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Best Glasp alternatives (2026)

Glasp is a social web highlighter founded in San Francisco in 2021 by Kazuki Nakayashiki and Kei Watanabe. Its extension highlights text on web pages and PDFs, attaches notes, and — the distinctive part — publishes highlights to a public profile where a community feed lets people learn from each other's reading. The company also makes the popular YouTube Summary extension, and paid plans add advanced YouTube summaries, channel tracking, PDF chat, audio transcription, and an AI clone that answers questions from your highlights. AI-suggested tags help organize saves, and imports cover Pocket, Instapaper, Medium, Readwise, and Kindle. Exports are strong: Markdown, CSV, HTML, and JSON, plus Notion auto-sync, an Obsidian plugin, and a developer API with an MCP connector. Extensions ship for Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox alongside iOS and Android apps rebuilt in 2026. Highlighting is free and unlimited but public; private highlights require Pro at $150 a year, with an Unlimited tier at $360. Below are the strongest alternatives in 2026, ranked honestly: each covers a different mix of jobs, and the right one depends on yours.

The best Glasp alternatives, ranked

  1. #1

    Marqly

    The AI bookmark manager — save once, find it instantly

    Marqly covers the core job — save, organize, retrieve — and adds semantic search (find by meaning), full-text search, save all open tabs that Glasp doesn't offer. Every save is auto-tagged and summarized, and semantic search finds things by meaning. Free tier, no card required.

    • Semantic search finds saves by meaning — describe what you remember, no exact titles needed
    • AI tags and summarizes every save automatically, so nothing needs manual filing
    • YouTube AI card puts summaries, transcript, and Q&A right on the watch page

    Pricing: Marqly has a free tier; paid plans are $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month. 7-day free trial of Pro. Free tier needs no card; Pro unlocks chat with saves and video chat.

    Try Marqly free
  2. #2

    LINER

    Citation-backed AI search suite that grew out of a web highlighter

    Compelling as a citation-first AI research assistant; hard to recommend as a highlighter, which is now an afterthought. Researchers and students who want AI search answers they can verify line by line, with academic agents on tap — more than they want a highlighting library.

    • Accuracy-focused AI search with line-by-line citations — every claim in an answer links to its source
    • Unlimited AI search even on the free plan; the core search isn't credit-gated
    • Serious academic tooling in Liner Scholar: literature review, citation recommendation, and hypothesis agents

    Pricing: LINER has a free tier; paid plans are Pro $17.99/month or $14.99/month billed annually; Max $35.99/month or $29.99/month billed annually; Team $26.99/seat/month (annual). Free tier includes unlimited highlighting and unlimited AI search, but shows ads inside answers and grants 0 agent credits. A card-required trial exists but its length isn't published. Agent credits don't roll over month to month.

    Marqly vs LINER →
  3. #3

    Weava

    Web and PDF highlighter built for student research

    Still the most student-shaped free highlighter, but the stalled development makes it hard to recommend for anything you can't afford to lose. Students on a budget who need to highlight PDFs and web pages side by side and generate citations — and can tolerate an aging, minimally maintained tool.

    • Highlights both web pages and PDFs in one tool — still rare among highlighters
    • Automatic citation generation in APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard formats, built for essay and paper workflows
    • Folder and sub-folder organization with color-coded filtering suits structured literature reviews

    Pricing: Weava has a free tier; paid plans are $3.99/month billed annually or $7.99/month billed monthly. Free tier includes unlimited highlights and notes but caps storage at 100 MB, blocks sub-folders, and shows ads. Students get 70% off Premium via an education email. No trial advertised. Pricing page appears untouched since ~2022, so verify billing before subscribing.

    Marqly vs Weava →
  4. #4

    Raindrop.io

    The all-in-one bookmark manager

    The best traditional bookmark filing cabinet — organization is world-class, but finding things still depends on your own tags and keywords. Collectors and visual organizers who file thousands of bookmarks into structured collections and want polished apps everywhere without paying.

    • One of the most generous free plans anywhere: unlimited bookmarks, collections, and highlights
    • Polished apps on every platform — web, Mac, iOS, Android, and all major browser extensions
    • Strong visual organization with covers, nested collections, and multiple view modes

    Pricing: Raindrop.io has a free tier; paid plans are $28/year or $3/month (Pro; App Store pricing $27.99/year, $2.99/month). The free plan is unusually generous — unlimited bookmarks, collections, highlights, and devices. Pro adds full-text search, AI suggestions, permanent page copies, reminders, annotations, and daily backups. Yearly billing is about 20% cheaper than monthly.

