Feedly, the world's largest independent RSS reader, has grappled with severe technical problems for more than a week, leaving paying customers frustrated by what they describe as "unusably slow" performance on the web application. According to a report published by TechCrunch on August 17, 2026, the service — which inherited the market vacated by Google Reader's 2013 shutdown — now serves 15 million users globally, making it larger than rivals such as Inoreader, NetNewsWire, and Reeder. The prolonged outage has sparked questions about whether the company remains committed to its core RSS audience as it shifts focus toward artificial intelligence products for business customers.
The most significant issue has been a marked performance decline on Feedly's web platform, which users on Reddit characterized as running "extremely" slow and rendering the service "unusable." Additional problems include a non-functional iOS app, even on the iOS 27 beta version, and the unannounced discontinuation of Feedly's classic mobile application several weeks ago. According to CEO Edwin Khodabakchian, the classic app served only a few hundred active users at the time of its shutdown two weeks prior and had been pulled from the App Store much earlier because it "no longer met some iOS and Android requirements." The company did not alert existing users before the final termination. Multiple subscribers also reported that their technical support inquiries went unanswered during the crisis.
Khodabakchian told TechCrunch that "despite the pivot to cyber threat intelligence, fixing the basic RSS functionality is still a priority because our CTI community uses the news-reading capability." The company identified the web app slowdown as stemming from a defect connected to using the "Mark as Read" function on accounts containing numerous folders, and a repair was deployed on Friday. The team was still verifying whether this solution resolved the issue for all affected users. The CEO also stated he was unaware of the iOS app failures that prevent the application from loading but pledged a swift resolution, emphasizing that the company continues to invest actively in its primary iOS and Android applications. Following the report's publication, the problem was posted to status.feedly.com to inform other users that the company was investigating the known issue.
The technical troubles arrive as Feedly repositions itself around AI-driven business intelligence, offering corporations tools to monitor emerging threats and access customized information through its platform. The company's homepage now prominently features these enterprise AI products rather than its traditional RSS reader service. However, Khodabakchian maintained that the company's objective "has been to maintain the Feedly News Reader as fast and streamlined as possible," noting that even its cyber threat intelligence clients depend on the news-reading features. The tension between serving a niche but loyal RSS user base while pursuing higher-revenue AI business customers may define Feedly's trajectory as most consumers now receive news through dedicated apps like Apple News, Google News, and social media platforms instead of RSS feeds. Companies navigating product transitions must balance engineering resources between legacy offerings and growth initiatives, particularly when core users have limited alternative platforms of comparable scale. The durability of Feedly's dual-market strategy will likely hinge on whether incidents like this week-long breakdown become routine or remain exceptional.