Marqly vs Weava: 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 Weava doesn't offer.
- Choose Weava if — 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.
Looking at the broader market? See our comprehensive benchmark of the best bookmark managers in 2026.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Marqly | Weava |
|---|---|---|
| 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 · $3.99/month billed annually or $7.99/month billed monthly |
- Marqly
- Free · $72/year (≈$6/mo) or $9/month
- Weava
- Free · $3.99/month billed annually or $7.99/month billed monthly
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.
- Weava: 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.
About Weava
Weava is a research highlighter made by Weavatools Limited, founded in Hong Kong in 2016 and backed by the Cyberport incubator. Its Chrome extension highlights both web pages and uploaded PDFs in multiple colors, attaches notes to each highlight, and organizes everything into folders and sub-folders in a web dashboard. A citation generator produces APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard references, which made it a staple for student essays — the company claims over two million lifetime users across more than 200 universities. Highlights and notes export to Word, Excel, TXT, and CSV on the free plan, which also includes unlimited highlighting with 100 MB of PDF storage. Premium at $3.99 a month billed annually adds unlimited storage, sub-folders, custom colors, and invite-based collaboration, with a 70% student discount. Development has slowed markedly: the extension was last updated in early 2024, there are no Firefox or Safari versions, and the former iOS app is no longer listed.
Where Weava wins
- 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
- Genuinely usable free tier: unlimited highlights and notes, with only storage, sub-folders, and colors gated
- Real 70% student discount, and adoption across 200+ universities
- Exports to Word, Excel, TXT, and CSV even on the free plan
Where Weava falls short
- Clear maintenance-risk signals: the Chrome extension hasn't been updated since February 2024, the site's copyright still reads 2022, and the former iOS app is delisted
- Recent reviews report disappearing highlights and folders — the last 100 Chrome reviews average around 2.9 stars
- Intrusive ads in the free tier and a dated interface
- Chrome-only ecosystem: no Firefox or Safari extensions, no working mobile apps, no API
- Highlights are tied to exact URLs, so they vanish if a page's address changes
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 Weava 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 Weava to Marqly
Yes. Export your data from Weava (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 Weava FAQ
Which is better, Marqly or Weava?
It depends on the job. Weava is a better fit if you need 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. 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 Weava free?
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.
Can I switch from Weava to Marqly?
Yes. Export your data from Weava (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 Weava have AI search?
Weava 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.
