The best read-it-later apps in 2026, now that Pocket is gone

A read-it-later app saves an article when you find it, strips it down to clean text, and keeps it until you have time to read. The best read-it-later apps also let you highlight, collect newsletters, listen instead of read, and send what you learned to your notes. Since Mozilla shut Pocket down in July 2025, its readers have had to pick a new home, and the right one depends mostly on where you read: on your phone, at your desk, or both.

This guide compares eight apps, with prices from each company's own page as of September 2026, and says who each one is for.

The quick answer

• Readwise Reader: the best for heavy readers who want articles, PDFs, EPUBs, newsletters, RSS feeds and YouTube videos in one place.
• Matter: the best for reading and listening on iPhone and iPad.
• Instapaper: the best free, simple read-it-later app on web, iPhone and Android.
• Barside: the best free reader on a Windows, Linux or Mac desktop, with newsletters, highlights and read-aloud, and a library that stays on your computer.
• Raindrop.io: the best if you mostly save bookmarks and read some of them.
• GoodLinks: the best one-time purchase on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
• wallabag: the best open-source reader, self-hosted or hosted for a small yearly price.
• Karakeep: the best self-hosted option with AI tagging.

What happened to Pocket

Mozilla announced on May 22, 2025 that Pocket would shut down on July 8, 2025. After that day, the only thing left to do was export your saves, which Mozilla allowed until October 8, 2025. After that, Mozilla said, the data would be permanently deleted. Mozilla explained that the way people save and consume content on the web has evolved, and moved its resources to other projects.

If you downloaded your Pocket export in time, it still has value. Barside reads both Pocket formats, the CSV (a ZIP with part_000000.csv) and ril_export.html, and brings your saves into its Reading inbox with their tags. The Pocket alternative guide shows each step.

How we chose

We judged each app on the whole life of an article, from saving to remembering:

• Saving. Browser extension, phone share sheet, email address or search bar.
• Reading. A clean view, pictures kept, and reading without a connection.
• Highlights and notes. Can you mark passages, add comments, and find them later or send them to your notes?
• Newsletters and listening. An address for newsletters, and text-to-speech.
• Where it runs. Phones, computers and the web.
• Ownership and price. Export, self-hosting, and the free plan's real limits, from official pages as of September 2026.

The best read-it-later apps at a glance

The 8 best read-it-later apps, reviewed

1. Readwise Reader

Readwise Reader is the reading app of Readwise, the highlight service. It takes articles, PDFs, EPUBs, email newsletters, RSS feeds, YouTube videos and X threads in one library. It has iPhone and Android apps, a web app, browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Safari, and desktop apps for Mac and Windows, and it works offline.

Best for: researchers, students and anyone who reads a lot and wants the highlights to end up in their notes.

Strengths:

• One inbox for nearly every kind of document, including feeds and newsletters.
• Text-to-speech with natural AI voices, adjustable speed and dozens of languages, on every platform.
• Ghostreader, an AI helper that answers questions, defines terms and simplifies hard passages.
• Highlights flow into Readwise and export to Notion, Obsidian and more.

Limits: there is no free plan after the 30-day trial, and Reader needs Readwise Full, not the cheaper Lite plan. On Linux you use the web app. With this many features, it can take a while to learn.

Price (as of September 2026): Readwise Full, which includes Reader, is US$9.99 a month billed yearly, or US$12.99 monthly. Readwise Lite is US$5.59 a month billed yearly, without Reader.

Barside imports both Readwise exports: the highlights CSV and Reader's library CSV. Compare the two in the Readwise Reader alternative guide.

2. Matter

Matter calls itself the modern read-later app for iPhone, iPad and the web. It puts reading and listening on equal footing: it turns articles, blogs and newsletters into a playlist read by natural-sounding voices, and you can highlight while you listen.

Best for: people who read and listen on iPhone and iPad.

Strengths:

• Listening that works like a podcast queue, with audio highlights.
• Newsletters delivered straight into Matter, and a way to follow writers from X and Gmail.
• A free version that keeps your whole library, saving from mobile and web extensions, and tags.

Limits: there is no Android app, and on a Windows or Linux computer you read in the web app. HD text-to-speech, its fluid highlighting and note-taking, integrations and full-text search are part of Premium.

