Omnivore vs Toby: Which is better? (2026)
The short answer
Toby, by walkover — Omnivore shut down in November 2024. Just be clear on what Toby is: a visual manager for live tab sessions and team collections, not a reading app that stores article content the way Omnivore did.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Omnivore | Toby | 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 · Productivity $4.50/member/month billed yearly ($54/yr) or $6/month; Team $8/member/month billed yearly ($96/yr) or $10/month | Free · $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month |
- Omnivore
- Free
- Toby
- Free · Productivity $4.50/member/month billed yearly ($54/yr) or $6/month; Team $8/member/month billed yearly ($96/yr) or $10/month
- 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.
- Toby: Toby has a free tier; paid plans are Productivity $4.50/member/month billed yearly ($54/yr) or $6/month; Team $8/member/month billed yearly ($96/yr) or $10/month. Free Starter plan caps at 60 saved tabs total — over the limit you keep read access but can't add more. No published trial length. Legacy free accounts were force-migrated to Starter in November 2024.
- 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 Toby
Toby is a visual tab manager built around the browser's new-tab page. Open tabs save into drag-and-drop collections, whole sessions can be stashed and restored in one click, and collections group into spaces that can be shared with teammates or published as public links that require no Toby account. It began inside Vancouver venture studio Axiom Zen in 2016, was once named a top Chrome extension of the year by Google and Product Hunt, and now claims more than 500,000 users under operator Launch Labs. Extensions cover Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, a web app works anywhere, and companion apps bring collections to iOS and Android. Toby AI can name, sort, and group open tabs automatically. Toby stores links rather than page content, so there is no archiving, highlighting, or full-text search. The free Starter plan caps at 60 saved tabs; Productivity costs $4.50 per member per month billed yearly, and Team runs $8 with SSO and centralized billing.
Which should you choose?
Omnivore’s story ended in November 2024: an ElevenLabs acqui-hire, a one-month export window, then deletion of everything left on the servers. Toby, running since 2016 and still shipping updates as of June 2026, is the survivor here — but it plays a different sport. Omnivore was built for reading: parsed articles, highlights, offline apps, powerful search. Toby is built for working: open tabs saved into visual collections on your new-tab page, whole sessions stashed and restored in one click, and spaces shared with teammates or published as public links.
Choose an Omnivore fork if:
- You want a true reading library — article text, labels, highlights — and have the self-hosting chops for a PostgreSQL-and-Elasticsearch stack kept alive by volunteers.
- Unlimited free saves matter; forks inherit Omnivore’s no-cost model, while Toby’s free plan stops at 60 saved tabs.
Choose Toby if:
- Your browser is your workspace and you juggle projects as tab sessions you’ll want back tomorrow.
- You work with others — shared spaces, member invites, and org-wide collections are rare in this category, with SSO on the Team plan.
- You want AI to do the sorting: Toby AI names, groups, and organizes open tabs into collections automatically.
The gap to respect is content. Toby stores links, not pages — no archiving, no highlights, no full-text search, so anything behind a dead URL is lost. Omnivore kept the words themselves. A former Omnivore user who mostly stockpiled work-in-progress tabs will find Toby a genuine upgrade with a team dimension Omnivore never had. One who actually read their queue each night will find Toby beside the point and should shortlist a living read-it-later app. Either way, staying on a shut-down platform’s fork is only sensible for dedicated self-hosters.
The option both sides overlook
If the real problem is finding things again, neither Omnivore nor Toby 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 Toby FAQ
Can Toby replace Omnivore for reading articles?
No. Toby saves links into visual collections but stores no page content — there's no reader view, no highlights, no offline reading, and no full-text search. Omnivore parsed and kept the article text itself. Toby replaces Omnivore only if what you really used Omnivore for was parking tabs, not reading them.
Is Toby free the way Omnivore was?
Only up to a point. Omnivore was entirely free with no caps. Toby's free Starter plan limits you to 60 saved tabs total — beyond that you keep read access but can't add more — and paid plans run $4.50 to $8 per member per month billed yearly. That revenue, though, is why Toby is still alive.
What options do former Omnivore users have?
Three paths: self-host a community fork of Omnivore's open-source code if you can run its demanding stack; move to a maintained read-it-later app if reading was the point; or adopt a tab-session tool like Toby if you mostly parked work tabs. The export deadline passed in November 2024, so unexported hosted data is gone.