Marqly vs Diigo: Which is better? (2026)
The short answer
- Choose Marqly — 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 — 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.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Marqly | Diigo |
|---|---|---|
| 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 · Standard $40/year; Professional $59/year; Business $10/user/month |
- Marqly
- Free · $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month
- Diigo
- Free · Standard $40/year; Professional $59/year; Business $10/user/month
Pricing
- Marqly: 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.
- 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 and an iOS app. Every save is tagged and summarized automatically, and semantic search lets you retrieve any bookmark by describing what you remember instead of matching exact keywords. 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; Pro is $48/year or $8/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
- No Android app yet (the web app works in Android browsers)
- No offline reading mode
- No public API or self-hosting option
- Chat with saves and video chat require Pro
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. Pro is $48/year (about $4/month billed annually) or $8/month, with a 7-day free trial. Pro unlocks chat with your saves and chat with YouTube videos.