Readwise Reader
Readwise Reader came out in 2022. It does a lot: articles, PDFs, newsletters, highlights, notes, and sync with Obsidian, Notion or Roam. If you use those tools, it’s really useful.
But it costs around 96 € a year, it’s proprietary and hosted in the US. If you don’t need the highlight sync, you pay for a lot of things you won’t use.
The other options
- Instapaper: a reading app with highlights and notes. Premium costs around 55 € a year.
- Omnivore: it was a good open-source option, but it closed in 2024.
What wallabag.it does
- It saves the whole article, not just the link. If the page disappears, you still have it.
- You read on the web, on Android, on iOS, and on Kobo or PocketBook e-readers. Offline too.
- Tags, search, highlights and annotations.
- You can export everything whenever you want: PDF, ePUB, mobi, JSON, CSV…
- It’s hosted in Europe. No ads, no tracking: it’s paid for by subscriptions.
- It’s the open-source wallabag, the project I started in 2013. If you’d rather host it yourself, you can.
Prices
| Service | Per year | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| wallabag.it | 11 € | Open source, hosted in Europe |
| Readwise Reader | ~96 € | Highlights sync, RSS, AI features, hosted in the US |
| Instapaper Premium | ~55 € | Highlights, notes, text-to-speech |
| Raindrop.io Pro | ~26 € | Bookmarks first, search and annotations in Pro |
wallabag.it costs 11 € a year. There’s also 4 € for 3 months, or 30 € a year if you want to support the project a bit more. You can try it free for 14 days, no credit card needed.
If you live in your notes app, Readwise Reader is made for you. If you want to save articles and read them, wallabag.it does that for 11 € a year.