Most Popular RSS Readers

On this page I'll try to keep a compiled list of most popular RSS feed readers, ie. desktop and online applications that are mostly used for reading RSS feeds. There are still no reliable ways for determining this (and it's questionable whether there will ever be), so I will be gathering this information from various sources, all of which will be listed with the stats. The most reliable source is currently FeedBurner since it has stats for a large number of feeds.

Information about the RSS reader market share can be quite skewed by online aggregators. For example, if you've used Bloglines for a while and then abandonded it while leaving your feeds active, Bloglines will still keep you marked as a subscriber and this will count in FeedBurner stats. Care should also be taken to eliminate the frequency of updates, so that unique visits are counted and not each and every hit. FeedBurner supposedly takes care of this.

Description: Top 20 RSS Readers across FeedBurners most highly subscribed 1000 feeds
Date: June 29, 2005
Source: Datamation

1	My Yahoo	59.02%
2	Bloglines	10.42%
3	Firefox LiveBookmarks	4.20%
4	NetNewsWire	3.74%
5	iTunes	3.37%
6	iPodder	2.38%
7	NewsGator Online	1.82%
8	Pluck	1.59%
9	FeedDemon	1.56%
10	Reader notidentified	1.02%
11	Apple CFNetworkGeneric Client	0.96%
12	SharpReader	0.86%
13	Thunderbird	0.82%
14	Safari RSS	0.61%
15	iPodderX	0.54%
16	LiveJournal	0.52%
17	NewsGatorOutlook Edition	0.51%
18	RSS Bandit	0.50%
19	RssReader	0.34%
20	Opera RSS Reader	0.33%

Description: Top 20 RSS Readers across FeedBurners most highly subscribed 1000 feeds, excluding 10 most popular feeds
Date: June 29, 2005
Source: Datamation

1	Bloglines	19.49%
2	NetNewsWire	10.07%
3	iTunes	9.53%
4	Firefox Live Bookmarks	7.25%
5	iPodder	7.17%
6	My Yahoo	6.68%
7	FeedDemon	4.23%
8	NewsGator Online	3.83%
9	Reader not identified	3.07%
10	Pluck	2.07%
11	SharpReader	1.91%
12	iPodderX	1.77%
13	Thunderbird	1.75%
14	Safari RSS	1.75%
15	LiveJournal	1.44%
16	NewsGator Outlook Edition	1.27%
17	Apple CFNetwork Generic Client	1.21%
18	RSS Bandit	0.99%
19	Opera RSS Reader	0.90%
20	Sage /td>	0.82%

Description: Stats for a single feed (gathered through FeedBurner)
Date: December 17, 2004
Source: ReadWriteWeb

1	Bloglines	51%
2	NetNewsWire	7%
3	Firefox Live Bookmarks	6%
4	FeedDemon	5%
5	NewsGator	4%
6	SharpReader	3%
7	RSS Bandit	3%
8	Radio Userland	2%
9	My Yahoo!	2%
10	The rest	17%

Description: Stats for a single feed (diveintomark.org)
Date: November 18, 2003
Source: DiveIntoMark.org

1	NetNewsWire	45.37%
2	SharpReader	15.41%
3	FeedDemon	8.58%
4	NewsGator	7.61%
5	Radio Userland	4.65%
6	nntp//rss	4.02%
7	Straw	2.23%
8	Amphetadesk	2.08%
9	RSS Bandit	1.75%
10	NewsMonster	1.75%
11	FeedOnFeeds	1.45%
12	Syndirella	1.41%
13	Shrook	0.92%
14	NewsDesk	0.87%
15	FeedReader	0.68%
16	Awasu	0.48%
17	Aggie	0.29%
18	EFFNews	0.29%
19	Hep	0.15%