OneTimeA fast, keyboard-first RSS reader you host yourself.
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.
Feedloft in 60 seconds
Everything in the box
Self-hosted Feedly alternative — folders, OPML, full-text search, one SQLite file.
Add feeds from any URL
Automatic feed discovery from any webpage (<link rel="alternate">), 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.
Full-text extraction
Pulls the full article via Mozilla Readability when a feed only publishes summaries — per-article or always-on per-feed.
Instant full-text search
SQLite FTS5 across title + content, scoped to all feeds or just the one you're reading — instant even at tens of thousands of articles.
3-pane reading UI
Folders/feeds, article list, article view. Dense, dark-mode-first typography with unread counts everywhere.
Desktop app included
The same server wrapped in Electron, auto-logged-in, no browser required — or docker compose up on a $5 VPS.
Feedloft vs Feedly
Feedly charges $8/mo. Here's what actually differs.
| 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 |
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.
Pick how you pay
Subscriptions if you want them — but the whole point is the lifetime tier.
Up and running in three 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.
Fair 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.
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More about Feedloft
Every page we publish about this app — comparisons, personas, platforms and the problems it solves.
Platforms
Stop renting. Own Feedloft.
Self-hosted Feedly alternative — folders, OPML, full-text search, one SQLite file.
Get Feedloft — $69 forever