Price (as of September 2026): free, or Matter Premium for US$8 a month or US$60 a year, the price Matter published on its own site. Subscriptions bought in the App Store are listed at different prices, such as US$7.99 a month or US$79.99 a year.

Barside imports Matter's export (Settings → Account → Export Data in Matter, which emails you a ZIP). See the Matter alternative guide.

3. Instapaper

Instapaper saves articles, videos and web pages, syncs them across the web, iPhone and Android, and sorts them into folders. The free plan puts no cap on saves.

Best for: people who want a simple, free saver that works on any phone.

Strengths:

• A generous free plan with sync and folders.
• Premium adds full-text search, a permanent archive, a PDF reader, Kindle integration, speed reading and AI voices for text-to-speech playlists on mobile.
• An API, so other apps can save to it.

Limits: the free plan allows 5 notes a month, and search and the permanent archive need Premium.

Price (as of September 2026): free, or Premium for US$5.99 a month or US$59.99 a year. Barside imports Instapaper's CSV or HTML export (instapaper.com → Settings → Export).

4. Barside

Barside is a free desktop app for notes, tasks, reading and meetings that keeps your library on your computer. It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. Its Reading item in the sidebar is one inbox for articles and newsletters, with the lists Inbox, Newsletters, Favorites, Archive and Highlights.

How it works:

1. Save a page. Paste a link and choose Save, choose Save the page open in your browser, or use Save to Reading in the search bar (Alt+Shift+Space from any app). The assistant can save a page too.
2. Barside keeps a readable copy. Your computer downloads the page and its pictures once, without your browser's cookies, so nothing loads from the web while you read. A page that needs a sign-in is saved as a link, with a Get article text button to try again.
3. Read and mark it up. Select text to highlight it, with an optional comment. Star favorites, add tags and archive what you finished. Listen reads the article aloud with the voices built into your computer, at 0.8× to 2× speed.
4. Keep what matters. Keep as a note moves an article into your notes. Everything stays searchable either way.

Newsletters: sign in (free) and open Settings → Reading to get Your Barside email address, like k7p2xq9m4d@read.barside.space. Subscribe with it, or forward newsletters from Gmail: Barside guides you through adding the address in Gmail, confirming it and making a filter per newsletter, and it never connects to your Google account. Tracking pixels are removed and never loaded. Mail waits on Barside's server only until your computer downloads it, about every 5 minutes while Barside is open, and then it is deleted there.

Strengths:

• Free, with highlights, newsletters, tags and read-aloud included.
• Reading items are notes that stay out of your notes list, so the search bar, AI search and the assistant find them, and AI apps such as Claude Desktop can list them with their highlights through AI connections.
• Imports from Matter, Readwise, Pocket, Instapaper and Raindrop.io bring highlights and tags along (Omnivore exports too), and articles you already have are skipped.
• Reader Mode trims Barside down to Reading, notes, bookmarks, On my desktop, the note map, Library, agents and the assistant, and opens on Reading. See app modes.

Limits: there is no phone app, so it is not for reading on the bus. There is no browser extension either: Barside reads the address of the page open in your browser instead (on Linux, it copies the address bar with xdotool). In Barside for Mac, macOS asks once per browser before Barside can read the address from Safari, Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi or Opera, and links from Firefox have to be pasted. Listen uses your computer's built-in voices, not AI voices. The newsletter address needs a Barside sign-in.

Price: free. With Barside Plus (US$20 a month or US$200 a year, plus sales tax), cloud sync keeps your notes, including Reading items, the same on all your computers. The full guide is read-it-later app with highlights.

5. Raindrop.io

Raindrop.io is a bookmark manager with reading features. It saves links into collections, previews articles and videos without leaving the library, and lets you highlight. It runs on the web, has apps for Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android, and extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge.

Best for: people who save many links for research and read some of them.

Strengths:

• A free plan with no cap on bookmarks, collections, highlights or devices.
• Pro adds full-text search (even inside YouTube videos), permanent copies of saved pages, an AI assistant, daily backups, reminders, notes on highlights and a finder for broken and duplicate links.
• Collaboration on shared collections.

Limits: it is organized around bookmarks, not an inbox of articles to finish. Permanent copies and full-text search need Pro.

