Omnivore vs Linkwarden: Which is better? (2026)
The short answer
Linkwarden wins — Omnivore shut down in November 2024, and Linkwarden is a thriving open-source project with archiving Omnivore never had. Ex-Omnivore users who want reading comfort should look elsewhere, but for preserving and organizing links, Linkwarden is the living choice.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Omnivore | Linkwarden | Marqly |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | Free · Cloud: $3/month per user billed yearly (25% off) or $4/month billed monthly | Free · $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month |
- Omnivore
- Free
- Linkwarden
- Free · Cloud: $3/month per user billed yearly (25% off) or $4/month billed monthly
- Marqly
- Free · $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month
Pricing
- Omnivore: Omnivore has shut down and no longer accepts new users. Omnivore shut down in November 2024 after its team was acqui-hired by ElevenLabs. Users had until November 30, 2024 to export their data before it was deleted. The open-source code remains on GitHub, and community forks offer self-hosted deployments.
- Linkwarden: Linkwarden has a free tier; paid plans are Cloud: $3/month per user billed yearly (25% off) or $4/month billed monthly. 14-day free trial of Cloud, cancel anytime. Self-hosting is free — Linkwarden is fully open source (AGPL-3.0) with all features included. The Cloud plan has no free tier beyond the trial and supports up to 30,000 links per user (expandable via support).
- 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.
About Omnivore
Omnivore was an open-source read-it-later app that launched in 2022 and quickly became a favorite alternative to Pocket and Instapaper. It was completely free: saved articles, newsletters, PDFs, and RSS feeds landed in a clean library with labels, filters, and a notably powerful search syntax, backed by native iOS and Android apps, browser extensions for all major browsers, text-to-speech, and plugins that synced highlights to Obsidian and Logseq. In late October 2024, the team announced they had joined ElevenLabs to work on its Reader app, and the hosted service shut down the following month — users had until November 30, 2024 to export their data before it was permanently deleted. Because Omnivore was AGPL-licensed, the code remains on GitHub with well over a thousand forks, and community projects offer self-hosted deployments, though the stack (PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, multiple microservices) is demanding to run. No official successor exists.
About Linkwarden
Linkwarden is an open-source, self-hostable bookmark manager focused on preservation and collaboration. Every saved link is automatically archived as a screenshot, a PDF, and a readable text copy — and can be pushed to the Wayback Machine — so bookmarks keep working even after the original page changes or disappears. Links are organized into nested collections with tags, optional AI-generated tags (including via local models for privacy), highlights and annotations, and full-text search across archived content. Collections can be shared publicly or edited collaboratively with per-user permissions. The project is AGPL-3.0 licensed with all features available when self-hosting for free; the official Cloud service costs $3/month per user billed yearly (or $4 billed monthly) after a 14-day trial and supports up to 30,000 links per user. Browser extensions cover Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, a REST API enables integrations, and official iOS and Android apps arrived in late 2025 with share-sheet saving and offline caching.
Which should you choose?
Start with the disqualifier: Omnivore’s hosted service no longer exists. It shut down in November 2024 after the team joined ElevenLabs, with a one-month export window before deletion — a hard ending for a free, open-source reader that had earned real affection. Its code survives in volunteer forks, but running the original stack means PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, and a cluster of microservices. Linkwarden is what a sustainable open-source project looks like instead: AGPL-licensed with free, full-featured self-hosting, a $3/month cloud that funds development, and a focus Omnivore never had — every saved link archived as a screenshot, PDF, and readable copy so your library outlives the web it came from.
Choose Linkwarden if:
- You want an open-source tool with a future — active releases, official iOS and Android apps since late 2025
- Preservation beats presentation: automatic page archiving, nested collections, and full-text search across it all
- You collaborate or share — public collections and per-user permissions were never Omnivore features
Choose an Omnivore fork only if:
- You’re committed to self-hosting a volunteer-maintained reading app despite the operational weight
- Omnivore’s specific reader experience and search syntax are worth that ongoing cost to you
Bottom line: the honest note is that these were never quite the same product. Omnivore was for reading; Linkwarden is for keeping — it has no reading queue, no text-to-speech, and no reading progress. Former Omnivore users wanting a true reading replacement should weigh Wallabag or a commercial reader instead. But between these two names, one is a memorial and the other is maintained: Linkwarden, without hesitation.
The option both sides overlook
If the real problem is finding things again, neither Omnivore nor Linkwarden fully solves it. Marqly auto-tags and summarizes every save with AI and lets you retrieve any of them by describing what you remember — plus a highlighter, YouTube summaries with transcripts, and save-as-PDF. There's a free tier with no card required.
Omnivore vs Linkwarden FAQ
Is Omnivore still an option compared to Linkwarden?
Only as self-hosted community forks — the hosted service closed in November 2024 when the team was acqui-hired by ElevenLabs, and data not exported by November 30 was deleted. The original stack is demanding (PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, microservices). Linkwarden is actively developed, with cloud hosting at $3/month or free self-hosting under AGPL.
Does Linkwarden do what Omnivore did?
Partly. Both are open source with highlights, annotations, full-text search, Pocket import, and mobile apps. But Omnivore was a reading app — a queue with text-to-speech and newsletter support — while Linkwarden is an archival bookmark manager that preserves every link as a screenshot, PDF, and readable copy, with collaborative and public collections Omnivore lacked.
Is Linkwarden safer from shutdown than Omnivore was?
Meaningfully. Omnivore was free with no revenue, so it ended the moment its founders moved on. Linkwarden's development is funded by its Cloud subscription ($3/month per user billed yearly), and because it's AGPL with free self-hosting and full data export, even a worst-case shutdown couldn't take your library with it.