A Readwise Reader alternative that keeps your library on your computer

Readwise Reader is a deep, carefully built reading app. It takes articles, PDFs, EPUBs, newsletters, RSS feeds and YouTube videos, adds an AI reading assistant called Ghostreader, and syncs your highlights to your notes app. That depth comes with a subscription, a cloud account and a lot to learn. If you want a Readwise Reader alternative that is free, keeps your reading on your own computer and sits next to your notes, Barside's Reading inbox is worth a look. It imports your Reader library and your Readwise highlights, and it works with the AI company you choose.

This page compares the two feature by feature, says plainly where Reader is better, and shows how to move your library.

The short answer

Reader is at its best when your reading is varied. Books, papers, newsletters, feeds and videos all land in one place. You can highlight text, images and tables, read from the keyboard, listen in lifelike voices, and ask Ghostreader to explain a passage or answer a question across your library. Through Readwise, your highlights flow into Obsidian, Notion and other notes apps, and Daily Review brings old highlights back.

People look for an alternative for a few reasons: the subscription cost, a library that lives in someone else's cloud, AI that runs on OpenAI models by default, or simply more app than they need.

Barside is a free desktop app for Windows, Linux and Mac. Its Reading inbox handles web articles and newsletters, keeps a readable copy of each on your computer, and puts your highlights in the same library as your notes, tasks and meetings. It does less than Reader. What it does, it does for free, locally, and with the AI you connect.

Why people look for a Readwise Reader alternative

• It is a subscription. Reader comes with Readwise: US$9.99 a month billed annually (US$119.88 a year) or US$12.99 month to month, after a 30-day free trial, as of September 2026. The cheaper Readwise Lite does not include Reader.
• Your library lives in the cloud. You need a Readwise account, and your documents, highlights and notes sync through it. Reader keeps copies for offline reading, but the account is the home of your library.
• AI on OpenAI models. Ghostreader's default model, included in the subscription, is GPT-5 Mini. To use another model, you add your own OpenAI API key, and Reader's docs list only OpenAI models for it: GPT-5, GPT-4.1, o3 and o4-mini. If you prefer Claude or Gemini inside your reading app, Barside connects either.
• No Linux app. Reader's download page offers desktop apps for macOS and Windows, both marked alpha. On Linux you use the web app.
• More than some people need. Reader has a Library and a Feed, two email addresses, custom prompts and many shortcuts. If you mostly read web articles and newsletters, a smaller inbox can be easier to keep up with.

Barside at a glance

Barside is a free desktop app that docks at the edges of your screen, with notes, reading, tasks, bookmarks, recordings, meetings and AI features. Reading is its inbox for articles and newsletters, with five lists: Inbox, Newsletters, Favorites, Archive and Highlights.

• Save from anywhere on your computer. Paste a link and choose Save, choose Save the page open in your browser, or press Alt+Shift+Space in any app and run Save to Reading (the aliases save and later work too). No extension is needed.
• A copy you keep. Your computer downloads the page and its pictures once, without your browser's cookies, and keeps the article in a clean layout. Nothing loads from the web while you read.
• One address for newsletters. Your Barside email address collects the newsletters you subscribe with it, or forward to it from Gmail with a filter. Settings → Reading walks you through the Gmail steps, and Gmail's confirmation email arrives with a Confirm forwarding button.
• Highlights with comments. Select text, choose Highlight, and add a comment if you want. The Highlights list collects every passage from every item, and its search looks through passages and comments.
• Listen. Barside reads an article aloud with the voices built into your computer, from 0.8× to 2× speed.
• Keep as a note. Move an article into your notes when you want to write around it, and link it to other notes with [[.

The read-it-later guide covers every detail. For a reading-first layout, switch to Reader Mode, which opens on Reading. See app modes.

Readwise Reader vs Barside: feature comparison

Readwise facts come from Readwise's website and Reader documentation, as of September 2026.

Pricing compared

Prices are as Readwise's own pages show them, as of September 2026.

You do not need Barside Plus for Reading. Plus is for people who want an encrypted cloud backup of the whole library, the same notes on several computers, or agents that run while their computers are off.

Your own AI across everything you read

Ghostreader is built into Reader. Barside takes a different route: it has no AI of its own, and you connect the account you already trust.

1. Open Settings → AI and choose Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or OpenRouter. For the first three, Barside opens the company's key page, and when you copy your new key, Barside checks it and saves it encrypted. OpenRouter is a one-click sign-in.
2. Open Library & briefing and use Ask library. Barside searches your notes, Reading items, bookmarks, saved pages and transcripts on your computer, and the AI you connected writes the answer, citing each source as a card like [S1] that opens the source. If the evidence is missing, Barside says so.
3. Ask the assistant (Ctrl+Shift+A) to list what you saved or to save a page for you.
4. Let an AI app such as Claude Desktop or ChatGPT use your reading through AI connections. Its read-only list_reading tool returns your Reading items with their highlights, only in the workspaces you share.

