The best Readwise alternatives in 2026
Seven Readwise alternatives compared honestly: Eden, Screvi, Glasp, Matter, Instapaper, Recall, and the free DIY route, with verified pricing and trade-offs.
Readwise is the best-known way to collect highlights in one place, and the reasons people look for an alternative are consistent: $119.88 a year is real money for reading software, the trial takes a card and auto-charges, and after watching Pocket and Omnivore die, people want their reading stack somewhere durable. The right alternative depends on what the highlights are for: remembering (Screvi, Recall), reading (Matter, Instapaper), or making things (that's where Eden comes in).
Full disclosure: we make Eden, which is first on this list. We explain exactly who it is for and who should pick something else. Every price below was checked against the vendor's own pricing page in August 2026.
The short version
| Tool | Best for | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Eden | Turning highlights and saves into content | Free plan; Kindle sync from $9/mo |
| Screvi | Cheapest direct Readwise clone, spaced repetition | From $4.99/mo |
| Glasp | Free Kindle export and daily review email | Free (public highlights); Pro $12.50/mo |
| Matter | A polished read-it-later app (Apple only) | Free core; Premium $8/mo |
| Instapaper | The reliable classic | Free (5 notes/mo); Premium $5.99/mo |
| Recall | AI summaries plus quiz-style review | Free tier; Plus $10/mo |
| DIY free | Obsidian plugin, Kindle app export | $0 |
Why people leave Readwise
Readwise itself is good software; the full product is $9.99/mo billed annually ($12.99 month-to-month), with a $5.59/mo Lite tier that drops the Reader app and the Notion/Obsidian export. The friction people cite: no permanent free tier, a 30-day trial that wants a card and auto-charges, and a price that's easy to justify for heavy researchers and hard for everyone else.
There's also a trust wound in this category. Pocket was shut down by Mozilla in 2025 and deleted everyone's data after an export window; Omnivore, the free open-source darling, gave users 14 days' notice before deleting everything when its team was acqui-hired in 2024. People shopping this category in 2026 ask a fair question: will this tool exist in three years, and can I get my data out?
One more thing worth naming: what are the highlights for? Readwise's answer is remembering, via its Daily Review. If your answer is "making things with them," none of the classic alternatives address it, and that's the gap Eden fills.
1. Eden
Eden is the pick when highlights are raw material rather than keepsakes. It syncs your Kindle highlights directly from Amazon, no Readwise account needed, on an automatic daily schedule, and if you already have years of highlights in Readwise, Eden imports from it too. Books land in your library with covers, per-book controls, and search.
The difference is what sits next to them. Eden's library also holds saved X posts (including your imported bookmarks), articles, YouTube videos with transcripts, PDFs, and newsletters, and you can highlight passages in anything you save. So the Naval quote, the thread that nailed a framing, and the podcast insight live in one searchable place, organized onto boards next to where you write. From there, Eden's AI drafts posts from any of it in your voice, and the scheduler publishes to eight platforms. Highlight on Monday, post by Tuesday: the full loop is turning Kindle highlights into content.
Honest trade-offs: Eden has no spaced-repetition review (if daily flashcard-style resurfacing is your core habit, Screvi or Readwise serve it better), and Kindle/Readwise sync starts on the $9/mo Personal plan rather than free. The free plan does let you start the library side: 100 saved items, no card.
Price: free plan; Kindle and Readwise sync from $9/mo. Best for: creators and writers whose highlights should become drafts, not just memories.
2. Screvi
Screvi is the direct "Readwise, but cheaper" play: Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, PDF, web, X, and YouTube capture, a daily review with real SM-2 spaced repetition (email and widget), AI search, and a one-click import from Readwise itself. From $4.99/mo with a 14-day no-card trial, iOS and Android apps, and a lifetime deal running.
It's a young product from a small team, which is the durability question to weigh against the price. But feature-for-feature against Readwise's core, it's the strongest cheap clone.
Price: from $4.99/mo. Best for: the Readwise experience at half the price.
