Ask HN: What Pocket alternatives did you move to?

Since mozilla announced the sunsetting of pocket, I started looking for alternatives, including building a light version for my personal use. But nothing came out of my research.

What options are there and how are you transitioning?

77 points

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ahmedfromtunis

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10 hours ago

98 comments

nchapman ・ 5 hours ago

I’ve been working on my own Pocket replacement for the past few months. I was the head of product at Pocket in 2018/19, and ever since I left, I’ve had this itch to build my own version. Mozilla shutting it down finally gave me the excuse I needed.

https://savewithfolio.com/

Folio lets you save articles from anywhere, has a lovely reading view, lets you listen to articles with some really nice text-to-speech voices, and access all your saves offline across all of your devices. If you enjoyed Pocket, you'll feel right at home! It’s still early days but all the core features are solid and working well.

Pocket imports are available via their API (though it’s been a little flaky lately), and I’m wrapping up file imports from Pocket, Instapaper, Matter, Raindrop, and Readwise so it should be easy to make the switch really soon.

Lots of fun stuff planned ahead. I’d love to have you join us if you’re looking for a new home!

  • rishi-singh ・ 2 hours ago

    Did you use flutter to write the app. Asking because the UI looks exactly the same on all platforms.

    • nchapman ・ 2 hours ago

      It's React Native which has been great. Still some work to do to make things really nice on large screens but overall a great experience.

  • sdrothrock ・ 4 hours ago

    Does Folio actually copy the content (i.e. if the original article is removed, Folio still has it) or does it function as a collection of bookmarks that it changes the presentation of?

    • nchapman ・ 4 hours ago

      Yes, we copy the content. We store both the original HTML and a copy of the extracted text as markdown. The text is what is synced to your device.

      • sdrothrock ・ 3 hours ago

        Thank you for answering! I'll be giving this a shot sometime :)

  • tony-allan ・ 4 hours ago

    It would help if you posted some UI images for the web app so I could have a look without having to signup

    • nchapman ・ 2 hours ago

      Thanks, good feedback!

dtkav ・ 9 hours ago

I use Obsidian Web Clipper [0] with the Relay Obsidian plugin [1] (I'm the author) for syncing.

Web clipper converts websites to markdown and puts them into your Obsidian vault, and then Relay can sync subfolders in your vault to make sure you have a copy on all of your devices (even between a work and personal vault for example).

Relay is also collaborative, so I frequently clip things, clean them up a bit, and move them into shared folders (like docs pages).

I like the feeling of local-first combined with a malleable UX. Especially for the pocket use-case, offline-capable is a must for me so I can catch up on reading when I'm flying or otherwise off-grid.

[0] https://obsidian.md/clipper

[1] https://relay.md

  • chrisweekly ・ 6 hours ago

    I use Readwise (and Obsidian).

dctoedt ・ 4 hours ago

Readwise.io FTW. Saves all kinds of online stuff. The iPhone & iPad apps sync seamlessly and have quite-good text-to-speech recognition for most of it — which is great for listening to longer articles in the car / at the gym. I've got the paid version.

https://readwise.io/

  • polo ・ 3 hours ago

    +1 for Readwise. I moved to their Reader app from Pocket long ago and never looked back. The app goes from strength to strength and the Readwise team also does a great job engaging with users.

al_borland ・ 7 hours ago

I came to the realization (through another commenter on HN) that I never actually read things I save. It’s just where my good intentions go to die. If it’s not worth reading in the moment, I don’t read it. I’ve been using a little bit of AI summaries to get more context from an article if I’m not actually going to read it, or want to see if it’s worth reading.

  • existencebox ・ 6 hours ago

    Chiming in with a slightly different perspective: I often bookmark things I see in passing that might not be useful now but may in the future based on things I know I want to do.

    Case studies in certain engineering/programming tasks, something I read that I found useful and want to have handy to share with others in the future, project ideas or notes for long-running efforts I pursue and sometimes want a "bucket to pull from" for instance.

