Miniflux Review, Pricing & Features

Miniflux is a minimalist, self-hosted RSS reader written in Go. Read about its features, self-hosting requirements, $15/year hosted plan, and alternatives.

Category
Productivity
Pricing
Open Source / Freemium (free self-hosted, optional paid hosted plan), from Free (self-hosted); $15/year hosted
Verified
Not yet
Last updated
July 18, 2026
Founded
2013
APIOpen SourceFreemiumSelf-Hosted

Overview

Miniflux is an open-source, self-hosted RSS and Atom feed reader built around a philosophy of radical simplicity: 'the content is the most important thing, everything else is just noise.' It is written in Go by developer Frederic Guillot and released under the Apache 2.0 license.

Unlike feature-heavy readers, Miniflux ships as a single static binary with PostgreSQL as its only dependency, making it fast to deploy and cheap to run. Users who don't want to self-host can instead pay $15/year for the official hosted version.

Key Features

Miniflux automatically fetches full article content for feeds that only publish summaries, strips tracking parameters and third-party trackers from links, and does not load images or telemetry by default, prioritizing privacy and speed.

It offers keyboard shortcuts for fast navigation, OPML import/export, integrations with read-later tools like Pocket and Wallabag, and a complete REST API that powers a wide ecosystem of third-party mobile and desktop apps.

Pricing

Self-hosting Miniflux is completely free; users only pay for their own server, which can be a low-cost VPS given the software's minimal resource requirements (~20MB RAM idle).

For those who prefer not to manage infrastructure, Miniflux offers an official hosted plan at reader.miniflux.app for $15 per year, including a 15-day free trial.

Key Features

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Extremely lightweight and fast, even on cheap VPS hardware
  • Fully open source under a permissive Apache 2.0 license
  • Strong privacy stance with zero telemetry and tracker stripping
  • Very low-cost hosted option ($15/year) as an alternative to self-hosting
  • Simple, distraction-free interface with strong keyboard support

Cons

  • Minimalist UI lacks some power-user features found in FreshRSS or Tiny Tiny RSS
  • Requires PostgreSQL specifically, no alternative database support
  • Self-hosting requires basic server administration skills
  • No built-in mobile app; relies on third-party clients via its API
  • Limited visual customization compared to consumer readers like Feedly

Pricing

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Miniflux free?

Yes, self-hosting Miniflux is completely free and open source. An optional official hosted version costs $15/year.

What database does Miniflux require?

Miniflux requires PostgreSQL; it does not support MySQL, SQLite, or other databases.

Who created Miniflux?

Miniflux was created by French developer Frederic Guillot and is maintained as an open-source project on GitHub.

Does Miniflux have a mobile app?

Miniflux itself provides only a web interface and REST API, but many third-party mobile apps support it via that API.

What license is Miniflux released under?

Miniflux is released under the Apache 2.0 license.

How much server power does Miniflux need?

Very little; a 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM VPS is generally sufficient for personal or small-team use, and the app idles around 20MB RAM.

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