Self-Host Miniflux: Minimalist RSS Feed Reader 2026

TL;DR

Miniflux (Apache 2.0, ~6K GitHub stars, Go) is a minimalist, opinionated self-hosted RSS feed reader built for speed and keyboard-driven workflows. No JavaScript frameworks, no bloat — just fast, clean RSS reading. Feedly charges $8/month for unlimited sources. Miniflux is free, stores only what you need, and provides a Fever API so existing RSS apps like Reeder and Unread work seamlessly.

Key Takeaways

Miniflux: Apache 2.0, ~6K stars, Go — minimalist, keyboard-driven RSS reader
Fever API: Compatible with Reeder, Unread, and other Fever-compatible iOS/Android apps
Full-text extraction: Fetch full article content from sites that only provide summaries
Anti-adblock proxying: Fetch articles through a proxy to bypass paywalls (experimental)
Fast: SQLite or PostgreSQL, built in Go — extremely fast even with thousands of feeds
vs FreshRSS: Miniflux is more opinionated and minimal; FreshRSS has more customization

Part 1: Docker Setup

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  miniflux:
    image: miniflux/miniflux:latest
    container_name: miniflux
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: "postgres://miniflux:${DB_PASSWORD}@db/miniflux?sslmode=disable"
      RUN_MIGRATIONS: 1
      CREATE_ADMIN: 1
      ADMIN_USERNAME: admin
      ADMIN_PASSWORD: "${ADMIN_PASSWORD}"
      BASE_URL: "https://rss.yourdomain.com"
      # Fetch full content for truncated feeds:
      FETCH_YOUTUBE_WATCH_TIME: 1
      POLLING_FREQUENCY: 60      # Check feeds every 60 minutes
      CLEANUP_FREQUENCY_HOURS: 24
    depends_on:
      db:
        condition: service_healthy

  db:
    image: postgres:15-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: miniflux
      POSTGRES_USER: miniflux
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: "${DB_PASSWORD}"
    volumes:
      - db_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U miniflux"]
      interval: 5s
      start_period: 20s

volumes:
  db_data:

docker compose up -d

Visit http://your-server:8080 → log in with admin credentials.

Part 2: HTTPS with Caddy

rss.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:8080
}

Part 3: Add Feeds

Via web UI

+ Add Feed → paste RSS URL
Feed auto-detected and added

Common feed URL patterns:

WordPress sites:    https://site.com/feed/
Ghost blogs:        https://site.com/rss/
Substack:           https://username.substack.com/feed/
YouTube channel:    https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNEL_ID
Hacker News:        https://news.ycombinator.com/rss
Reddit subreddit:   https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted.rss
GitHub releases:    https://github.com/owner/repo/releases.atom

Import OPML

Settings → Import/Export → Import OPML
Upload your subscriptions.opml from Feedly, Newsblur, etc.

Export from Feedly:

Feedly → Organize → Export → OPML → Download

Part 4: Keyboard Shortcuts

Miniflux is optimized for keyboard-driven reading:

Key	Action
`j`	Next unread item
`k`	Previous item
`v`	Open original article
`o`	Open original in new tab
`f`	Toggle starred
`m`	Toggle read/unread
`d`	Fetch full content
`g u`	Go to Unread
`g s`	Go to Starred
`g h`	Go to History
`g f`	Go to Feeds
`?`	Show shortcuts

Part 5: Full-Text Fetching

For sites that only provide article summaries in their RSS feed:

Automatic (per feed)

Feed settings → Fetch original content: Enable
Miniflux fetches the full article and stores it locally

Custom scraper rules

# Feed settings → Scraper rules (CSS selectors):
.article-body, article, .post-content

Built-in scrapers

Miniflux has built-in full-text scrapers for 100+ popular sites including:

The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC
Ars Technica, Wired, The Verge
Medium articles

Part 6: Mobile App Integration

Miniflux supports the Fever API for compatibility with RSS apps:

Enable Fever API

Settings → Integration → Fever API: Enable
Username: your Miniflux username
Password: set a separate Fever password

Fever API endpoint: https://rss.yourdomain.com/fever

Compatible apps

App	Platform	Notes
Reeder 5	iOS/macOS	Best iOS RSS reader, Fever native
Unread	iOS	Clean, focused reading
NetNewsWire	iOS/macOS	Free, open source, excellent
ReadKit	macOS	Feature-rich desktop app
Fluent Reader	Windows/Linux	Cross-platform
Feeder	Android	Simple, open source

NetNewsWire setup

File → New Miniflux Account
URL: https://rss.yourdomain.com
Username + API key (Settings → Integrations → API keys)

Part 7: Filters and Categories

Filters (keep rules)

