Comparison
Readless reads your newsletters and emails you a digest. Readbase gets them out of your email for good, and summarises each one where you actually read it.
What it costs to get AI summaries
Readbase
$0
Free plan, every newsletter, no card
Readless
$4.90/mo
No free plan. Card required for the trial
Readless solves a crowded inbox by sending you one more email. Readbase takes newsletters out of your email altogether.
Most people looking for a newsletter app want one thing first: their newsletters out of Gmail. Readless takes them in at its own address, then writes a digest and sends it to your personal inbox, on a schedule, next to your work email, your receipts and everything else you were trying to get away from.
Readbase never sends your newsletters back. They arrive at your @readbase.io address and stay in an app made for reading them, each with its own summary and reading time. When one is worth it, you are one tap from the full newsletter. When one never is, you unsubscribe from the same screen.
That is also where you get your morning recap, on iPhone, without it competing for space with everything else in your email.
This is the whole difference. Same inbox, same morning, same three newsletters, with and without Readbase.
The same three newsletters, this morning
Five tools for calmer, more focused work
How the best PMs run discovery
An Interview with a Chip Executive
Three subjects. Open all three to find out which one mattered.
Five tools for calmer, more focused work
How the best PMs run discovery
An Interview with a Chip Executive
You already know. Read the 12-minute one, skip the rest.
How every one of those summaries is written
A long newsletter is split into sections and every section is processed, so the piece buried at the bottom counts as much as the lead story. Summarisers that take one pass at whatever fits in a context window quietly lose the second half.
Each section is mined for the ideas it actually contains. The models are instructed to stay strictly inside the text: no speculation, no inference, no outside knowledge. You get what the writer wrote.
A second pass turns the complete set of ideas into 3 or 4 bullets, each a full thought of roughly 30 to 45 words, focused on what matters and why. No filler, no throat-clearing, no "this newsletter discusses".
Readless deduplicates your sources and clusters what is left by topic. That is efficient, and it is also how Lenny, Ben Thompson and a small indie writer you love all end up sounding the same. The person you chose to listen to becomes a bullet with no name on it.
Readbase summarises each newsletter on its own, from the whole text. The summary is that writer's argument in three or four lines, and it sits on top of their newsletter, not instead of it.
And you can start for free. Every summary is included on the free plan, with no card and no trial clock. Readbase Premium adds Ask AI, reading stats and the newest models when you want more, not before you have seen it work.
Every reader here assumes you already know what to subscribe to. That is the part most people are actually stuck on.
A newsletter app is worth nothing if what is in it is not worth reading. Readless hands you an empty inbox and an address, and the rest is your problem: go and remember what you meant to subscribe to, go and find the rest.
50+
Hand-picked newsletters across eight topics, in our public directory.
Day one
Pick your topics at signup and we suggest the best newsletters in each, before your inbox is empty.
A human
Tell us what you are into and we go and find them for you. Nobody else here does that.
That is not a feature we bolted on. It is the same belief the whole product runs on: the hard part of newsletters is not storing them, it is working out which ones deserve your attention in the first place.
Green means included on the free plan. Amber means it is there, but you pay for it.
| Feature | ReadbaseBest for newsletters | Readless |
|---|---|---|
| Finding newsletters worth reading | ||
| Someone who helps you find newslettersTell us what you are into and we go and find them for you. | A real person, free | You go looking yourself |
| Focus and triage | ||
| AI summary on every newsletterEach newsletter summarised on its own, before you open it. | Free, every newsletter | Blended into one digest, Pro |
| Free planWhether you can keep using it without paying. | No card required | 7-day trial, card required |
| Daily recap of everything unreadOne briefing each morning instead of a pile of unread newsletters. | Free - iPhone | Sent to your email inbox |
| Ask AI about a newsletterAsk for the key points, have a passage explained, or get background on the topics. | Readbase Premium | |
| Your inbox | ||
| Keeps newsletters out of your emailNothing about your newsletters lands in your personal inbox. | Read them in the app | Digests arrive by email |
| Private newsletter addressA dedicated address you subscribe with. | you@readbase.io | |
| Bookmarks and savingKeep the newsletters you want to come back to. | Free | No saved queue, by design |
| 1-click unsubscribeDrop the newsletters you stopped reading. | Filter senders out of the digest | |
| Offline readingYour newsletters on flights, trains and dead zones. | Free - iPhone | |
| Platforms | ||
| Native iPhone app | Plus the web app | Web only |
Where your newsletters end up. Readless collects them, merges everything into one AI digest and emails that digest to your personal inbox. Readbase gives newsletters an inbox of their own, away from your email, and puts a summary on top of each newsletter in an app built for reading. You skim the summary, open the one worth it, save it or unsubscribe, all in the same place.
No. Readless has no free plan. There is a 7-day trial of Pro that requires a card, after which Pro is $4.90 a month and Max is $9 a month, billed monthly. Readbase has a free plan with AI summaries on every newsletter, your private @readbase.io inbox, bookmarks and 1-click unsubscribe, and no card to sign up.
No. Readless runs in the browser. Readbase has a native iPhone app with offline reading, a morning recap and Siri support, plus a web app for any computer.
Because a merged digest is written by the model, not by the people you subscribed to. When twenty newsletters are deduplicated into topics, the writer's voice and the reason you followed them disappear, and you cannot tell which newsletter a point came from. Readbase summarises each newsletter on its own, from the whole text, so the summary is still that writer's argument, and the full newsletter is one tap away.
Sign up free, copy your @readbase.io address and use it for the newsletters you want to keep. They arrive summarised from the first one. Once they are all moving, you can cancel Readless before the next billing date.
“The AI summaries are genuinely good. I can tell they're built for newsletters - not just a generic summariser slapped on top.”
Alex T.
Product Manager
“Having a separate inbox just for newsletters is a game changer. My email is clean, and I don't miss the content I care about.”
Marta M.
Marketing Manager
“I've easily saved 3+ hours a month. I skim the AI summary, decide if it's worth reading in full, and move on. No guilt, no backlog.”
David C.
Software Engineer
“Every newsletter now comes with its own summary. It's a small thing that makes a huge difference - I actually stay on top of everything I subscribe to.”
Javier L.
Founder
“Readbase saves me hours every month. The AI picks up on what matters in each newsletter - it doesn't feel robotic, it feels like it gets the content.”
Emily R.
Growth Lead
Every newsletter summarised the moment it lands, in an inbox of its own. Free to start, no card required.
No card required.
