Updated August 2026 · Prices, plan limits and free-tier caps re-read from each vendor's own pricing page on 19 August 2026 · both Feedly paid prices corrected upward, and first-person testing accounts removed
Google News if offline matters most, because it is the only free one that documents the feature. Feedly if choosing your own sources matters more, because 100 chosen feeds beats an algorithm. Skip Inoreader unless you will pay, because it gates offline behind $90 a year. Test any of them on a real commute first, because one vendor will not commit to it in writing. Data checked: 19 August 2026.
When the train drops into a tunnel or the data allowance runs out on the 28th, a news app that only works online fails at exactly the moment you wanted it. The fix is a reader that pulls your sources into one list and keeps the text on the phone.
The awkward finding that shaped this page: of the three apps here, the one most often recommended for offline reading is the only one that never documents it. Google News states in its own store listing that articles can be downloaded for reading offline. Inoreader states it too, and charges for it. Feedly, which an earlier version of this page recommended on exactly that basis, says nothing about offline reading on its pricing page, in its help centre or in its own app listing. That is vendor silence rather than a denial, and the app may well behave as people report. But it is not something to promise you, and not something to build a recommendation on.
Not documented by Feedly anywhere
Feedly · 4.4 stars from 316,646 reviews · 5M+ installs · free with ads, in-app purchases $7.99 to $69.99 · Play listing updated 10 August 2026 · Play listing · checked 19 August 2026
Feedly is a reader: it gathers headlines from the sites, blogs and publications you follow into one stream, so instead of opening eight apps you scroll a single list. Its real strength is source control, and the free tier is genuinely generous about it. Feedly's own pricing page says so under the heading "Need a free plain reader?": Feedly "offers a free plan on the web and on mobile that allows you to follow up to 100 feeds and organize them into 3 folders." A hundred sources you picked yourself is more control than any algorithmic feed offers, and that, rather than offline reading, is the reason to choose it.
On offline reading specifically, Feedly makes no published claim, and we looked in all three places a vendor would put one. Its help centre returns two results for "offline," both about threat-intelligence workflows. The only caching it documents is server-side, describing added feeds as continuing "to live in the Feedly database," which is Feedly's database and not your phone. And the word "offline" does not appear once in Feedly's own Google Play description. Plenty of people read Feedly on the Underground perfectly happily, so this is silence rather than contradiction. Treat it as untested ground: if you are relying on it for a flight, save a few articles and put the phone in airplane mode before you go, rather than finding out at 30,000 feet.
One piece of context this page owes you, because it is not obvious from the app. Feedly's business has moved. Its main website now leads with Feedly Threat Intelligence, a product sold to corporate cyber-threat teams, and describes itself as "the AI platform CTI teams use to track threats," trusted by "380 CTI teams." The old consumer pricing address returns a not-found page. None of that breaks the reader: the Android app is actively maintained, with a Play listing updated the same week this was checked, and the free plain reader is still offered by name. But if you are choosing a daily reader for the next five years, it is worth knowing that the consumer app is no longer the centre of the company's attention.
Ten minutes, and one limit to plan around
Install from the Play Store, then create a free account or sign in with Google. Feedly walks you through topics, from world news and tech to cooking or a local team. The better move is to add the specific sites you trust rather than only broad topics: tap the plus button, paste a site address or search a publication by name, and Feedly pulls in its feed.
Plan your folders before you build them, because three is the ceiling. The free plan allows exactly three, so a News, Work and Weekend scheme fills the allowance completely and a fourth folder means paying. Decide the three categories you actually sort by, rather than discovering the limit after you have organised fifty feeds.
The same goes for sources: 100 on the free plan sounds generous, and it is, but a feed you never reach becomes a chore you avoid. Keeping to the sources you would genuinely miss is better practice than filling the quota, and it keeps the morning skim short enough to finish. If you want the wider category first, our books, news and education hub rounds up the reading apps we rate.
The step people skip
Offline reading is not automatic in any of these apps, and that is where most complaints start. Open the app on Wi-Fi before you leave and let it sync, so recent stories are pulled down while you still have a connection. Skip that and you get a spinner the moment you lose signal.
For Feedly, treat the steps below as what to try, not as documented behaviour. Feedly publishes nothing about how much it keeps on the device, for how long, or whether saved articles survive without a connection. The routine here is the sensible one and matches how the app is widely used, but the only way to know it works for your commute is to test it: save a few pieces, switch on airplane mode at home, and see what opens.
The feature that does the heavy lifting is Read Later. One tap saves an article, and saved pieces stay readable with no connection, so a long read caught at lunchtime waits for the commute. The reading view is the other half of it: you can switch between a compact headline list for scanning and a full-text view that strips the page down to the words.
One limit that holds regardless of app. Embedded video and pages built around interactive elements need a live connection, because there is nothing textual to keep. If a story is mostly a video player, saving it achieves nothing anywhere.
Two habits make the rest of it reliable: let Feedly refresh over Wi-Fi automatically if your phone allows it, so stories are cached overnight rather than while you run for the bus, and use the share button to push the occasional article into a notes app or a read-aloud app.