    While it's certainly true that I probably _use_ 10-20% of what I bookmark, I don't think it would be possible to realize the same positive outcomes without the 80% that I don't. (Just last week I was able to braindump a large piles of 'examples/essays I found helpful learning about neural network optimization' to one of my engineers because I'd kept them handy after they helped me.)

    I should say though, I sense this is a slightly different use case than the "I want to read this article just to read it" bookmarks where I know I never will, which is certainly something I've experienced but is a minority case in my life nowadays, so I wanted to vouch for productive scenarios too.

  • dgl ・ 7 hours ago

    Same. I used to read a bunch of things offline using Instapaper, but that was when I commuted on the tube (no signal, then), now I hardly commute. I still save things (in a text file) but try to save them with grepable keywords, so I can find them more easily later.

  • Geste ・ 7 hours ago

    Shhh don’t ruin the hype train ! We need to get the vc money in those startups going ! /s

pentagrama ・ 4 hours ago

I moved to https://raindrop.io/.

Imported all the Pocket stuff with no issues, free plan is enough for me.

  • burnt-resistor ・ 36 minutes ago

    Yup. Same. I hope they're making enough money to keep the lights on and don't over expand or sellout.

segphault ・ 9 hours ago

I ended up on Readwise Reader after trying a few different options. It unapologetically caters to power users and is clearly built by people who actually use and care about the product, so I'm finding it to be a pretty solid improvement over Pocket.

They also have put some effort into making their mobile app work reasonably well on eInk displays, so it's pretty great on a Boox tablet. It has real pagination, which is a feature that I was pretty annoyed about losing in Pocket when Pocket rewrote its mobile app.

sprior ・ 3 hours ago

I depended heavily on Pocket for over a decade as a free user. It started to get bogged down with about 20k bookmarks. I used to spend hours manually tagging saves and the search function never seemed to actually return results. This time around I wanted a self hosted solution.

I looked at Walabag and Shiori before I decided on Karakeep. I just didn't like the UI of the first two. I already have an Ollama server and the AI tagging feature of Karakeep is far better than Walabag's, in fact the tag management feature in general is. And Meilisearch adds a really fast search engine to Karakeep that has allowed me to discover new value to the 16k bookmarks from Pocket after cleaning down from the 20k I exported, it's super impressive.

Now the less great news, Karakeep is much newer and less mature than the other options and currently only supports a SQLite backend and I really hope that changes. The only API for Karakeep goes through its web interface and so I don't think I even could export all my bookmarks. If the data was stored in a standalone real database like MySQL or PostgreSQL other options would be possible.

The AI tagging is AMAZING but it generates a LOT of tags and that makes the tag management screens in Karakeep difficult or impossible to use because they are overwhelmed. I am looking forward to the next and future releases which aim to help with this.

I use the Android app which works really well.

Karakeep does make your server into a web crawler and because of the little war on AI LLMs we're experiencing these days an unfortunate number of websites have started to fight all crawling. Karakeep uses a SingleFile browser extension which allows you to prove you are a human or log in to a website and then capture a page and submit it to Karakeep. This is a little awkward because you may end up bookmarking something once using the regular Karakeep extension and then see that you didn't get what you want and have to do it again via SingleFile. I'm hoping that at least a config list will be added so that the regular Karakaap browser extension will automatically invoke SingleFile for websites known to block bots.

Brajeshwar ・ 2 hours ago

I stopped using Pocket, Instapaper, and the likes in my ongoing effort to be able to walk out[1] whenever I want/need to. I tried out and still wanted to have something that keeps archives of the content I like to read. That is also largely resolved with Archive.org.

So, I end up with just a plain-text of some of the links I want as bookmarks. If they shut down or go away; its fine.

I have tested a few similar app. I'm currently happy with a minimal foot-print of Shiori.[2] I tried and liked the UI/UX of Readeck[3] better but it has its own convoluted saving and sharing (public) style and way of working. I didn't want to deal with that.

Shiori saves a local copy (my default), and I can read it later. I also default it to public share so I can share with people asking for similar topic and such. It is a single Go binary with support for sqlite3, PostgreSQL, MariaDB and MySQL as its database.

