The 6 Best Web Highlighters in 2026 (Tested on Real Pages)

The short answer: for most people the best web highlighter in 2026 is Marqly — six colors plus notes, highlights that are still on the page when you come back, and a library you can search by meaning, from free. Readwise Reader wins if your highlights need to flow into Notion, Obsidian, or Anki. Hypothesis wins if you want completely free, open-source annotation. Weava is the budget research pick, Glasp the social one, and LINER has drifted away from highlighting entirely.

We judged all six on the four things that actually matter in daily use: does the highlight persist on the page when you revisit, how good are the colors and notes, can you export your work, and what does it cost. (New to the habit? Here’s how to highlight text on any website and actually keep it.)

Tool	Persists on the page?	Colors & notes	Export	Free tier	Paid price (verified Aug 2026)
Marqly	✅ Yes, on revisit	6 colors + notes	In-app library (no file export yet)	✅ Yes	$48/yr (~$4/mo) or $8/mo
Readwise Reader	✅ Yes, via extension	Highlights + notes & tags	✅ Best in class (Notion, Obsidian, more)	❌ 30-day trial	$9.99/mo annual, $12.99 monthly
Weava	✅ Yes	5 default colors; custom on Premium	Citations & docs	✅ Yes (~100MB)	$3.99/mo (reg. $7.99)
Hypothesis	✅ Yes, with extension	1 color + notes/replies	API/JSON	✅ Fully free	Free (paid LMS plans for schools)
Glasp	✅ Yes — public by default on free	Multiple colors + notes	Markdown/CSV, note apps	✅ Generous but public	Pro $15/mo ($150/yr)
LINER	✅ Yes	Colors + notes	Limited	⚠️ Limited, ad-supported	Pro $17.99/mo ($14.99/mo annual)

Prices checked against each tool’s own pricing page or announcement in August 2026 — Glasp and LINER both raised or restructured pricing this year, so older roundups are stale.

Marqly — best all-round highlighter (and the only one with meaning search)

Marqly’s highlighter does the fundamentals right: select text on any website, pick one of six colors, attach a note. When you revisit the page, your highlights are still there, painted on the live article. Every highlight also syncs to your Marqly library, where it’s auto-tagged and — the part no one else here offers — searchable by meaning. You can find a highlight weeks later by describing it (“the stat about sleep and reaction time”) without remembering the page it came from, because semantic search runs across titles, content, highlights, and even video transcripts.

Pros:

• 6 highlight colors + notes; highlights persist on the page when you return
• Highlights sync into a library with AI auto-tagging and semantic search
• Boards let you group highlights and links, and share a board as a public page
• Free tier, no card; Pro is $48/year (~$4/month) — the cheapest annual paid plan here after Weava
• Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari extensions (★4.8 on the Chrome Web Store)

Cons:

• No file export of highlights to Markdown/Notion — your highlights live in Marqly
• No spaced-repetition review system like Readwise’s
• Newer tool; smaller community than the incumbents

If your frustration is “I highlight things and never see them again,” this is the tool built around that exact problem — the same retrieval-first thinking behind our AI bookmark manager roundup.

Readwise Reader — best for export and spaced repetition

Reader is the power reader’s stack: a read-it-later app, RSS reader, and highlighter in one, with the Readwise review system underneath. Highlight on the web via the extension, in PDFs, in EPUBs, in newsletters — everything lands in one place, then flows out to Notion, Obsidian, Evernote, and friends. The daily review resurfaces old highlights so you actually retain them.

Pros:

• The best export pipeline in the category, full stop
• Highlights work across web, PDF, EPUB, email newsletters, and YouTube
• Spaced-repetition review turns highlights into retained knowledge
• 30-day free trial, no card required

Cons:

• No free tier after the trial: $9.99/month billed annually ($119.88/year), $12.99 monthly
• It’s a whole reading workflow, not a lightweight highlighter — real learning curve
• Overkill if you just want to mark up pages as you browse

Weava — best budget pick for students and researchers

Weava is built for research projects: highlights are filed into folders and sub-folders, PDFs are first-class citizens, and it generates citations — which is why it’s a staple in universities. The free plan includes unlimited highlights and notes with about 100MB of storage and five default colors; Premium (currently $3.99/month, regular $7.99) unlocks unlimited storage, custom colors, image saving, and collaboration, with a steep student discount on top.

