedly folders come across intact. j/k through your feeds; hit / when you need something from three months ago.
When paying Feedly is still the right call
Being straight about it: the subscription earns its keep in three situations. If your team is large enough that Feedly's collaboration features, permissions and admin controls are genuinely load-bearing; if your workflow is built on its integrations and leaving means rebuilding that plumbing; or if you have enterprise requirements — SSO, audit logs, SLAs, a vendor to call — that a pay-once app doesn't come with. Everyone else is paying $8/mo for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
If that's you, Feedloft is $24, once. For the deeper dive, read the Feedloft vs Feedly head-to-head or the full Feedly comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes. The full source is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/feedloft-mvp and always will be. The self-hosted version is the complete product, not a crippled trial — $24 buys the packaged installer, 1-click setup and updates.
Is there a mobile app?
Not a native one. Feedloft is a web app plus an Electron desktop wrapper; if it's hosted on a VPS you can read it from your phone's browser. Feedly's polished iOS/Android apps are a genuine advantage if you read mostly on mobile.
What if a feed only publishes summaries?
Feedloft pulls the full article with Mozilla Readability — per-article on demand, or always-on for a given feed. Extracted content is sanitized and stored locally, so it's searchable too.
Will duplicate items pile up?
No. Item identity falls back to a stable hash of title + pubDate when a feed omits guids, so items don't duplicate on refresh — a bug class the parser was specifically tested against, along with malformed XML and encoding chaos.
Does it phone home?
No accounts, no analytics, no calls out except to fetch the feeds and pages you actually subscribed to. The smoke test suite runs against a local fixture server — you can verify all of this in the source.
More on Feedly pricing
Feedloft — product page, demo & full feature list · All OneTimeSuite pricing breakdowns
Try Feedloft — $24, once
Self-hosted Feedly alternative — folders, OPML, full-text search, one SQLite file.