Feedloft

A fast, keyboard-first RSS reader you host yourself.

Pay once. Own it forever. No subscription.

Feedloft is a self-hosted alternative to Feedly Pro — folders, OPML import/export, full-text extraction, and instant full-text search, all running on hardware you control. One Node process, one SQLite file, zero telemetry.

Features

• Feed management — add by URL with 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 — background scheduler with conditional GET (ETag / Last-Modified, honors 304 Not Modified), per-feed interval overrides, and automatic backoff for failing feeds.
• Folders + virtual views — one level of folders, unread counts everywhere, plus "All" and "Starred" views.
• 3-pane reading UI — folders/feeds, article list, article view. Dense, dark-mode-first typography.
• Keyboard-first — j/k to move, o/Enter to open, m to toggle read, s to star, v to open the original in your browser, r to refresh, gg/G to jump, / to search, ? for the full cheat sheet, Shift+A to mark all read.
• Full-text extraction — pull the full article via Readability when a feed only publishes summaries, either per-article or always-on per-feed.
• Full-text search — SQLite FTS5 across title + content, scoped to all feeds or just the one you're reading.
• Desktop app — the same server, wrapped in Electron, auto-logged-in, no browser required.
• 100% local — no accounts, no analytics, no calls out except to fetch the feeds and pages you actually subscribed to.

Tech stack

• Server: Node.js + Express + better-sqlite3
• Feed parsing: rss-parser (RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0/RDF, Atom) + iconv-lite for encodings
• Full-text extraction: @mozilla/readability + jsdom + sanitize-html
• Client: React (Vite) + Tailwind CSS + Lucide icons + Motion
• Desktop: Electron (thin wrapper around the same Express server)
• Storage: a single SQLite file, with FTS5 for search

Quick start

npm install
cp .env.example .env      # set ADMIN_PASSWORD before exposing this to a network
npm run build              # builds the React client
npm start                   # builds + boots the server on http://localhost:5331

Or, for local development with hot reload on the client:

npm run server              # terminal 1: API on :5331
npm run dev:client          # terminal 2: Vite dev server with API proxy

Desktop app

npm run desktop

Boots the same Express server on a free local port with its data stored under Electron's per-user app-data directory, and opens a window auto-logged-in as the admin user. npm run dist wires up an NSIS installer via electron-builder (Windows), configured in package.json.

Docker

docker compose up -d

The SQLite database is persisted in the feedloft-data volume. Configure ADMIN_PASSWORD and POLL_MINUTES via a .env file or environment variables before starting.

Configuration

Variable	Default	Description
PORT	5331	Port the Express server listens on
ADMIN_PASSWORD	changeme	Password for the single admin login
POLL_MINUTES	15	Default background poll interval (minutes)

Feedloft vs. Feedly Pro

	Feedloft	Feedly Pro
Price	$24 once	$8/mo ($96/yr)
Hosting	Self-hosted, your data	Their cloud
Telemetry	None	Vendor analytics
Full-text search	✅ (FTS5)	✅
OPML import/export	✅	✅
Full-text extraction	✅ (Readability)	✅
Keyboard shortcuts	✅ full vim-style set	Partial
Desktop app	✅ (Electron)	Web only
Source	MIT, open	Closed
Break-even vs. Feedly Pro	3 months	—

☕ Skip the setup — get the 1-click installer

Prefer not to run npm install yourself? Grab the packaged Windows installer (desktop app, pre-built, auto-updating data folder) on Whop:

https://whop.com/onetime-suite

The source in this repository is fully functional and MIT-licensed — the Whop listing is purely a convenience purchase for people who'd rather not build it themselves.

Testing

npm test

Runs test/smoke.js: an in-process fixture HTTP server serving RSS, Atom, and truncated/full-article fixtures, driving a real ephemeral-port instance of Feedloft against a temp SQLite database — no mocks, no stubs. Covers login, feed add + parse, conditional GET / 304 handling, guid dedupe on refresh, full-text extraction, read/star mutations, FTS5 search, and OPML import/export round-tripping.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Copyright (c) 2026 Ben (bensblueprints).