FreshRSS Hosting: Your Own RSS Reader on Your Own Server

FreshRSS is an open-source (AGPL-3.0) feed reader: it follows RSS and Atom feeds for you and shows the new articles in one place, with no algorithm deciding what you see. Choose it with a plan, pay, and we build the VPS (KVM, NVMe, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS) and install it in about two minutes after boot. You get:

• FreshRSS 1.30 on its built-in SQLite database, with feed refresh already scheduled.
• An HTTPS address like rss-k3x9q2.devoster.app with a Let's Encrypt certificate.
• Your admin account already created. FreshRSS's install wizard is skipped and done on the server, so nobody else can claim it. You log in as admin with a generated password shown in the Devoster dashboard, where you can also reset it.
• Closed to strangers: registration is closed, and anonymous reading and refreshing are off.
• Dashboard controls to open the app, restart, stop or start it, read its logs, run an update and connect your own domain.

The app is free; you pay only the VPS plan, with 10% off yearly. The server comes with full root, free nightly backups kept 3 days plus one snapshot, a dedicated IPv4, 1 Gbps with unlimited bandwidth and DDoS protection. Already have a Devoster VPS? You can install FreshRSS on it from VPS Control, after the panel checks the OS, free ports 80/443 and disk, or reinstall the server with it, at no charge. Other apps that install this way are on the One-Click Apps page.

• Add a feed by pasting a site's address; FreshRSS finds its feed when the site advertises one. Group feeds into categories, such as News, Tech and Friends.
• Coming from another reader? Export an OPML file there and import it under Subscription management, Import/export. Your feeds and categories come across in one go.
• Refreshing: the server checks for due feeds every 15 minutes, around the clock, even when nobody is logged in. By default each feed is fetched at most once an hour, which is polite to the sites you follow; you can shorten the interval for a feed in its settings.
• Reading: mark as read on scroll, star articles to keep, search, and create filters and saved searches. Old articles are purged on a schedule you can set per feed, so the database stays small.
• Extensions: FreshRSS's extensions can be added to /opt/devoster/data/freshrss/extensions over SFTP.

The web interface works well in a mobile browser. For a native app, FreshRSS speaks the Google Reader and Fever APIs that many RSS apps on iOS, Android and desktop support. The API is off at install, so nothing answers it until you choose to:

• As admin, open Administration, Authentication, and turn on "Allow API access (required for mobile apps)".
• In your Profile, set an API password. It is separate from your login password, and each user sets their own.
• In the app, choose FreshRSS or Google Reader API as the account type and enter the API address shown next to that field (it ends in /api/), your username and the API password.

Read and starred status then stays in sync between the app and the browser.

• No public sign-up. As admin you add people under Administration, Manage users, and give them a password; each person gets their own feeds and read status.
• No email needed. Outbound mail ports are blocked by default on Devoster VPS plans, and FreshRSS doesn't need mail to work. Hand out passwords yourself.
• Passwords: yours is reset from the Devoster dashboard. Other users change theirs in their profile; if someone is locked out, FreshRSS's command-line tool cli/update-user.php, run inside the app's container over SSH, sets a new one.

Plans: FreshRSS is light. Nano (1 vCPU / 1 GB / 25 GB) handles hundreds of feeds for a person or a household, and is the recommendation. Choose Micro (1 vCPU / 2 GB / 50 GB) if many people will read on it, or if you plan to keep years of articles. You can upgrade from the panel later, but plans are not shrunk in place.

Backups: nightly backups (kept 3 days) and your snapshot slot cover the whole VPS, and an OPML export from FreshRSS is a quick copy of your subscriptions to keep elsewhere. The data lives in /opt/devoster/data/freshrss.

Updates: we check new FreshRSS versions and apply them in a maintenance hour you choose, or when you press Update now. A snapshot of the VPS is taken first, and if FreshRSS doesn't come back healthy the server is rolled back automatically.

The server is unmanaged: you have full root, and its security is your responsibility. Our VPS hardening checklist is a good hour's read.