The real numbers
The free tier is genuinely usable for offline reading, which is the point of this page, but it has hard edges and one of them is not a limit at all: the Play listing declares that Feedly contains ads, and Feedly's own pricing page lists "Hide sponsored ads" as a paid feature. So the free plan is ad-supported, and no amount of configuration changes that.
Beyond that, the free caps are 100 feeds and 3 folders. Search, notes and highlights are paid. Feedly's own pricing page gives the current tiers, and they are higher than this page used to state:
Two details worth knowing before you shop. Feedly's own plan documentation confirms the four-tier structure and closes off a common question: "The Feedly Lifetime plan was a one-time offer when Feedly first began and is no longer available." And the AI assistant that older guides call Leo is not named that on Feedly's current pages; the feature set is now presented simply as Feedly AI. Prices are billed annually and shift with promotions, so treat the figures here as a checked snapshot rather than a permanent quote.
Light on permissions, but cloud by design
Feedly asks for little. Reading feeds needs network access and not much else. Storage or photo access appears only if you save images or want offline content written to the device, and notifications are optional. Decline the extras and you can still read everything. A news reader has no business asking for your location, microphone or contacts, and one that does is telling you something.
The trade-off is architectural, not a permission you can refuse. Feedly is a cloud service, so your subscription list lives on your account on its servers. That is what lets the same feed follow you from phone to tablet to browser, and for most people it is a fair exchange. But if your preference is that nothing leaves the device, no permission toggle gets you there and a local-only reader is the honest answer instead.
Documented, and free
Google News · 4.0 stars from 1,961,588 reviews · 1B+ installs · free, contains ads, no in-app purchases · Play listing updated 13 August 2026 · Play listing · checked 19 August 2026
Google News is the one to start with if offline reading is the whole point, because it is the only free app here that commits to it in writing. Google's own Play listing says: "When your connection isn't strong or you need to save data, Google News will continue to work smoothly by slimming down the size of images and downloading less data. Articles can be downloaded over Wi-Fi to save for later when you are offline."
Read that sentence for what it says and no more. Google promises that articles can be downloaded over Wi-Fi for later offline reading. It does not describe an automatic sync of sources you follow, and Google's help centre does not name a setting for any of it, so the mechanism is thinner than most write-ups suggest. The trade-off is control: you are steering an algorithm rather than choosing a list, which suits some readers exactly and frustrates others. It carries no in-app purchases at all, which makes it the simplest free option here.
Inoreader · 2.8 stars from 9,601 reviews · 500K+ installs · no ads, in-app purchases $8.99 to $89.99 · Play listing updated 4 August 2026 · Play listing · checked 19 August 2026
Documented, but Pro only, $7.50 a month billed annually
Inoreader is the closest rival on features, especially if you want folders, rules and filters, and its free tier follows 150 feeds against Feedly's 100. Two things should temper that.
First, offline reading is not on Inoreader's free plan, which is the single reason it does not lead this page. Inoreader's own pricing table marks offline reading as unavailable on Free and available on Pro, describing it as access to "the articles you have gathered in our apps without an internet connection." Pro is $7.50 per month billed annually, or $9.99 billed monthly, so about $90 across a year. For free offline reading specifically, that settles it: Feedly and Google News are the starting points.
Second, look at the rating. At 2.8 stars from 9,601 ratings, Inoreader is by a wide margin the lowest-rated app named on this page, against Feedly's 4.4 from 316,646. That is not a verdict on the service, which is well regarded on the desktop, but it is a signal about the Android app specifically and worth reading current reviews before committing a year's subscription.
What replaced Pocket
For saving long reads to finish later, the tool many people relied on is gone. Mozilla's own support page sets out the sequence: Pocket was "removed from app stores" on 22 May 2025, along with monthly renewals and new sign-ups; the service shut down on 8 July 2025, with an export-only mode on the web continuing for 90 days; and on 12 November 2025 that export window "closed" and "all deletion of accounts and user data began." Mozilla's own summary is that "as of November 12, 2025, user data export has been disabled, and all user data has been queued for permanent deletion." If you still have the app installed, it cannot reach Pocket's servers and is worth deleting.
Instapaper · 4.6 stars from 12,803 reviews · 500K+ installs · no ads, in-app purchases $1.00 to $59.99 · Play listing updated 13 August 2026 · Play listing · checked 19 August 2026
Of the read-later apps still standing, Instapaper is the best rated on Play by a clear margin at 4.6, and it is the closest in spirit to what Pocket was: save an article, read it stripped down, later and offline. Readwise Reader gathers newsletters, PDFs and articles in one place and rates 4.3, though from only 558 ratings across 100K+ installs, so it is a much smaller and younger listing than the others here. Raindrop.io sits alongside them as a lighter bookmarking option at 4.3.
None of these replaces a feed reader; they solve the neighbouring problem of the article you want to finish rather than the stream you want to follow. Used together with Feedly, the split works well: the reader brings you the day, and the read-later app keeps the three pieces you did not have time for. If your offline reading extends past articles into manuals and ebooks, our roundup of PDF reader apps covers documents, and our free English dictionary apps let you look a word up without leaving the page.
