plainews is a free, text-only news aggregator. It pulls headlines from real outlets across the political spectrum, updated hourly, with bias ratings on every article. No feed algorithm. No notifications. No behavioral profile. Just the news.
Every major news platform is an engagement machine. It learns what makes you react and shows you more of it. The result: you read more news but trust it less. You feel more informed but understand less. plainews is built on a different model: headlines ranked by editorial significance, not engagement metrics. No one decides what you should care about today.
Most news platforms have an algorithmic feed. The feed decides what you see. plainews curates headlines from 82 countries and all 50 US states using local sources in native languages. German users see Der Spiegel in German. Japanese users see NHK in Japanese. Canadian users see CBC alongside Radio-Canada in French.
Every article tells you who is speaking and where they stand. Bias ratings come from AllSides and Ad Fontes Media. Not because all views are equally valid — but because you deserve to see the full picture before you form your own.
Every article on plainews shows a bias label based on the publishing outlet’s known political leaning. These ratings come from AllSides and Ad Fontes Media. The labels are:
Bias ratings are approximate and based on outlet-level ratings, not individual article analysis. Always read critically and verify important claims at the original source.
The ratings come from two independent, widely-cited organizations: AllSides, which rates outlets through blind surveys, editorial review, and reader feedback, and Ad Fontes Media, which scores outlets using trained analysts across the spectrum. We map their ratings onto our six labels and never invent a rating or change one based on a single story. When an outlet hasn’t been independently rated we label it Unknown rather than guess. Readers with a free account can also add a community bias rating on individual articles; those reader ratings are shown separately and never blended into the independent outlet rating.
The Daily Brief and Midday Break are original editorial summaries, produced fresh each morning and midday. They are not scraped or copied. Each is synthesized from the day’s most significant headlines into original prose: stories are grouped by theme, summarized in our own words, and — critically — annotated to show where coverage diverges across the political spectrum. Sources are cited inline by name as attribution, never reproduced at length, and every brief links back to the original journalism. We never editorialize our own opinion; we present the competing accounts and let you weigh them. Past briefs are permanently archived and browsable in the Brief Archive.
If a bias rating looks wrong, a source is mislabeled, or a brief contains an error, tell us. We update ratings as the independent organizations we rely on update theirs, and we correct factual mistakes promptly. Reach us via the contact page.
plainews ingests RSS feeds from hundreds of news outlets worldwide, updated hourly. Headlines are scored by editorial significance using Claude AI, which evaluates policy impact, geopolitical weight, and the number of people affected. Sources include AP, Reuters, BBC, NPR, The Guardian, Fox News, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, Politico, and many more.
The entire site runs on a single Cloudflare Worker at the edge — no origin server, no database server, no build pipeline. Articles are archived in Cloudflare KV and R2 for long-term storage. Full-text search is powered by Cloudflare D1.
plainews uses a collective model to grow what’s freely available to everyone:
Growing archive — As we ingest more RSS feeds and backfill historical articles, the archive grows deeper, giving everyone more to search.
Translations cached for everyone. When a reader translates an article, that translation is permanently archived. The next person who wants the same article in the same language receives it instantly, without using any of their translation quota. Translations accumulate over time and compound — the more people use the site, the more translations are available for free.
plainews is completely free to use. There are no paid tiers, no subscriptions, and no premium features. The site is sustained through two sources:
plainews does not use behavioral tracking, interest-based profiling, or cross-site tracking. We do not sell or share personal data with advertisers or any third party.
If you’re interested in advertising on plainews, contact [email protected] or view our media kit.
Reading plainews requires no account and no personal information. We use anonymous aggregate analytics (page views, device type) to understand usage patterns. If you create a free account, the data we collect is minimal and clearly described in our Privacy Policy.
No tool can be perfectly unbiased — including plainews. Bias ratings are outlet-level approximations, not article-level analysis. Sources make editorial decisions. We believe the best defense against misinformation is reading widely, thinking critically, and always checking the original source. plainews is a tool to help you do that more easily.
/ — Jump to the search bar from anywhere on the pageEnter — Run the search (while focused in the search bar)Escape — Clear the search and return to the front pageplainews is an independent project. For feedback, press inquiries, or partnership opportunities, email us at [email protected] or visit our contact page.
Follow plainews on the open social web:
@plainews.com on Bluesky
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@plainews.com@bsky.brid.gy on Mastodon
(paste that handle into your Mastodon search to follow)
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RSS feeds.
The daily brief auto-posts on Bluesky and federates to Mastodon via
Bridgy Fed. No tracking, no algorithm; same content as on the site.
plainews is a free, text-only news reader. You search for a topic. You get the news on it — from real outlets, in plain text, with no algorithm in between. No feed. No notifications. No behavioral profile. Just the news.
Every major news platform is an engagement machine. It learns what makes you react and shows you more of it. The result: you read more news but trust it less. You feel more informed but understand less. plainews is built on a different model: you come when you want to know something, and you leave when you do. No one decides what you should care about today.