The 10 best Pocket alternatives in 2026, free and paid

Pocket is gone, the export window is closed, and "just use Raindrop" is only the right answer for some people. Here's the map.

Updated August 2026 · by Ashray Chowdhry, Trove's founder

Quick picks

What actually happened to Pocket

Mozilla shut Pocket down on July 8, 2025. The export window closed in November 2025, and that was the one chance to download years of saves. If you're arriving here now, wondering whether you can still get your data out: the blunt answer is no. The archive tool is offline and there's no back door.

That stings, but it should also shape how you choose a replacement. Nearly two decades of "save it to Pocket" ended with a deadline most people missed. So whatever you pick next, make data export a first-class requirement, not a nice-to-have. Every recommendation below is judged partly on how easily you can leave it.

How these were judged

No lab and no scorecard. Each app here is weighed on its documented features and its published price as of August 2026, against what saving actually looks like now: mostly videos whose useful part is spoken rather than written. The axes that matter are capture friction, whether the app can see inside what you saved, how retrieval holds up past a few hundred saves, and export. Prices in this category move, so confirm the ones you care about before you pay. I build Trove, which is #7, so read that entry knowing it.

For pure article readers

1. Instapaper: the minimalist free pick

Instapaper is the closest thing to classic Pocket energy: a quiet, text-first reading queue that's been doing one job well since 2008. Saving is instant, typography is lovely, and the free tier covers the core experience. Premium adds full-text search and unlimited notes.

It's an article app to its bones, though. Save a TikTok or a product page to Instapaper and you get a sad little link card it can't do anything with.

2. Readwise Reader: the power pick

Reader is the maximalist answer: articles, PDFs, newsletters, RSS, YouTube transcripts, and a genuinely great highlighting system that feeds a spaced-repetition review loop. Reader comes with the full Readwise plan, $9.99 a month billed annually (about $120 a year) or $12.99 month to month; the cheaper Lite plan doesn't include Reader, and there's no free tier, only a 30-day trial.

That's real money, and the feature density is overkill if all you want is a reading list. There's a learning curve too, because Reader wants to be a system rather than an app.

For visual bookmarkers

3. Raindrop.io: the default migration

Raindrop is what most Pocket refugees actually chose, and for good reason: unlimited bookmarks free, collections and tags that feel familiar, apps everywhere, and painless import/export. It treats bookmarks as visual cards, which suits recipe links and shopping pages better than a text-only queue.

What it doesn't do is understand anything. Raindrop can't tell you what was said inside a saved video, and its full-text search (Pro) covers pages, not video content. It's a filing cabinet — a very good one.

4. mymind: the beautiful private one

mymind saves everything into a gorgeous visual stream with zero folders and does the tagging for you. It has a strong privacy stance and real charm. Plans start at about $5 a month and climb to roughly $7–13 for the tiers with the AI features, and there's no free tier beyond the trial.

What holds it back is the price and the deliberate lack of structure. "Just trust the search" suits people who'd rather ask than browse, and unnerves everyone else. There's a fuller breakdown in the mymind alternatives guide.

For self-hosters

5. Wallabag: open-source read-it-later

Wallabag is the community's Pocket: self-hosted or cheaply hosted, open source, with parsing, tagging, and offline reading. Your data lives on your server, which makes the Pocket ending structurally impossible to repeat.

6. Karakeep: open-source with AI tagging

Karakeep (formerly Hoarder) adds automatic AI tagging to the self-hosted bookmark stack. It's the tinkerer's dream: bring your own server and your own AI key, own every byte.

What you give up, in both cases: you're the sysadmin. Updates, backups, and uptime are your job, which is either the point or a dealbreaker.

For people whose "read it later" became "watch it later"

Here's the uncomfortable truth about replacing Pocket in 2026: for a lot of us, the thing we save most isn't articles anymore. It's a recipe someone talks through on TikTok, a café in a Reel, a product in a post, alongside the occasional long-read. Article apps can't hold that mix, and bookmark managers hold it without understanding it.

7. Trove — for saves that answer back

That gap is why we built Trove. Share anything to it (TikToks, Reels, YouTube, articles, products, songs) and it reads the whole thing: watches and transcribes video, pulls out the recipe or the place or the product, summarizes it, and files it automatically. Retrieval is then a question rather than a scroll. Ask "what was that pour-over method I saved?" and the answer comes back out of your own saves, with the exact one cited.

Since it's my own app, weigh this entry accordingly. It's iPhone-only (iOS 17+). Capture is the share sheet, or you can copy a link anywhere and open Trove, which spots what's on your clipboard and offers to keep it — useful when you're clearing a backlog and re-sharing hundreds of old saves would take all evening. The download is free with 100 free credits for summaries and questions, after which unlimited AI costs $2.99/month (or $19.99/year). If your saves are 95% long-form articles, Instapaper or Reader will serve you better. If they look like most people's saves now, video-heavy and mixed and half-forgotten, this is the one built for that.

Rounding out the ten

8. GoodLinks: one-time purchase, Apple-native

A tidy read-later app for the Apple ecosystem with a one-time price instead of a subscription. It runs on iOS and Mac only, and it's a reading app rather than a research tool.

9. Matter: reading with polish

Still going in 2026, and still the slickest of the modern readers: audio versions of articles, clean highlighting, a free tier with Premium at roughly $60 a year. The best features sit on the paid side, and it's article-centric like Instapaper.

10. Dewey: for backing up social saves

Dewey bulk-backs-up your saved posts from social platforms, which helps if your problem is "I have 3,000 TikTok favorites and I want a copy." As of this writing it archives and organizes without reading or understanding the content, on a subscription. It's a small product, so check it's still shipping before you build a workflow on it.

Full comparison

If your Pocket was full of more than articles

Trove reads everything you save — videos included — and answers questions from your own library, citing the exact save.

Free download · 100 free credits · Pro from $2.99/mo · iPhone, iOS 17+