Marqly vs Diigo: Which is better? (2026)
Executive verdict & bottom line
- Choose Marqly if — Anyone who saves more than they can organize — researchers, students, and heavy readers who want to find things again by describing them. It adds AI auto-tagging, semantic search (find by meaning), AI summaries, YouTube AI (summary, chat, transcript) that Diigo doesn't offer.
- Choose Diigo if — Students, teachers, and researchers who need to highlight and annotate web pages collaboratively on a small budget. It offers public API, which Marqly doesn't.
Looking at the broader market? See our comprehensive benchmark of the best bookmark managers in 2026.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Marqly | Diigo |
|---|---|---|
| AI auto-tagging | ✓ | — |
| Semantic search (find by meaning) | ✓ | — |
| AI summaries | ✓ | — |
| YouTube AI (summary, chat, transcript) | ✓ | — |
| AI Q&A over 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 · $72/year (≈$6/mo) or $9/month | Free · Standard $40/year; Professional $59/year; Business $10/user/month |
- Marqly
- Free · $72/year (≈$6/mo) or $9/month
- Diigo
- Free · Standard $40/year; Professional $59/year; Business $10/user/month
Pricing
- Marqly: Marqly has a free tier; paid plans are $72/year (≈$6/mo) or $9/month. 7-day free trial of Pro. Free tier needs no card and stores up to 2,000 bookmarks with search across your whole library; every AI feature is Pro — auto-tagging, summaries, semantic search, AI Q&A over saves and video chat.
- Diigo: Diigo has a free tier; paid plans are Standard $40/year; Professional $59/year; Business $10/user/month. The free plan is ad-supported and caps lifetime bookmarks and highlights — Diigo's own pages state the limit inconsistently (500–1,000 bookmarks, 100–200 highlights). Cached pages, PDF annotation, and full-text search are paid features. A free Teacher plan exists for verified educators.
About Diigo
Diigo is a veteran bookmarking and web-annotation service aimed at research: its extension highlights text in multiple colors directly on live pages, attaches sticky notes, and files everything into a searchable library with tags and Outliners for structuring findings. Groups add shared libraries and collaborative annotation, and a free Teacher console made it a staple in classrooms. Paid plans are cheap — Standard at $40 a year adds unlimited highlights, server-side cached copies of saved pages, full-text search, and PDF annotation, with Professional at $59 a year lifting the remaining caps. The free tier is ad-supported and caps total bookmarks and highlights. Diigo still works, but shows its age: the interface predates modern design trends, the Chrome extension last updated in 2024, the Android app left Google Play the same year, and the official blog is offline. A web API and CSV, HTML, and RSS exports keep data portable.
Where Diigo wins
- Multi-color highlighting and sticky notes directly on live web pages — still its core strength
- Groups enable shared libraries and collaborative annotation, popular in education
- Free Teacher plan with a class console for verified educators
- Outliners let you structure highlights and links into research documents
- Cheap paid plans: $40/year adds unlimited highlights, cached pages, full-text search, and PDF annotation
- Data stays portable via CSV, HTML, and RSS export plus a web API
Where Diigo falls short
- Visibly neglected: the Chrome extension last updated in 2024, the Android app left Google Play, and the official blog domain is dead
- No AI of any kind — no auto-tagging, summaries, or semantic search
- Dated interface that predates modern design conventions
- Full-text search and cached pages are paywalled, and the free tier shows ads
- Its own pricing pages contradict each other on free-plan limits
About Marqly
Marqly is an AI bookmark manager built around a browser extension for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari, plus a web app, an iOS app, and an Android app. On Pro, every save is tagged and summarized automatically and semantic search retrieves a bookmark by describing what you remember instead of matching exact keywords; the free tier is the manual half — saving, boards, highlights and keyword search. On YouTube, an AI card next to the player adds a streaming summary, a playback-synced transcript, and transcript-grounded chat. A built-in highlighter marks up any website in six colors with notes that persist across visits, boards collect links and highlights into shareable public pages, and any page can be captured as a clean PDF locally in the browser. Imports from Pocket, Raindrop, and standard browser bookmark exports make switching quick. A free tier requires no card and stores up to 2,000 bookmarks with search across your whole library; Pro lifts that cap to unlimited and adds full AI capabilities for $72/year (with $39 first-year offer) or $9/month with a 7-day trial.
Where Marqly wins
- 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
- Highlights in 6 colors persist on the page itself and sync to your library
- Screen-faithful save-as-PDF handled locally in the browser
- One-click imports from Pocket, Raindrop, and browser bookmark files
Where Marqly falls short
- Free tier stores up to 2,000 bookmarks (without AI); unlimited bookmarks and all AI capabilities require Pro
- No AI at all on the free tier — auto-tagging, summaries, semantic search and chat are all Pro
- Lifetime plans (AppSumo, 2022-24) save, browse and search without limit, but include no AI
- No offline reading mode
- No public API or self-hosting option
The core difference: Finding saves when you forgot the exact title
The most frequent pain point with traditional bookmark tools like Diigo is search failure. When you save hundreds of links and later only remember the concept—not the exact title or tag—keyword matching comes up empty. Marqly indexes the actual meaning of your bookmarks, articles, highlights, and YouTube transcripts with semantic embeddings.
Keyword & Tag Matching
Matches titles, tags, and exact strings. If you paraphrase or forget the exact wording, the save stays hidden.
"study about sleep cycles and focus"Semantic AI Search
Understands natural-language concepts. Find any bookmark by describing what you remember, just like asking a human colleague.
"study about sleep cycles and focus"Switching from Diigo to Marqly
Yes. Export your data from Diigo (most tools export standard bookmark HTML or CSV), then import the file into Marqly — AI tags everything automatically and semantic search works across all of it.
Marqly vs Diigo FAQ
Which is better, Marqly or Diigo?
It depends on the job. Diigo is a better fit if you need public API. Marqly wins when finding saves again matters most: it adds AI auto-tagging, semantic search (find by meaning), AI summaries on top of standard bookmarking, so you can retrieve any save by describing it.
Is Diigo free?
Diigo has a free tier; paid plans are Standard $40/year; Professional $59/year; Business $10/user/month. The free plan is ad-supported and caps lifetime bookmarks and highlights — Diigo's own pages state the limit inconsistently (500–1,000 bookmarks, 100–200 highlights). Cached pages, PDF annotation, and full-text search are paid features. A free Teacher plan exists for verified educators.
Can I switch from Diigo to Marqly?
Yes. Export your data from Diigo (most tools export standard bookmark HTML or CSV), then import the file into Marqly — AI tags everything automatically and semantic search works across all of it.
Does Diigo have AI search?
Diigo does not offer AI organization features — saving, tagging, and finding content is manual. That gap is exactly what AI-first tools like Marqly automate.
Is Marqly free?
Yes — Marqly has a free tier with no card required: up to 2,000 bookmarks, all of them readable and keyword-searchable. Pro is $72/year (about $6/month billed annually) or $9/month, with a 7-day free trial, and unlocks the AI layer — semantic search, auto-tagging and summaries, AI Q&A over your saves, and chat with YouTube videos.
