Comparing newsletter readers

Letterwire, Meco, Readwise Reader and the Substack app — what each is actually for, and when you should pick one of the others.

We make Letterwire. So treat this the way you'd treat any comparison written by a competitor: check the claims. We've dated everything and linked out, and we've been specific about the cases where another app is the better answer, because those cases are real.

The question that actually separates them

Every app here solves "newsletters are drowning in my inbox." They split on how the newsletters get to you, and that decides almost everything else — privacy, which publishers work, and what happens to your existing subscriptions.

	Letterwire	Meco	Readwise Reader	Substack app
How newsletters arrive	Your own @letterwire.app address	Connects to Gmail / Outlook	Forwarding address, RSS, saved articles	Substack subscriptions only
Needs access to your mailbox	No	Yes	No	No
Works with non-Substack publishers	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Also handles web articles / PDFs	No	No	Yes	No
Highlights & notes export	No	Highlights	Yes (Notion, Obsidian, etc.)	No
Newsletter discovery directory	Yes, ~700 publications	Yes	No	Yes, Substack only
Platforms	iOS, Android, web	iOS, Android, web	iOS, Android, web	iOS, Android, web

Competitor details from public app-store listings and product sites, last checked 4 August 2026. If we've got something wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.

Meco

Meco connects to your Gmail or Outlook account and lifts newsletters out of it into its own feed. That's a genuinely good design if your subscriptions are already spread across an inbox you have no intention of reorganising — nothing to re-subscribe, nothing to migrate. It groups by topic and offers audio briefings.

The trade is mailbox access. To find newsletters in your inbox, it has to be able to read your inbox.

Pick Meco if: you have years of subscriptions in Gmail, you don't want to change your address with dozens of publishers, and connecting an app to your mail doesn't bother you.

Readwise Reader

Reader is the most capable app here and the least focused on newsletters specifically. It takes newsletters, RSS feeds, web articles, PDFs and ebooks, and its real strength is what happens after you read — highlights, notes, and sync into Notion, Obsidian and the rest.

If you're building a personal knowledge system, nothing else on this list competes. If you just want to read your newsletters, it's more tool than the job needs.

Pick Readwise Reader if: you highlight as you read and want those highlights to end up somewhere else, or you want one inbox for everything you read, not just email.

The Substack app

Free, excellent for what it covers, and if your reading is mostly Substack it may be all you need. It imports your existing Substack subscriptions and the reading experience is built by the people who built the publishing platform.

The limit is in the name. Newsletters on Ghost, beehiiv, ConvertKit, or a newspaper's own system don't appear.

Pick the Substack app if: nearly everything you read is published on Substack.

Letterwire

Letterwire gives you a real email address ending in @letterwire.app and you subscribe with it. Because it's ordinary email, it works with any publisher that sends email, and Letterwire never touches your existing mailbox — there's nothing to connect and no permission to grant.

It's deliberately narrow: newsletters, and a directory of around 700 publications for finding new ones, with each entry showing what it covers and how often it actually publishes. It won't save web articles or export highlights.

Pick Letterwire if: you want newsletters completely separated from your email rather than sorted inside it, you read across many publishing platforms, and you'd rather not give an app access to your inbox.

The honest summary

Don't want to re-subscribe anywhere? Meco.
Want highlights and a knowledge base? Readwise Reader.
Read almost entirely on Substack? The Substack app.
Want newsletters out of your email entirely, across every platform? Letterwire.

Start with what you'd read

Whichever you pick, the app matters less than the subscriptions. Our newsletter directory lists around 700 publications with what they cover and how often they publish.

Try Letterwire