Most of the online services such as archivebox.io, raindrop.io, readwise.io, and the plethora of other replacements are cheap enough but I've been long enough on the Internet to know that I have to deal with the loss yet again.

Here is an example of Shiori Saved and Shareable article https://read.oinam.com/bookmark/39/content

1. https://brajeshwar.com/2025/can-i-walk-out/

2. https://github.com/go-shiori/shiori

3. https://readeck.org/en/

marklar423 ・ 7 hours ago

I'm self hosting Readeck (https://readeck.org/en/) and I really like it. It's nicer than Pocket was, the website extraction seems to work better, and it can't ever be shut down.

For my Kobo, I wrote a mod that lets me redirect Pocket API requests, and a small proxy server that translates Pocket API calls into Readeck calls.

So far it's working flawlessly and my Kobo is using its built in Pocket viewer for Readeck instead. I'm hoping to open source it soon so others can use it.

extr0pian ・ 10 hours ago

Wallabag. I switched from Pocket to Wallabag years ago because I didn't like sponsored content and ads in Pocket. I originally started paying for it as a subscription directly from wallabag.it, but then I started self-hosting it. Wallabag has an option to import all of your articles from Pocket too. It's a fantastic service.

  • MattTheRealOne ・ 2 hours ago

    I also switched to self-hosted Wallabag. I won’t have to worry about the service deciding to shutdown again.

  • abawany ・ 6 hours ago

    I also switched to their hosted/paid offering and currently have no plans to self-host. I also aftee that the import tool from Pocket just worked and did a great job.

astrorho ・ 6 hours ago

Raindrop.io. Made by a Kazakhstan based dev.

isthistheme ・ 9 hours ago

Instapaper. It's simple and sleek. Provides direct import from Pocket.

  • lxgr ・ 6 hours ago

    Same here (although from Omnivore, not Pocket).

    I still miss Omnivore, but Instapaper is absurdly far ahead of Pocket. For example, Pocket could never figure out how to store paywalled content (for which I have a subscription to), despite having deep Firefox integration (although an extension with page access should be enough) and iOS having an API for the share sheet that allows injecting JavaScript into the page being shared.

imgabe ・ 5 hours ago

I have a bookmarks folder called "check later" for all the things I'll never get around to reading.

thisislife2 ・ 9 hours ago

Nothing but bookmarks and archive.org and PDFs. Every time I update the browser, I make sure to take a manual backup of the bookmarks.

ashishb ・ 3 hours ago

I wrote my own https://reading.ashishb.net

  - it produces readable pages
  - it produces an RSS feed that one can add to any feed reader as well
It is not the most polished product and hence not for everyone
masylum ・ 9 hours ago

Hey, this is Pao, the guy building https://fika.bar.

Fika is a place to save, discover and share content built upon 3 products:

- A local-first bookmark manager (Works 100% offline) - A feed reader: With feed discovery from your bookmarks. - A blog/newsletter platform

The only thing it currently does not have is e-reader integration yet. But you get the other 2 products bundled together which make a lot of sense.

  • butlike ・ 9 hours ago

    You should add a public leaderboard called the Fika score (a play on fico score)

  • mm263 ・ 6 hours ago

    Also, I don't seem to be able to login - stuck at "Syncing to this device."

  • mm263 ・ 6 hours ago

    The link to your blog doesn't seem to work

  • Bolwin ・ 6 hours ago

    [dead]

aldur ・ 9 hours ago

I replaced it two years ago with a small something I built for myself and serves me well [0], haven’t looked back since.

[0]: https://aldur.blog/micros/2025/07/07/pocket/

  • beala ・ 8 hours ago

    I also self host a small app for syncing bookmarks and a miniflux instance. Having the bookmark service publish an RSS feed for miniflux to consume is brilliant. Thanks for sharing.

LeicaLatte ・ 2 hours ago

bookmarking is such a lightweight task (like vpn), compute and storage wise, there is no reason to not self host it. many nice solutions out there, i personally use wallabag. its gets many things right.

