Best News Apps in India (2026): Flipboard Alternatives

If you read news on Google News or Flipboard and want something built for India, you have more choice than you might think. The apps below split into three kinds: short summaries you can finish in a few minutes, big feeds in your own language, and hyperlocal apps that tell you about the power cut on your street.

Every rating, language list and feature below was read from each app's own Google Play listing (India store) on 12 November 2026. Where a company says something about itself, we say so. Where we could not check a claim, we left it out.

The short answer

App	Best for	Languages (per its listing)	Play rating (India)	Installs
Inshorts	60-word summaries in English or Hindi	English, Hindi	4.4 (616,346 ratings)	10M+
Dailyhunt	One big feed in your language	English plus 13 Indian languages	4.7 (2,744,777 ratings)	100M+
JioNews	Summaries, video and live TV in one app	13 languages	3.6 (139,372 ratings)	10M+
Way2News	Short local news in Telugu and Tamil	Telugu and Tamil first	4.7 (1,228,449 ratings)	50M+
Public	Short videos about your own city	10 Indian languages	4.2 (1,172,258 ratings)	100M+
Lokal	Status posts and wishes, with some local news	9 Indian languages	4.5 (133,397 ratings)	10M+
NewsPoint	Times Group papers in many languages	14+ languages	3.9 (146,925 ratings)	50M+

All seven are free to download, and every listing says "Contains ads". Dailyhunt is the only one that also sells something inside the app: a paid Premium plan.

Short summaries: Inshorts and Way2News

Inshorts

Inshorts rewrites each story into 60 words or less and shows it as a card you swipe past. Its listing puts it simply: "no opinions, no extra noise, only facts that matter." Tap a card and you get the original full story from the outlet that reported it.

Inshorts is an Indian company, founded by Azhar Iqubal, Deepit Purkayastha and Anunay Pandey and based in Noida. It scores 66 on our Swadeshi Meter.

What works well

• The fastest way to catch up on a day's news, in English or Hindi
• A Finance feed shows live stock prices next to business stories, and you can build a watchlist
• Save stories and read them later without internet (listing: "Read Offline")
• Free: the listing shows ads and no in-app purchases

What doesn't

• Only English and Hindi. For Tamil, Telugu, Bengali or Marathi you need another app
• 60 words cannot carry analysis. Use it to decide what to read in full, not as your only source
• The app asks for storage access (to save images for offline reading) and your device ID (to fix bugs), according to its own listing

Full Inshorts page

Way2News

Way2News is the same idea in regional languages, with a local twist. You pick your location and language, and it shows short news cards you flip through. Its listing leans hard on Telugu and Tamil, and says it also has readers for Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Bangla, Marathi and Gujarati news. Alongside news it carries job announcements (it says plainly "We are not a Job search app"), horoscopes, cricket scores and WhatsApp status videos.

The company is Way2News Private Limited, which its Play developer name says was "Formerly Way2SMS". We have not scored Way2News on the Swadeshi Meter yet.

What works well

• The strongest pick here if you read Telugu or Tamil news
• Local news by location, not just state headlines
• Rated 4.7, level with Dailyhunt at the top of this list

What doesn't

• Outside Telugu and Tamil, the listing gives no detail on how deep its coverage goes
• Status videos, memes and celebrity gossip share the feed with news

Big feeds in your language: Dailyhunt and NewsPoint

Dailyhunt

Dailyhunt pulls stories and videos from what it says are 5,000+ publishers into one feed, in English and 13 Indian languages: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Odia, Punjabi, Urdu, Bhojpuri and Assamese. (Its headline says "15 Languages"; the list in the same listing has 14 including English.) The listing names the papers and channels it carries for each language, which makes it easy to check that your paper is there before you install.

Dailyhunt is made by VerSe Innovation, an Indian company founded in Bengaluru in 2007. VerSe scores 68 on our Swadeshi Meter.

What works well

• One of the two widest language lists here (NewsPoint is the other), with named papers for each language
• You can see your local paper's stories next to national ones
• Highest number of ratings by far (2.7 million)

What doesn't

• A busy feed. News, videos, "viral cards" and cricket all compete for space
• Ad-supported, with a paid Dailyhunt Premium that the listing says removes ads and adds "9000+ Magazines & eNewspapers". We could not find a published price for Premium, so check it in the app before you pay

Full Dailyhunt page

NewsPoint

NewsPoint is the Times Group's news app. Its website footer reads "© 2026 Times Internet Limited", and the listing describes it as being "by the Times of India (TOI) group". It mixes short news, live TV, e-newspapers and cricket, in 14+ languages, with Times titles such as The Times of India, The Economic Times, Navbharat Times and Maharashtra Times alongside other publishers. We have not scored Times Internet on the Swadeshi Meter yet.