Automatically mark articles as read or starred based on patterns:

Feed settings → Keep entry rules:
- EntryTitle =~ kubernetes → Keep only articles about Kubernetes
Block entry rules:
- EntryTitle =~ sponsored → Auto-skip sponsored articles

Part 8: REST API

# Get API token:
# Settings → API Keys → + Create

TOKEN="your-api-token"
BASE="https://rss.yourdomain.com/v1"

# Get unread entries:
curl "$BASE/entries?status=unread&limit=10" \
  -H "X-Auth-Token: $TOKEN" | jq '.[].title'

# Mark entry as read:
curl -X PUT "$BASE/entries" \
  -H "X-Auth-Token: $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"entry_ids": [1, 2, 3], "status": "read"}'

# Add a feed:
curl -X POST "$BASE/feeds" \
  -H "X-Auth-Token: $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"feed_url": "https://example.com/feed/", "category_id": 1}'

# Star an entry:
curl -X PUT "$BASE/entries/42/bookmark" \
  -H "X-Auth-Token: $TOKEN"

Maintenance

# Update:
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

# Backup:
docker exec miniflux-db-1 pg_dump -U miniflux miniflux \
  | gzip > miniflux-db-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql.gz

# Logs:
docker compose logs -f miniflux

# View feed errors:
# Feeds → Filter by "Parse error" to see broken feeds

Why Self-Host Miniflux?

The case for self-hosting Miniflux comes down to three practical factors: data ownership, cost at scale, and operational control.

Data ownership is the fundamental argument. When you use a SaaS version of any tool, your data lives on someone else's infrastructure subject to their terms of service, their security practices, and their business continuity. If the vendor raises prices, gets acquired, changes API limits, or shuts down, you're left scrambling. Self-hosting Miniflux means your data and configuration stay on infrastructure you control — whether that's a VPS, a bare metal server, or a home lab.

Cost at scale matters once you move beyond individual use. Most SaaS equivalents charge per user or per data volume. A self-hosted instance on a $10-20/month VPS typically costs less than per-user SaaS pricing for teams of five or more — and the cost doesn't scale linearly with usage. One well-configured server handles dozens of users for a flat monthly fee.

Operational control is the third factor. The Docker Compose configuration above exposes every setting that commercial equivalents often hide behind enterprise plans: custom networking, environment variables, storage backends, and authentication integrations. You decide when to update, how to configure backups, and what access controls to apply.

The honest tradeoff: you're responsible for updates, backups, and availability. For teams running any production workloads, this is familiar territory. For individuals, the learning curve is real but the tooling (Docker, Caddy, automated backups) is well-documented and widely supported.

Server Requirements and Sizing

Before deploying Miniflux, assess your server capacity against expected workload.

Minimum viable setup: A 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM VPS with 20GB SSD is sufficient for personal use or small teams. Most consumer VPS providers — Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr — offer machines in this range for $5-10/month. Hetzner offers excellent price-to-performance for European and US regions.

Recommended production setup: 2 vCPUs with 4GB RAM and 40GB SSD handles most medium deployments without resource contention. This gives Miniflux headroom for background tasks, caching, and concurrent users while leaving capacity for other services on the same host.

Storage planning: The Docker volumes in this docker-compose.yml store all persistent Miniflux data. Estimate your storage growth rate early — for data-intensive tools, budget for 3-5x your initial estimate. Hetzner Cloud and Vultr both support online volume resizing without stopping your instance.

Operating system: Any modern 64-bit Linux distribution works. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Debian 12 are the most commonly tested configurations. Ensure Docker Engine 24.0+ and Docker Compose v2 are installed — verify with docker --version and docker compose version. Avoid Docker Desktop on production Linux servers; it adds virtualization overhead and behaves differently from Docker Engine in ways that cause subtle networking issues.

Network: Only ports 80 and 443 need to be publicly accessible when running behind a reverse proxy. Internal service ports should be bound to localhost only. A minimal UFW firewall that blocks all inbound traffic except SSH, HTTP, and HTTPS is the single most effective security measure for a self-hosted server.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Running Miniflux without a tested backup strategy is an unacceptable availability risk. Docker volumes are not automatically backed up — if you delete a volume or the host fails, data is gone with no recovery path.

What to back up: The named Docker volumes containing Miniflux's data (database files, user uploads, application state), your docker-compose.yml and any customized configuration files, and .env files containing secrets.

Backup approach: For simple setups, stop the container, archive the volume contents, then restart. For production environments where stopping causes disruption, use filesystem snapshots or database dump commands (PostgreSQL pg_dump, SQLite .backup, MySQL mysqldump) that produce consistent backups without downtime.

