Remember how you (or, depending on your age, your parents) used to have a subscription to one newspaper. How was that their only source of written news?
You can barely imagine it, right? There’s a good chance you have at least two or three different news apps installed on your phone or tablet. You probably follow a dozen more news outlets on social media platforms as well. Plus, then there are the news items shared by friends and family, who follow yet other news outlets.
If you stop to think about it, you probably read news from over twenty different sources during any given week. Luckily, you can now get so-called news aggregators to collect all the news for you. From all the news outlets you can imagine. In one handy app or platform.
Below, we’ll list the ten best news aggregator apps on the market today. This way, you can have all the information you need, gathered in one easy overview. Let’s check them out!
What are news aggregators?
Before we go to the list of the ten best news aggregator websites, let’s have a quick look at what news aggregators actually are and how they work.
News aggregators are websites or apps that gather news items from hundreds (if not thousands) of different news outlets across the web. They present snippets of these news items on their own website. Often, they allow you to create a profile on their website where you can select your specific preferences.
Are you mostly interested in national political news? Or are you more into international news? How about sports, economics, or travel?
By telling the news aggregator your preferences, it creates a personalized feed of news that’s tailored to your specific interests.
Now, as we mentioned, the news aggregator will present snippets of the news items. That’s because they don’t actually have all the news content on their website. That would be considered plagiarism or at least constitute duplicate content, something which the original news publisher won’t appreciate!
These snippets link to the original article on the news outlet’s website. So if you read the snippet and think that sounds interesting, then you click on it, and you’ll be taken to the original article.
How do news aggregators work?
News aggregators either use RSS feeds/APIs or robots (called web crawlers) to collect the data for them.
Many news websites offer an RSS feed that anyone can subscribe to. The news aggregator subscribes to the feed, and once a new item is published on the news site, the news aggregator will automatically receive a snippet of that article.
Some news sites, however, don’t offer an RSS feed or API. They use web scrapers like SERPMaster to gather the data they want and extract it from the site. They then copy this information and display it on their own website.
And that, in a nutshell, is how news aggregator websites work.
Top 10 news aggregator websites
So now you know more about the process behind it, let’s have a look at that list of the top ten news aggregator websites on the market today.
- Feedly
Feedly is available for browsers, Android phones, and iOS. You can easily subscribe to any news website’s RSS feed (hence the name Feedly!) and filter the feed based on your personal preferences.
So, for example, you can decide to subscribe to the New York Times’ feed, but only for sports or entertainment-related articles.
You can further customize your feed using different filters, layouts, and much more. You can also easily save news articles so you can read them later.
Pocket isn’t just a news aggregator that pushes information. With Pocket, you can save articles from anywhere across the web on the go.
For example, you’re scrolling through your socials, and someone posted an article you find interesting. You don’t have time to fully read it at that given moment – or maybe you want to read it again later – so you just save it to Pocket. There, it’s added to your saved articles.
And as a news aggregator, Pocket does gather news articles for you. And it will do so based on the articles that you save yourself as well!
- Google News
We mentioned Google News earlier, but did you realize it’s a news aggregator itself as well?
Google gathers news articles from everywhere around the web (hey, it’s Google itself!) and presents them to you in a continuous feed.
You can further personalize it based on your preferences, and Google News’s algorithm will start to recognize your preferences and update its feed accordingly.
- Apple News
Just like Google News, this is one of the main tech giants in the world, providing its own news aggregator to keep you engaged with the little apple sign everywhere you go, with everything you do.
Flipboard is definitely the most aesthetically pleasing news aggregator on this list. That’s all due to the magazine-style layout of this website and app, which shows large cover images that present the news in a very visual manner.
You select the topics you’re interested in, and Flipboard will create a personalized magazine for you, where you can flip through the stories.
- SmartNews
A simple yet great news aggregator that does the trick and lets you gather a lot of news. It simply does the trick!
- Fark
A fun news aggregator that’s aimed at entertainment and peculiar news. If you want a laugh, Fark might be the one for you!
- News360
This news aggregator is really focused on the customization part, offering over one million (!) different topics to filter by and choose from.
- AP News
For the people who want solid reporting and quality news. AP News is not for fun, but for news reporting as it was meant to be.
- Inoreader
This one is great for international readers as it offers translated versions of articles as well. Do note that this functionality is paid for (at a relatively small fee).
