Marqly vs Glasp: 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 semantic search (find by meaning), full-text search, save all open tabs, browser bookmarks import that Glasp doesn't offer.
- Choose Glasp if — Learners who want to highlight in public — building a shareable knowledge profile and discovering what smart people underline — with strong YouTube AI on the side. 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 | Glasp |
|---|---|---|
| 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 · Pro $12.50/month billed yearly ($150/year) or $15/month billed monthly; Unlimited $30/month billed yearly ($360/year) |
- Marqly
- Free · $72/year (≈$6/mo) or $9/month
- Glasp
- Free · Pro $12.50/month billed yearly ($150/year) or $15/month billed monthly; Unlimited $30/month billed yearly ($360/year)
Pricing
- Marqly: Marqly has a free tier; paid plans are $72/year (≈$6/mo) or $9/month. Free tier needs no card and stores up to 100 bookmarks with search across your whole library; every library AI feature is Pro — auto-tagging, summaries, semantic search, AI Q&A over saves and video chat (YouTube summaries have a 3-per-month free allowance). Offline reading is Pro on web and iOS.
- Glasp: Glasp has a free tier; paid plans are Pro $12.50/month billed yearly ($150/year) or $15/month billed monthly; Unlimited $30/month billed yearly ($360/year). Free plan includes unlimited public highlights only — private highlights require Pro. Free AI caps are tight (3 YouTube summaries/day, 20 PDF chat messages/month). Prices rose ~20-25% in May 2026; subscriptions are non-refundable. EDUCATION: "we offer a 40% discount for educators and students" — applies to Pro billed yearly, with a short verification step (glasp.co/posts/glasp-student-discount). Verified verbatim on glasp.co/pricing 2026-10-29.
About Glasp
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.
Where Glasp wins
- The social layer is genuinely unique — public profiles and a community feed let you learn from what others highlight
- Core highlighting is free and unlimited; only privacy and AI features sit behind the paywall
- Best-in-class YouTube AI — Glasp makes the hugely popular YouTube Summary extension, with transcripts and channel tracking
- Broadest platform coverage in the highlighter niche: Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, iOS, Android, and a mobile Safari extension
- Excellent export and integrations: Markdown, CSV, HTML, and JSON, plus Notion auto-sync, an Obsidian plugin, Readwise, and a developer API with MCP connector
- Dedicated Kindle highlight import and export
Where Glasp falls short
- Free highlights are public by default — keeping highlights private requires Pro at $150/year
- Free AI limits are tight: 3 YouTube summaries a day and 20 PDF chat messages a month
- Prices rose about 20-25% in May 2026, the Unlimited tier is expensive, and subscriptions are explicitly non-refundable
- No full-page archiving, full-text search, or offline mode — it's a highlight layer, not an archive
- Two-person team, which is a real support and longevity risk
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 100 bookmarks with search across your whole library; Pro lifts that cap to unlimited and adds full AI capabilities for $72/year (with $49 first-year offer) or $9/month, billed when you upgrade. Offline reading is a Pro feature of the web app and iOS app: supported pages you mark for offline are cached on that device.
Where Marqly wins
- Semantic search finds saves by meaning — describe what you remember, no exact titles needed
- On Pro, 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 100 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
- Offline reading is Pro-only and per-device — cached on each device, not a synced offline library
- 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 Glasp 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 Glasp to Marqly
Check Glasp’s current export format before switching. Marqly accepts browser bookmark HTML, Pocket list.csv, and Raindrop HTML; it does not preserve original save dates. Other formats may not import cleanly, so test a small sample first. Pro adds automatic tagging on import and semantic search; free supports up to 100 saves with keyword search.
Marqly vs Glasp FAQ
Which is better, Marqly or Glasp?
It depends on the job. Glasp is a better fit if you need public API. Marqly wins when finding saves again matters most: it adds semantic search (find by meaning), full-text search, save all open tabs on top of standard bookmarking, so you can retrieve any save by describing it.
Is Glasp free?
Glasp has a free tier; paid plans are Pro $12.50/month billed yearly ($150/year) or $15/month billed monthly; Unlimited $30/month billed yearly ($360/year). Free plan includes unlimited public highlights only — private highlights require Pro. Free AI caps are tight (3 YouTube summaries/day, 20 PDF chat messages/month). Prices rose ~20-25% in May 2026; subscriptions are non-refundable. EDUCATION: "we offer a 40% discount for educators and students" — applies to Pro billed yearly, with a short verification step (glasp.co/posts/glasp-student-discount). Verified verbatim on glasp.co/pricing 2026-10-29.
Can I switch from Glasp to Marqly?
Check Glasp’s current export format before switching. Marqly accepts browser bookmark HTML, Pocket list.csv, and Raindrop HTML; it does not preserve original save dates. Other formats may not import cleanly, so test a small sample first. Pro adds automatic tagging on import and semantic search; free supports up to 100 saves with keyword search.
Does Glasp have AI search?
Glasp offers AI tagging, AI summaries, AI Q&A over saves. Marqly covers the full AI layer — auto-tagging, summaries, semantic search, and AI Q&A over your saves — plus YouTube summaries, transcripts, and video chat on the watch page. Marqly’s AI features require Pro; free supports up to 100 saves with keyword search.
Is Marqly free?
Yes — Marqly has a free tier with no card required: up to 100 bookmarks, all of them readable and keyword-searchable. Pro is $72/year (about $6/month billed annually) or $9/month, billed when you upgrade, and unlocks the AI layer — semantic search, auto-tagging and summaries, AI Q&A over your saves, and chat with YouTube videos.