For a complete automated backup workflow that ships snapshots to S3-compatible object storage, see the Restic + Rclone backup guide. Restic handles deduplication and encryption; Rclone handles multi-destination uploads. The same setup works for any Docker volume.

Backup cadence: Daily backups to remote storage are a reasonable baseline for actively used tools. Use a 30-day retention window minimum — long enough to recover from mistakes discovered weeks later. For critical data, extend to 90 days and use a secondary destination.

Restore testing: A backup that has never been restored is a backup you cannot trust. Once a month, restore your Miniflux backup to a separate Docker Compose stack on different ports and verify the data is intact. This catches silent backup failures, script errors, and volume permission issues before they matter in a real recovery.

Security Hardening

Self-hosting means you are responsible for Miniflux's security posture. The Docker Compose setup provides a functional base; production deployments need additional hardening.

Always use a reverse proxy: Never expose Miniflux's internal port directly to the internet. The docker-compose.yml binds to localhost; Caddy or Nginx provides HTTPS termination. Direct HTTP access transmits credentials in plaintext. A reverse proxy also centralizes TLS management, rate limiting, and access logging.

Strong credentials: Change default passwords immediately after first login. For secrets in docker-compose environment variables, generate random values with openssl rand -base64 32 rather than reusing existing passwords.

Firewall configuration:

ufw default deny incoming
ufw allow 22/tcp
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 443/tcp
ufw enable

Internal service ports (databases, admin panels, internal APIs) should only be reachable from localhost or the Docker network, never directly from the internet.

Network isolation: Docker Compose named networks keep Miniflux's services isolated from other containers on the same host. Database containers should not share networks with containers that don't need direct database access.

VPN access for sensitive services: For internal-only tools, restricting access to a VPN adds a strong second layer. Headscale is an open source Tailscale control server that puts your self-hosted stack behind a WireGuard mesh, eliminating public internet exposure for internal tools.

Update discipline: Subscribe to Miniflux's GitHub releases page to receive security advisory notifications. Schedule a monthly maintenance window to pull updated images. Running outdated container images is the most common cause of self-hosted service compromises.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Container exits immediately or won't start

Check logs first — they almost always explain the failure:

docker compose logs -f miniflux

Common causes: a missing required environment variable, a port already in use, or a volume permission error. Port conflicts appear as bind: address already in use. Find the conflicting process with ss -tlpn | grep PORT and either stop it or change Miniflux's port mapping in docker-compose.yml.

Cannot reach the web interface

Work through this checklist:

Confirm the container is running: docker compose ps
Test locally on the server: curl -I http://localhost:PORT
If local access works but external doesn't, check your firewall: ufw status
If using a reverse proxy, verify it's running and the config is valid: caddy validate --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Permission errors on volume mounts

Some containers run as a non-root user. If the Docker volume is owned by root, the container process cannot write to it. Find the volume's host path with docker volume inspect VOLUME_NAME, check the tool's documentation for its expected UID, and apply correct ownership:

chown -R 1000:1000 /var/lib/docker/volumes/your_volume/_data

High resource usage over time

Memory or CPU growing continuously usually indicates unconfigured log rotation, an unbound cache, or accumulated data needing pruning. Check current usage with docker stats miniflux. Add resource limits in docker-compose.yml to prevent one container from starving others. For ongoing visibility into resource trends, deploy Prometheus + Grafana or Netdata.

Data disappears after container restart

Data stored in the container's writable layer — rather than a named volume — is lost when the container is removed or recreated. This happens when the volume mount path in docker-compose.yml doesn't match where the application writes data. Verify mount paths against the tool's documentation and correct the mapping. Named volumes persist across container removal; only docker compose down -v deletes them.

Keeping Miniflux Updated

Miniflux follows a regular release cadence. Staying current matters for security patches and compatibility. The update process with Docker Compose is straightforward:

docker compose pull          # Download updated images
docker compose up -d         # Restart with new images
docker image prune -f        # Remove old image layers (optional)

Read the changelog before major version updates. Some releases include database migrations or breaking configuration changes. For major version bumps, test in a staging environment first — run a copy of the service on different ports with the same volume data to validate the migration before touching production.

Version pinning: For stability, pin to a specific image tag in docker-compose.yml instead of latest. Update deliberately after reviewing the changelog. This trades automatic patch delivery for predictable behavior — the right call for business-critical services.

Post-update verification: After updating, confirm Miniflux is functioning correctly. Most services expose a /health endpoint that returns HTTP 200 — curl it from the server or monitor it with your uptime tool.

See also: FreshRSS — more customization and Google Reader API

See all open source RSS tools at OSSAlt.com/categories/productivity.

The SaaS-to-Self-Hosted Migration Guide (Free PDF)