Only the excerpts an answer needs go to the AI company you picked, and Sources lets you leave any workspace or note out. The AI search guide explains the details, and the AI you connect and your data covers privacy.

Where Readwise Reader is better

Reader wins on range and polish in several places. If these matter to you, stay.

• Every format. PDFs, EPUBs, RSS feeds, YouTube videos with transcripts, and threads compiled into articles. Barside's Reading takes web pages and newsletters.
• Richer highlighting. Reader highlights images, tables and rich text on any device, and you can read and highlight from the keyboard. Barside highlights text.
• Daily Review. Readwise resurfaces your old highlights by email and in the app. Barside has no spaced review.
• Every device. Reader runs on the web, iOS and Android, on e-ink devices such as BOOX, and sends to Kindle. Barside is a desktop app.
• Exports and integrations. Readwise syncs highlights to Obsidian, Notion, Roam Research, Evernote and Logseq, and offers a public API and an MCP server. Barside keeps highlights inside its own library.
• AI that needs no setup. Ghostreader works out of the box, summarizes documents automatically, and has custom prompts. With Barside, you connect your own AI first.
• Voices. Reader's text-to-speech covers dozens of languages with natural AI voices. Barside uses the voices on your computer.

How to move from Readwise Reader to Barside

Barside's Readwise importer reads two files, one for your library and one for your highlights. Nothing is uploaded: Imports and your data explains how the files are read.

1. Export your Reader library. On your Readwise account profile page, choose Export Library as CSV. Reader's command palette has the same export as Generate CSV export.
2. Export your highlights. Go to readwise.io/export and choose CSV.
3. Install Barside from the download page and open it.
4. Open Settings, find Import notes and choose Import.
5. Next to Readwise, choose Choose CSV and pick both files together (hold Ctrl to pick the second).
6. Barside shows Ready to import with the number of reading items and a list of things to know. Under Import into, pick a workspace, then choose Import and Open Reading.

What comes along:

• Every document in your Library, with its title, author, date saved and tags. Archived documents go to the Archive, the rest to the Inbox. Items from your Feed are skipped, and the preview says how many.
• Your highlights and their notes, attached to the article with the same title from the library file, in reading order where the export gives locations.
• Book highlights in your Readwise export, as one item per book with its highlights, in the Archive.
• Markdown highlight files from Readwise work too.

Barside imports each library document as a link, with its highlights. Open one and choose Get article text to download the article. Articles already in Reading are skipped, so a second import later adds only what is new. The guide to importing your notes lists every importer.

Move your newsletter subscriptions

Reader gives you two email addresses, one for the Library and one for the Feed. Your export does not move subscriptions, so point them at Barside:

1. In Barside, sign in (free), open Settings → Reading, choose Get my address, then Copy.
2. If Gmail forwards newsletters to Reader, add your Barside address in Gmail's forwarding settings first. Gmail sends a confirmation email to it, which arrives in Reading with a Confirm forwarding button. Then edit those Gmail filters to forward to your Barside address.
3. If you subscribed with a Reader address, change each subscription to your Barside address, or sign up again with it.

Barside has no RSS reader, so keep feeds in a feed reader, or in Reader if you stay with Readwise for them.

Who should switch, and who should stay

Barside is a good fit if you:

• read mostly web articles and newsletters, at a computer;
• want a free app, with no yearly subscription for reading;
• want your library and highlights on your own drive;
• use Linux, or want the same app on Windows, Linux and Mac;
• want to choose your AI company, or use no AI at all;
• want reading, notes, tasks and meetings in one app.

Stay with Readwise Reader if you:

• read PDFs, EPUBs, RSS feeds or YouTube videos;
• rely on Daily Review to remember what you read;
• read on your phone, a tablet or an e-ink device;
• export highlights to Obsidian, Notion or another notes app every day.

A middle path works too: keep Readwise Lite for book highlights and Daily Review, and read web articles and newsletters in Barside.

Other alternatives worth a look

• Matter. A polished read-later app for iPhone, iPad and the web, with natural text-to-speech, newsletters, podcasts and YouTube. The Matter alternative compares it with Barside.
• Instapaper. Free for saving and reading; Premium adds full-text search, a permanent archive, a PDF reader and more, for US$5.99 a month or US$59.99 a year, as of September 2026.
• wallabag. Free, open-source software you can host on your own server, with apps, browser extensions, RSS feeds and an API.
• Pocket. Shut down by Mozilla in July 2025. If you still have your export, the Pocket alternative shows how to import it.

For the whole field, see the best read-it-later apps, and if you want reading as part of a bigger system, the best second brain apps.

Works well with Reading