    Marqly vs Raindrop.io →
  5. #5

    Instapaper

    The original read-it-later app, saving articles since 2008

    Still the purest reading experience in the category; choose it for distraction-free reading, not for organizing or resurfacing a large library. Long-form readers who want a quiet, beautifully typeset queue of articles — especially Kindle owners and anyone migrating a Pocket export.

    • The cleanest, most typography-focused reading view in the category, refined since 2008
    • Reliable offline reading on iPhone, iPad, and Android
    • Send-to-Kindle delivery and a PDF reader for Premium subscribers

    Pricing: Instapaper has a free tier; paid plans are $5.99/month or $59.99/year (Premium). Premium doubled in price in late 2023 (from $3/month, $30/year). The free tier covers unlimited saving and offline reading; Premium adds full-text search, a permanent archive, unlimited notes, text-to-speech playlists, speed reading, and send-to-Kindle.

    Marqly vs Instapaper →
  6. #6

    Readwise Reader

    The power-reader app that folds articles, RSS, newsletters, PDFs, and highlights into one inbox

    The most powerful reading tool on the market — worth the subscription for heavy readers, overkill and overpriced for casual bookmarking. Serious readers and note-takers who consume large volumes across articles, newsletters, PDFs, and video, and want highlights flowing into Notion or Obsidian.

    • Handles every content type in one inbox: articles, RSS, newsletters, PDFs, ePubs, YouTube videos, and Twitter threads
    • Ghostreader AI can summarize documents, define terms, and answer questions about what you're reading
    • YouTube videos get synced transcripts you can read, highlight, and query

    Pricing: Readwise Reader costs $9.99/month billed annually ($119.88/year) or $12.99/month billed monthly (Full plan). 30-day free trial. No permanent free tier — after the 30-day trial you must subscribe. Reader is only included in the Full plan; the cheaper Lite plan ($5.59/month billed annually) covers classic Readwise highlight syncing without the Reader app.

    Marqly vs Readwise Reader →

Marqly vs Glasp, feature by feature

Feature MarqlyGlasp
AI auto-tagging
Semantic search (find by meaning)
AI summaries
YouTube AI (summary, chat, transcript)
Chat with your saves
Web highlighter
Notes on highlights
Save page as PDF
Full-text search
Save all open tabs
Public sharing (boards/collections)
Pocket import
Browser bookmarks import
Offline reading
iOS app
Android app
Browser extension
Free tier
Public API
Self-hostable
Price Free · $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month Free · Pro $15/month or $150/year; Unlimited $36/month or $360/year
Marqly
Free · $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month
Glasp
Free · Pro $15/month or $150/year; Unlimited $36/month or $360/year

Glasp alternatives FAQ

Is Glasp free?

Highlighting is free and unlimited — but public. The free plan also includes 3 basic YouTube summaries a day, 30 PDF uploads, and 20 PDF chat messages a month. Private highlights, advanced YouTube summaries, and Notion auto-sync require Pro at $15/month or $150/year; a heavier Unlimited tier runs $36/month or $360/year. Students get a discount on Pro yearly with an academic email.

Is Glasp still maintained?

Yes, actively. In 2026 alone Glasp rebuilt its iOS and Android apps from the ground up, shipped AI auto-tag suggestions, and updated pricing — all documented on its official blog. The site claims over a million users. The caveat is team size: Glasp is run by its two co-founders, so support bandwidth and long-term velocity depend on a very small crew.

What is the best Glasp alternative?

If you want private highlighting without a subscription, LINER and Weava both offer it in some form, with trade-offs. Marqly is a strong option when highlights are part of a bigger save-and-find workflow: six-color private highlights that persist on the page, plus AI auto-tagging, summaries, and semantic search across everything you save. Readwise Reader fits best for heavy read-it-later use.

Does Glasp work on iPhone?

Yes, well. Glasp has a native iOS app — rebuilt in 2026 with a reader and widgets — plus a Safari extension that highlights inside mobile Safari, which almost no competitor offers. Everything syncs with the desktop extensions and web app. There's also an Android app, making Glasp one of the most mobile-complete highlighters available.

Can I export my data from Glasp?

Yes — export is one of Glasp's strengths. Highlights and notes export as Markdown, CSV, HTML, or JSON, and integrations push them automatically to Notion (paid, daily sync), Obsidian via an official plugin, Readwise, Roam, and Logseq. Kindle highlights export as TXT, CSV, or Markdown. A developer API and MCP connector cover programmatic access.