3. Glasp
Glasp does two things genuinely free: unlimited Kindle highlight import/export (it sidesteps the clipping caps that truncate Amazon's own notebook export) and a Daily Kindle Review email. The catch is its model: Glasp is a social highlighting network, and on the free plan your highlights are public. Private highlights and the AI features (YouTube summaries, PDF chat, daily Notion sync) sit on Pro at $12.50/mo, which is Readwise money.
Price: free with public highlights; Pro $12.50/mo. Best for: free Kindle export, if public-by-default doesn't bother you.
4. Matter
Matter is the best pure read-it-later replacement: a beautiful reader with text-to-speech, podcast transcription, and an AI co-reader, with the core saving and reading free forever and Premium at $8/mo. Two hard limits: it's iOS, Mac, and web only, with no Android ever, and it's much weaker than Readwise on the highlight-review and Kindle side. It replaces Reader, not Readwise classic.
Price: free core; Premium $8/mo ($60/yr). Best for: Apple users who mostly want a great reading app.
5. Instapaper
Instapaper has outlived two generations of competitors, which is itself a feature after the Pocket and Omnivore funerals. Free gets unlimited saves and folders but only 5 notes/highlights a month; Premium at $5.99/mo ($59.99/yr) unlocks unlimited highlights, full-text search, permanent archive, and send-to-Kindle. No daily review, no Kindle import, no AI. It's a hammer, and it's never once broken.
Price: free (5 highlights/mo); Premium $5.99/mo. Best for: dependable read-it-later with light highlighting.
6. Recall
Recall approaches the problem as an AI knowledge base: save articles, YouTube videos, and PDFs, get AI summaries, and review with quiz-style spaced repetition. The free tier includes unlimited saves and 10 AI summaries a month; Plus at $10/mo unlocks the rest. It's summarize-and-quiz rather than highlight-and-sync: no Kindle sync at its core, so it complements a books workflow more than it replaces one.
Price: free tier; Plus $10/mo. Best for: people who want AI summaries and active recall over verbatim highlights.
7. The free DIY lane
If the job is just "get my Kindle highlights out for $0": the Obsidian Kindle Highlights plugin syncs your Amazon notebook (or a My Clippings.txt file) straight into your vault with smart re-sync; the Kindle app's per-book Share → Export Notes emails a spreadsheet; Clippings.io imports free (exports need $1.99/mo). All books-only, all manual-ish, all genuinely free. What you give up is everything around the highlights: sync cadence, review, search across sources, and any path from highlight to output.
Price: $0. Best for: Obsidian users and one-time exports.
How to choose
- Choose Eden if your highlights should end up in published work: it's the only option here where Kindle books, social saves, articles, and videos share one library that feeds an AI writer and a scheduler.
- Choose Screvi if you want Readwise's remember-what-you-read loop at half the price.
- Choose Glasp if free Kindle export matters most and public highlights are fine.
- Choose Matter or Instapaper if the reading app is the point.
- Choose Recall if you'd rather be quizzed than re-read.
- Stay with Readwise if the Daily Review habit is load-bearing and the Reader app earns its keep; it remains the most complete remember-focused product.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free Readwise alternative?
For Kindle export specifically: Glasp (public highlights) or the Obsidian plugin. For a lasting free tier with highlights, Recall and Raindrop.io (unlimited free highlights, bookmarks-focused) are the real ones; most "free" alternatives cap quickly, like Instapaper's 5 notes a month. Eden's free plan covers the save-and-organize side; Kindle sync starts on its $9/mo plan.
What happened to Omnivore and Pocket?
Both are gone. Omnivore shut down with 14 days' notice in late 2024 when its team joined ElevenLabs; Pocket was closed by Mozilla in 2025 and its data deleted after an export window. Their deaths are why export freedom should be a hard requirement for whatever you pick next.
Can I import my existing Readwise highlights?
Into Eden, yes: connect Readwise and your library comes over. Screvi also imports from Readwise directly. Readwise itself exports to Notion, Obsidian, Markdown, and CSV, so your archive is portable wherever you go.
Does anything turn highlights into social posts?
That's Eden's lane specifically. Saved highlights sit on boards next to your drafts, the AI writes from them in your voice, and the scheduler publishes the result. The classic Readwise alternatives all stop at storage and review.
If your highlights folder is really a drafts folder in denial, start there: turn your Kindle highlights into content, or try Eden free.