Elfeed
Shares rank 11 of 15 RSS readers by recommenders
Free, versatile RSS reader inside Emacs that keeps old posts and can run hooks on feeds, but some find its standard design unsuited to their needs.
Free, versatile RSS reader inside Emacs that keeps old posts and can run hooks on feeds, but some find its standard design unsuited to their needs.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 67%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Versatile and extensible inside Emacs
“Try doing that with Elfeed2.”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “I have officially retired from Emacs” “elfeed is unbelievably versatile as are most things in Emacs”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Making RSS More Fun”
Other RSS readers people recommend
The four most recommended other RSS readers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NetNewsWire | 79 | 7 | 92% | 10 | 4 yrs5 owners | Approved |
| Miniflux | 27 | 0 | 100% | 8 | 1 mo5 owners | Approved |
| FreshRSS | 26 | 0 | 100% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Inoreader | 20 | 1 | 95% | 9 | — | Approved |
| ElfeedThis page | 6 | 3 | 67% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
9 of the 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“tools of a more standard design, like elfeed and newsboat, do not cater to my use cases”
“it stores the history as you download updates so you can always go back and read an old post”
“you can automatically set a hook on a feed that it calls lingva.el functions to translate”
“Try doing that with Elfeed2.”
“Elfeed2 doesn't load content for most of my feeds, elfeed does.”
“I've had a daily digest of mostly interesting videos and rarely (if ever) the urge to browse YouTube.”
“while wonderful they demand too much time because they are meant to READ posts”
“much fast than GNUs, Elfeed or the core RSS reader in Emacs”
“elfeed is unbelievably versatile as are most things in Emacs”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.