Price (as of September 2026): free, or Pro for US$3 a month, or about US$2.30 a month billed yearly (plus VAT where it applies), as Raindrop.io's own blog lists it; its pricing page shows the price in your local currency. Barside imports Raindrop.io's CSV export (Settings → Backups in Raindrop.io). For links next to your projects, see Barside's bookmark manager.

6. GoodLinks

GoodLinks is a read-later app for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision Pro. It extracts the article text without ads, lets you highlight and tag, and syncs links, articles, highlights, tags and your reading position through iCloud.

Best for: Apple users who would rather pay once than subscribe.

Strengths: a one-time price, a clean reader, and sync through iCloud with no separate account.

Limits: Apple devices only. After the first year, new features need the optional annual feature upgrade (US$4.99 in the App Store), and features you unlocked stay yours.

Price (as of September 2026): US$9.99 once on the App Store.

7. wallabag

wallabag is open-source read-it-later software that has existed since 2013. You can run it on your own server for free, or use wallabag.it, the hosted version, which has run since 2016. It has apps for the web, Android, iPhone, tablets and e-readers, plus browser extensions, and it imports your reading list from other services (Pocket, Omnivore, Instapaper and Pinboard among them) and exports articles, tags and annotations.

Best for: people who want open source and full control of their reading data.

Strengths: a low yearly price for hosting, offline apps, e-reader support and open export.

Limits: running it yourself means maintaining a server, with updates and backups on you. If you would rather not, the hosted plan removes that work for a yearly fee.

Price (as of September 2026): free to self-host. wallabag.it starts at €11 a year, with a 14-day free trial and no card required.

8. Karakeep

Karakeep is an open-source app to save links, notes, images and PDFs, with AI tagging, full-page archives against link rot, highlights, RSS feeds that save new posts, OCR for text in images, and full-text search. It has iPhone and Android apps, extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Safari, a web app and an API.

Best for: people who self-host and want AI to sort what they save.

Strengths: a self-hosted version with every feature, free; archives that survive a page going offline; AI tags.

Limits: self-hosting means running Docker on a server. The free cloud tier is only enough to try it: 10 bookmarks and 20 MB.

Price (as of September 2026): free to self-host. Karakeep Cloud Pro is US$4 a month or US$40 a year, with 50,000 bookmarks and 50 GB.

Phone, desktop or both: where you read decides

If you read on the bus or in line, choose an app with a strong phone app: Matter on iPhone and iPad, Instapaper on any phone, or Readwise Reader everywhere. Listening features matter most here too, because they turn a commute into reading time.

If you read long pieces at your desk, the calculation changes. A big screen, a keyboard for comments and your notes one window away matter more than a share sheet. That is where Barside fits: the reader sits next to your notes and tasks, highlights live in the same library, and Keep as a note turns an article into working material. Pair it with a phone app if you need both.

Ownership is the third question. Pocket's end showed that a cloud library can disappear. wallabag and Karakeep let you run the server. Barside keeps each article as a local copy on your computer, and Export backup in Settings saves the whole library to one ZIP. Read more about local-first storage and backups.

How to choose a read-it-later app

• You read on your phone: Matter (iPhone and iPad), Instapaper (any phone) or Readwise Reader.
• You read at a Windows or Linux desktop and want it free: Barside, also on a Mac.
• You want highlights in your notes: Readwise Reader exports them to Notion and Obsidian. Barside keeps them in your notes library already.
• You want newsletters out of your email: Readwise Reader, Matter or Barside.
• You like to listen: Matter Premium or Readwise Reader for AI voices, Instapaper Premium on mobile, or Barside's built-in voices.
• You hate subscriptions: GoodLinks on Apple devices, or Barside.
• You want to own the server: wallabag or Karakeep.

How to move your reading library

1. Export from your old app. Matter: Settings → Account → Export Data. Readwise: the highlights CSV from readwise.io/export, or Reader's library CSV. Instapaper: Settings → Export. Raindrop.io: Settings → Backups. Pocket: the export you downloaded before it closed.
2. In Barside, open Settings → Import notes and pick the file. You see a preview with the number of items and any warnings before anything is added.
3. Check Reading. Articles arrive with their highlights and tags, and anything already in Reading is skipped. Files are read on your computer and nothing is uploaded.

See import your notes and reading for every format, and save webpages for offline reading for keeping a full copy of a page inside a note. If you are building a larger system for what you read and write, the best second brain apps compares the tools around it.