Miniflux Hosting

How Miniflux works

Miniflux subscribes to RSS and Atom feeds, checks them on a schedule, and places new entries into an unread queue. Readers can open individual feeds, combine them through categories, star important items, or move quickly through the list with keyboard shortcuts. The interface is intentionally compact so attention stays on the articles.

When a feed contains only an excerpt, Miniflux can use site-specific or custom scraper rules to retrieve the relevant page content. Filtering and rewrite rules can exclude unwanted entries, adjust links, or clean source-specific markup. The application also exposes an API and supports integrations for sending selected items to other tools.

Key Miniflux features

Privacy controls remove tracking pixels and common tracking parameters, proxy media where configured, and avoid forwarding a referrer to article sites. Feed-level rules give experienced users control over filtering, rewriting, and extraction without turning the reader into a full automation suite.

Keyboard navigation supports rapid triage of unread items. Categories, saved entries, search, and third-party clients help readers work across devices, while the server remains the central source of subscriptions, read state, and stored content.

Miniflux vs Inoreader

Miniflux is a self-hosted, minimalist feed reader focused on subscriptions, reading, search, privacy, and a small set of integrations. Inoreader is a hosted information-monitoring service that combines RSS with social sources, monitoring feeds, folders, tags, notes, filters, rules, and team workspaces.

Inoreader may suit researchers or organisations that want provider-managed discovery, monitoring, automation, and collaboration across many source types. Miniflux is a better match when a straightforward personal reading queue, direct server control, and a lighter interface matter more than broad intelligence features.

Who uses Miniflux

News readers, developers, researchers, and privacy-conscious users run Miniflux to follow selected publications without an algorithmic timeline. Small groups can also use separate accounts on one instance when each person wants an independent subscription list and reading state.

The application is less suitable for teams that need complex social monitoring, editorial workflows, or a large built-in discovery catalogue. Its opinionated design deliberately avoids many features found in enterprise intelligence platforms.

Self-hosting Miniflux: requirements and cost

Resource use grows with the number and refresh frequency of feeds, retained entries, full-text extraction, search activity, and simultaneous readers. PostgreSQL stores users, subscriptions, entries, categories, and read state. AvaHost provisions that database beside Miniflux, but it remains unmanaged.

Miniflux introduces no separate software fee, and the database-adjusted recommendation is Plan 2 at €5. The hosted service includes one-click deployment, a custom domain, automated HTTPS, automatic application updates, and scheduled backups. Very large feed collections or aggressive refresh patterns should be reviewed after launch for database growth and request load.