RistrettoMike ・ 9 hours ago

Throwing another answer in for Instapaper. It’s not as new and flashy as something like Readwise or Matter, but also doesn’t try to do too much.

Killer features of Instapaper for me include the kindle digest and IFTTT integration (which I use to mirror my archived articles to Raindrop.io)

  • jkestner ・ 6 hours ago

    I don’t use Instapaper as much as I used to when I had an iPod touch on the subway, but I’m a subscriber. Happy to support the indie effort.

  • bashlk ・ 9 hours ago

    Yup this is where I ended up too

beala ・ 9 hours ago

I realized that all I needed was basically a way of syncing bookmarks across a bunch of different platforms (linux, mac, iOS, android) and browsers, and I didn't really need any of the fancier features like offline access. I had claude code one-shot a simple python web app that saves links to sqlite. I stuffed it in a docker container and hosted it on my home server. I set up a public portal using cloudflare tunnels to access it when I'm not on my LAN. I wrote a little bookmarklet that saves a page and is compatible with the various browsers I use.

  • skeaker ・ 9 hours ago

    If all you need is to save bookmarks, could you not simply sign into your browser and use the built in sync feature?

    • beala ・ 8 hours ago

      I'd love to do that, but I'm split between different browsers on different platforms. I'd also love to consolidate browsers so this isn't an issue, but iOS hobbles anything that's not Safari. Idk part of me thinks maybe I should just save links to obsidian or email them to myself, but I'd really like saving a link to be a single click.

nosrepa ・ 6 hours ago

I wish del.icio.us was still a thing.

  • justusthane ・ 6 hours ago

    It more or less is. It was purchased[0] by the one man operation Pinboard.in (by https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=idlewords), which has most of the same functionality.

    I was a Pinboard user and fan for many years, although I now have some concerns over the current health of the project, and have since moved away in favor of self-hosting Linkding.

edoceo ・ 9 hours ago

Ages ago I made a PWA (cras) that install on my phones and it's a share-target, so I've been adding to that.

Self hosted, like four PHP scripts and Sqlite.

visviva ・ 5 hours ago

I've been using Instapaper for many years to collect things to read later, and I use Pinboard to archive things that I've read and want to save.

inhumantsar ・ 9 hours ago

I wrote a plugin for Obsidian called Slurp which cleans a web page's html and converts it to markdown.

crinkly ・ 9 hours ago

If you have an iPhone, just use reader view, then print it but don’t select a printer and then share it. A PDF pops out. Then shove that in iCloud Drive or on your phone and read it later.

No services or set up involved, works reliably and you can keep the PDF forever.

  • eviks ・ an hour ago

    PDF is almost a non-digital format, so awful reading experience on devices with different screen sizes, no good content search or even basic copy&paste. And you get no tagging in this scheme. So a major downgrade.

  • mi_lk ・ 9 hours ago

    if you have an iPhone just use Safari's Reading List. It syncs with iCloud

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/108970

    • leakycap ・ 3 hours ago

      As much as I like Reading List, I think the key benefit of the PDF approach is...

      > works reliably and you can keep the PDF forever

      I have a ton of Apple devices and maybe my Reading List is just messed up, but it doesn't seem to keep an offline cache that is reliable in any way and would be hard to search or organize (unlike the PDFs)

jethronethro ・ 10 hours ago

wallabag. Actually been using it for years, with a short detour to the now-gone Omnivore.

nithinbekal ・ 8 hours ago

I replaced it with a tiny app that I built for myself, that just has the features of Pocket that I was using.

https://bukmark.me/

righthand ・ 9 hours ago

Bookmarks and Reader Mode.

4ad ・ 10 hours ago

Never used Pocket, but I moved to Raindrop.io (from Pinboard) for my bookmarks. I believe it can import Pocket.

vinnski ・ 5 hours ago

pinboard.in

I like the privacy first approach and the web 1.0 look. The tag cloud is pretty neat too

runjake ・ 7 hours ago

Readwise Reader and Obsidian Web Clipper.

Yanael ・ 6 hours ago

“Add to Reading List” on iOS Safari

rickette ・ 8 hours ago

For me Kobo support is the most important feature. But haven't found a substitute.