What works well

• A good fit if you already read Times Group papers
• Wide language coverage, including Urdu, Assamese and Nepali

What doesn't

• The lowest rating of the seven except JioNews
• The listing text still talks about "current affairs 2023" and the 2023 World Cup, which tells you how often it gets attention

News from your own city: Public and Lokal

Public

Public is short videos about your city: accidents, traffic, water and power cuts, mandi prices, local festivals, jobs in your area. It is made by the same group as Inshorts; the Inshorts Group's own site lists both apps. That site says Public covers "700+ districts in India" in 12 languages, while the Play listing names 10: Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Assamese and Telugu.

Users can record their own videos and report local problems. That is the point of the app, and also the thing to be careful about (see below).

What works well

• News at street and district level that national apps skip
• Its listing calls it a "100% Free app"
• 1.17 million ratings, averaging 4.2

What doesn't

• Much of what you see is posted by other users, not reporters
• The listing names only some states. Check that yours is covered

Lokal

Lokal began as a local news, jobs and classifieds app. Its website still describes it that way: it "provides local news, jobs, classifieds", and was "started in June 2018 by IITian's Jani Pasha and Vipul Chaudhary" (Behtar Technology Pvt. Ltd., Bengaluru). The app itself has moved on. Its Play listing is now titled "Lokal - AI Status & Updates" and leads with AI-made status posts, festival wishes and good-morning quotes, with "hyperlocal news from your area" further down. We have not scored Lokal on the Swadeshi Meter yet.

What works well

• 9 languages: Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Bengali, Hindi and Punjabi
• Fine if you want local updates and shareable wishes in one place

What doesn't

• If you want a news app first, this is no longer one. Try Way2News or Public instead

JioNews: everything in one app

JioNews, from Jio Media Limited, offers short summaries, full articles, short and long videos, live TV channels and audio summaries that keep playing while you use other apps. It covers 13 languages: English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Oriya, Assamese, Punjabi and Urdu. The listing names publishers including ANI, ABP, Network18, Moneycontrol, Zee Media and NDTV. Jio scores 88 on our Swadeshi Meter, the highest of the companies here that we have scored.

One thing has changed. Many write-ups still say JioNews gives Jio users free magazines and e-papers. The current Play listing (last updated 26 May 2026) does not mention magazines or e-papers at all. It now advertises discount coupons instead, and the app is called "JioNews - News & Coupons". Don't install it for magazines until you have checked inside the app.

What works well

• The most formats in one app, including live TV and audio
• 13 languages

What doesn't

• The lowest rating of the seven, 3.6
• Coupons and shopping deals sit inside a news app

Full JioNews page

Watch out for

• Ads that look like news. All seven run on ads, and a sponsored card in a feed can look a lot like a news story. If a "story" ends in a buy button or an install link, it is an ad.
• Posts by users, not reporters. Public invites anyone to record and share. Way2News and Lokal also carry viral videos and status posts. Local rumours travel fast on apps like these. Before you forward a video about a crime, a riot or a "new government scheme", look for the same story from a newspaper or TV channel you trust.
• Notifications. Every app here pushes breaking-news alerts. Turn them down in the app's settings, or in your phone's settings, in the first week.
• Permissions. Hyperlocal apps want your location to pick your city. You can usually pick it by hand instead. A news app has no reason to read your contacts, so say no if one asks.
• Paid extras. Dailyhunt Premium is the only paid plan here, and we found no published price. If you subscribe through Google Play, cancel it in Google Play, not just inside the app.
• Who owns the app. "Indian app" and "Indian-owned" are not the same thing. Inshorts and VerSe are Indian companies, but both lose most of their Swadeshi Meter points on shareholding, because a large part of each company's shares is held by foreign investors (our sources: Entrackr's 2021 report for Inshorts, Tracxn for VerSe). The Inshorts Group's own website footer names "Inshorts Pte. Ltd." at a Singapore address. Jio Platforms has Meta and Google among its minority shareholders. More on how to read ownership: Which "Indian" apps are actually foreign-owned?

Which one to pick

• You want the day's news in five minutes, in English or Hindi: Inshorts.
• You read news in Tamil, Bengali, Odia, Marathi or another Indian language and want your own papers: Dailyhunt.
• You read Telugu or Tamil and want local news: Way2News.
• You want to know what's happening in your town, and you're happy to check before you believe: Public.
• You want live TV, video and audio in one app: JioNews.
• You already read the Times of India or Navbharat Times: NewsPoint.
• You mostly want wishes and status posts to share: Lokal.

If you are coming from Flipboard because you liked having many sources in one place, Dailyhunt is the closest match. If you are coming from Google News because you liked the clean headline list, start with Inshorts.

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Compare more apps: Flipboard alternatives, Google News alternatives and Apple News alternatives.

Play Store ratings, install counts, languages and features read from each app's India Google Play listing on 12 November 2026. Ratings move, so check the listing before you decide.