Feedly does not say, which is the honest answer. The word offline does not appear in its Play description, and its help centre returns nothing on the subject beyond two threat-intelligence articles. Many people do read it without a signal after syncing on Wi-Fi, so this is vendor silence rather than a no. Test it before you depend on it: save a few articles, turn on airplane mode at home, and see what opens. Checked 19 August 2026.
There is a free tier and it covers everyday offline reading. Feedly's own pricing page describes it as a plan to "follow up to 100 feeds and organize them into 3 folders." It is ad-supported, since hiding sponsored ads is a paid feature. Search, notes and highlights also sit on the paid plans. Checked 19 August 2026.
Feedly lists Pro at $6.99 per month billed annually, which is near $84 a year, and Pro+ at $8.93 per month billed annually, discounted from $12.31, so roughly $107 across a first year. Pro raises the feed ceiling to 1,000; Pro+ goes to 2,500 and adds Feedly AI feeds and the RSS Builder. Prices move with promotions, so check the current page before subscribing.
Because offline reading is not included on Inoreader's free plan. Its own pricing table marks that feature as unavailable on Free and available on Pro, which is $7.50 per month billed annually, about $90 a year. If you are reading online anyway, Inoreader's 150 feeds and its rules and filters are a real advantage. For offline specifically, it costs money and Feedly does not.
Open the article and tap the save or Read Later icon, usually a bookmark, which adds it to your saved list. Sync on Wi-Fi first so there is something to keep. In Google News this is documented behaviour: Google says articles "can be downloaded over Wi-Fi to save for later when you are offline." In Feedly it is the widely used routine but not a documented one, so verify it holds on your phone before a journey you cannot repeat.
Mozilla shut it down. Its support page gives 22 May 2025 for removal from app stores, 8 July 2025 for the shutdown itself, and 12 November 2025 for the close of the export window and the start of data deletion. If the app is still on your phone it can no longer reach Pocket's servers. Instapaper is the best-rated surviving equivalent on Google Play; Readwise Reader and Raindrop.io are the other common choices.
Very few. Network access is essential, and storage access is reasonable if you save images or offline content. A genuine news reader has no need for your location, contacts or microphone, so treat any such request as a reason to look elsewhere. Note separately that a cloud reader keeps your subscription list on its servers, which is a design trade-off rather than a permission you can decline.
For now, yes, with one caveat worth weighing. The Android app is actively maintained and the free reader plan is still offered by name. But Feedly's own website now leads with a corporate threat-intelligence product rather than the consumer reader, and its old consumer pricing address no longer resolves. That is not a reason to avoid it today, only a reason to keep your feed list exportable.
Checked 19 August 2026: this page was written in the first person around an experience nothing can substantiate, including a setup timed at about ten minutes, a personal three-folder scheme, and a switch to Readwise Reader after Pocket closed. All of it has gone, and every number is now read from the vendor's own page. The free-tier limits held up exactly: Feedly's own pricing page still offers a plan to "follow up to 100 feeds and organize them into 3 folders," and Inoreader's free tier still covers 150. The paid prices did not hold up. This page quoted Feedly Pro at roughly $72 a year and Pro+ at roughly $99; Feedly now lists Pro at $6.99 per month billed annually and Pro+ at $8.93 per month billed annually, discounted from $12.31, so both figures were too low. The AI assistant this page called Leo is no longer presented under that name, and Feedly's current pages describe the capability as Feedly AI. Two things have been added that materially affect the recommendation. Feedly's own site now leads with Feedly Threat Intelligence, a corporate security product, and its old consumer pricing address returns a not-found page, so this page says plainly where the company's attention has moved while noting the Android app is still actively maintained. And Inoreader, previously described only as the closest rival, is rated 2.8 on Google Play against Feedly's 4.4, which readers deserve to see before subscribing. The claim that Inoreader gates offline reading behind Pro was checked against its own comparison table and is correct, as is the roughly $90 a year figure. The Pocket timeline has been replaced with Mozilla's three published dates instead of a single vague one. A comparison table, an "Our answer" capsule, a dated verification box and this changelog are new. Corrected within the day, and it changed the recommendation: the first version of this rewrite repeated, as fact, that Feedly keeps article text on the device after a sync and that saved articles stay readable with no connection. That claim was inherited from the previous version and not checked, because attention went to the prices instead. Feedly documents no such thing. Its help centre returns two results for "offline," both about threat intelligence; the only caching it describes is server-side, in "the Feedly database"; and the word does not appear once in its own Google Play description. Google News, by contrast, states in its own listing that articles "can be downloaded over Wi-Fi to save for later when you are offline," and Inoreader documents offline reading explicitly while charging for it. So the app this page led with for offline reading is the only one of the three that will not put the feature in writing. The page now says that plainly, recommends Feedly for source control rather than for offline, points readers wanting documented free offline reading to Google News, and tells anyone relying on Feedly offline to test it first. Vendor silence is not a denial and the app may well work as people describe, but a recommendation should not rest on it.
GPS Speedometer: The Best Free Speed App for AndroidNavigation & Auto