Pocket alternatives in 2026
Written by the developer of LaterVault, which is one of the options below. I have tried to be straight about where it loses.
Pocket closed in July 2025 and took a lot of reading lists with it. Omnivore closed the year before that. If you saved articles in either one, you have already learned the lesson the hard way: a reading list that lives on a company server is only as permanent as that company's interest in running it.
So the useful way to compare what is left is not by feature lists. It is by asking one question about each option: if this company stopped caring tomorrow, what happens to my articles? There are only three answers, and every tool below is one of them.
The three kinds of read-it-later app
On someone else's server. You make an account, your articles live in their database, you read through their apps. This is what Pocket was. It buys you real things: your list follows you to your phone, your tablet, and any borrowed computer. It costs you the thing Pocket users just found out about.
On your own server. Open source, self-hosted. Nobody can switch it off but you, and you still get sync across devices. The price is that you are now running a server, with the backups, updates and broken evenings that implies.
On your own device. The articles sit in your browser's own storage. Nothing to shut down, nothing to pay monthly, no account to lose access to. The honest cost is that your reading list stays on the machine where you saved it.
The options
| Tool | Keeps the article text | Where your articles live | Account | Cost | Phone app |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LaterVault | Yes | Your browser, on your device | No | Free, optional one-time $12 | No |
| Instapaper | Yes | Their server | Yes | Free tier, paid subscription | Yes |
| Readwise Reader | Yes | Their server | Yes | Subscription | Yes |
| Raindrop.io | Yes | Their server | Yes | Free tier, paid subscription | Yes |
| Wallabag | Yes | A server you run, or their hosting | Yes | Free self-hosted, paid hosted | Yes |
| Karakeep | Yes | A server you run | Yes | Free self-hosted | Yes |
| Chrome Reading List | No, link only | Google's server, via your Google account | Yes | Free | Yes |
| Closed July 2025 | |||||
| Omnivore | Closed 2024 |
A word about Chrome's Reading List, because it is free, it syncs, it has a phone app, and you already have it. On paper it looks like the easy answer.
It saves the link and nothing else. When a page goes down, gets rewritten, or moves behind a paywall, that entry becomes a dead link, and there is no offline copy because nothing was ever stored on your machine. It is a queue of things to open, not a library of things you keep.
It also sits in your Google account, on Google's server. If you are reading this page, a company decision just cost you a reading list. Moving it into a different company's account does not change the arrangement that caused that.
Which one to pick
If you read on your phone as much as your computer, pick Instapaper, Readwise Reader or Raindrop. Sync across devices is the whole reason those products exist and none of the local options can match it. Go in knowing what you are accepting, and export your library once in a while.
If you already run a home server, Wallabag and Karakeep give you sync and permanence at the same time. That is the best answer available if you are willing to be the sysadmin.
If you mostly read at a desktop browser and what you actually want is for this to never happen again, a local library is the simplest thing that works. That is what I built LaterVault to be.
What LaterVault is
What it does
- Save any page with one click, a right-click, or a keyboard shortcut
- Articles are cleaned into a reader view with the same Readability engine Firefox uses
- Full text search across everything you have saved
- Saved articles open with no connection, because the text is already on your disk
- Imports a Pocket export (HTML or CSV) or Omnivore JSON, then fetches the readable text of every old link, so a pile of dead bookmarks becomes a real archive
- Exports the whole library to plain JSON whenever you want
- No account, no server of mine, no analytics. The free version sends nothing anywhere.
What it does not do
- No phone app. It is a browser extension for desktop Chrome, Edge and Firefox. If you save on your laptop, it is on your laptop.
- No sync between your own devices. Moving your library to another computer means exporting a file and importing it there.
- No shared or public lists, no recommendations, no social layer.
- Clearing your browser data can delete it, the same as any site storage. That is what the export and the scheduled backups are for.
Those limits are not a roadmap I am apologising for. They follow directly from having no server, which is also the reason nobody can take your library away. You are picking one or the other.
Moving a Pocket export in
If you pulled your data out before Pocket's export window closed, you have a zip with an HTML or CSV file inside. Unzip it, install LaterVault, open the library, choose Import, and select that file. Your saves come in with their read status and tags. They arrive as links, and a banner then offers to download the readable text of each one, which is the step that turns an old Pocket export into something you can still read offline in five years.
Try it
The core is free and stays free. There is a one-time $12 Pro unlock for tags, highlights and notes, extra reading themes, and scheduled local backups. No subscription, and I am not going to paywall the part that keeps your data safe.
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