Pros:

• Unlimited highlights and notes on the free plan
• Strong PDF highlighting and citation support
• Cheapest paid upgrade in this roundup at the current $3.99/month
• Folder/sub-folder structure suits paper-writing workflows

Cons:

• 100MB free storage cap fills up fast with PDFs
• Organization is manual folders — no AI tagging, no meaning search
• The interface is functional rather than pleasant; updates are infrequent

Hypothesis — best fully free (and open source)

Hypothesis is a nonprofit, open-source annotation layer for the entire web. Install the extension, highlight, and annotate — publicly, privately, or within a group. Educators use it heavily for social reading, and the public layer means you can see what others annotated on the same page. It is completely free for individual use; the business model is paid LMS integrations for schools.

Pros:

• 100% free for individuals, open source, nonprofit-backed
• Public annotation and group discussion are unique — annotate with people
• Works on web pages, PDFs, and EPUBs
• Annotations persist and are anchored robustly to the text

Cons:

• One highlight color — organization happens through tags and groups, not color
• Export is thin: API/JSON and community scripts rather than one-click files
• The social/academic framing is noise if you just want private markup

Glasp — best for sharing what you highlight

Glasp is a social highlighter: your highlights build a public profile that others can follow, like a Goodreads for web reading. The free plan is generous — but highlights are public by default, and private highlighting sits behind the paid plan. Glasp also bundles YouTube summaries and AI chat. Note the May 2026 price increase: Pro is now $15/month or $150/year, and the top Unlimited tier runs $360/year.

Pros:

• Unlimited public highlights free; good color and note support
• Exports to Markdown/CSV and plays well with note apps
• The social graph genuinely surfaces interesting reading from people you follow
• Bundled YouTube summaries (3 basic per day free)

Cons:

• Public-by-default is a serious caveat — private highlighting costs $15/month
• Pricing jumped ~25% in May 2026
• The app is increasingly an AI/social bundle; pure highlighting is a shrinking share of it

LINER — the former favorite that pivoted away

LINER was once the default answer to “web highlighter.” In 2026 it’s primarily an AI search assistant — the pricing page leads with AI models, agent credits, and file uploads, not highlighting. Highlighting still works and syncs, but the free plan is limited and ad-supported, and Pro costs $17.99/month ($14.99/month billed annually) — nearly 4.5× Marqly’s annual rate, for a product whose center of gravity is now elsewhere.

Pros:

• Mature, reliable highlight engine with colors and notes
• The AI search assistant is genuinely capable if you want that too
• Cross-device sync including mobile apps

Cons:

• Most expensive tool in this roundup, priced for AI search, not highlighting
• Free plan is restrictive and shows ads
• Export options are limited; the product’s roadmap is visibly not about highlighting

How to choose

1. You highlight to find things again later → Marqly. Persistence plus semantic search over every highlight is the combination nobody else here has, and it starts free.
2. Your highlights must end up in Notion/Obsidian/Anki → Readwise Reader. Pay the $9.99/month; the pipeline is worth it for that workflow.
3. You’re a student on a budget writing papers → Weava, with the student discount.
4. You want free forever and like the idea of annotating with others → Hypothesis.
5. You want your reading to be social → Glasp — just understand free means public.
6. You want an AI research assistant that also highlights → LINER, if the price fits.

The pattern across the category: capture is solved, retrieval isn’t. Any of these tools will paint text yellow. The question worth paying for is whether you’ll ever see that highlight again — which is the same problem we dig into in our guide to highlighting text on any website and the reason Marqly treats every highlight as something you should be able to find by meaning, not memory.

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All prices verified against official pricing pages in August 2026. We’ll update this comparison as plans change.