Also no word from Kobo (Rakuten) about this. Very disappointing.

  • ethan_smith ・ 7 hours ago

    Check out marklar423's comment above - they wrote a mod that redirects Kobo's Pocket API requests to their self-hosted Readeck instance, which might solve your Kobo integration problem.

pkaye ・ 9 hours ago

How about Karakeep if you want to run it locally. You can also have it tag your bookmarks automatically if you connect it to a LLM.

mynegation ・ 8 hours ago

Selhosted Wallabag + ReadKit app on iOS synchronized with Wallabag instance.

joshka ・ 8 hours ago

> But nothing came out of my research.

Seriously? I call bullshit. Type "pocket alternative" into your favorite search engine and you'll find a bunch of sites that recommend a few good alternatives. This is a pretty good question for reddit.com/r/selfhosted as opposed to hn, and it's well covered there.

https://openalternative.co/alternatives/pocket has a good list

https://github.com/search?q=bookmark+&type=repositories&s=st... is a good search as well that surfaces several good options (Karakeep, LinkWarden, Shiori, etc.

Personally, I went with Karakeep hosted as a docker container on my NAS, mostly because my pocket list is pretty much dump and forget and the UI and backend language looked the nicer of the top options.

  • eviks ・ an hour ago

    > Type "pocket alternative" into your favorite search engine and you'll find a bunch of sites that recommend a few good alternatives.

    Now our turn to call bs. There is no single result at the first few pages of your "favorite search engine" results that would give you a comprehensive comparison to Pocket, so you'll have to waste time with a few services to uncover how they fail at something basic Pocket has.

    And all these "alternatives" lists you cite are very primitive that won't help you uncover such issues

    > mostly because my pocket list is pretty much dump and forget

    Ok, but you know that some people actually want to use the service to, you know, read later instead of forgetting?

ElectronBadger ・ 9 hours ago

Some time ago I went to Vivaldi and since then I use its Reading List.

xnx ・ 10 hours ago

Instapaper

mbirth ・ 9 hours ago

I’m an Apple user and switched to GoodLinks at first but later migrated to AnyBox because the latter one can create PDF and WebArchive snapshots of the webpages.

constantinum ・ 4 hours ago

Personal setup: 1. Notion web clipper and Instapaper

Work: 1. raindrop.io 2. eagle.cool

floundy ・ 10 hours ago

I switched to Wallabag. 14 day free trial (an actual free trial that doesn't require CC info). There's a Pocket import function. I found it useful to filter the .csv that Pocket downloaded me into two .csv's, one for unread articles and one for archived articles, that I respectively imported into Wallabag as the import feature allowed for "mark as read" on imports.

About 10% of the articles I had didn't download due to Captcha requirements or paywalls that had been added since I had archived the article in Pocket. Once my articles imported to Wallabag, I filtered the unread list from 0 to 3 minutes which showed me all the ones that were paywalled or only saved snippets. I fixed them with the Wallabag browser extension, which has an option to save content direct from browser.

I now have Wallabag on my Android phone, Boox ereader (runs Android), and Kobo ereader (via KOReader). No issues and I'm liking it better than Pocket.

  • politelemon ・ 9 hours ago

    How does the import to kobo happen?

    • floundy ・ 8 hours ago

      I installed KOReader following these instructions: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/Installation-on-Ko...

      Wallabag plugin is built into KOReader. Launch KOReader by clicking the icon it puts in your Kobo library, then in the menus you will find Wallabag config. I added a "Wallabag Articles" folder for it to sync to.

      Note if you use a password manager, my password had a double quote which I believe messed with the .lua config password string, so I was getting connection errors.

      It took 80-90 mins to download 1200 unread articles to my Kobo. I haven't played with the auto sync function yet, so far I just manual sync before/after a reading session.

      • crabmusket ・ 3 hours ago

        I've really got to be brave and try KOReader one of these days. I used Pocket because it was the one service supported on my Kobo. I don't want to replace the hardware, but I am mildly annoyed by the locked down and slow software.