Question: Do most feed readers talk to a server?

Started with RSS recently, and I've been using Feeder, but UI wasn't vibing with me so I wanted to explore other options

One that stood out was Tiny Tiny RSS, but I noticed that it's self-hosted

Which made me wonder, what are the other feed apps doing? I assumed no back end would be necessary since I can provide the link to the RSS XML

So what kinds of things are the servers doing?

Or am I misinformed and Tiny Tiny RSS is self-hosted because it is doing something beyond the usual feed readers

2 comments

All feed readers talk to other machines to get the feeds you're reading. TTRSS is just fetching them and storing them locally regularly instead of just when the client is running. I don't remember whether or not TTRSS has a reader interface or whether you need to use a client to talk to it.
There are local readers, that fetch the feed directly from your device, but many use backend servers for the feed fetching. There are a handful of possible reasons:

Cross-device syncronization.

Save battery by checking on the server and only waking the device with a push notification when there are actually new items.

Obey platform background activity restrictions (especially on iOS)

Privacy by hiding your IP from the feed operators.

Avoid missing items on busy feeds when your client goes offline by checking constantly from the server.