Pocket vs Instapaper: Which is better? (2026)
The short answer
Instapaper — Pocket is gone (shut down July 2025), and Instapaper is its closest living relative: a free, typography-first reading queue that imports Pocket exports directly. Former Pocket readers lose almost nothing in the switch.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Instapaper | 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 | See site | Free · $5.99/month or $59.99/year (Premium) | Free · $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month |
- See site
- Instapaper
- Free · $5.99/month or $59.99/year (Premium)
- Marqly
- Free · $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month
Pricing
- Pocket: Pocket has shut down and no longer accepts new users. Mozilla shut down Pocket on July 8, 2025. Saves could be exported until October 8, 2025, after which all user data was permanently deleted. Premium subscribers received prorated refunds.
- Instapaper: Instapaper has a free tier; paid plans are $5.99/month or $59.99/year (Premium). Premium doubled in price in late 2023 (from $3/month, $30/year). The free tier covers unlimited saving and offline reading; Premium adds full-text search, a permanent archive, unlimited notes, text-to-speech playlists, speed reading, and send-to-Kindle.
- 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 Pocket
Pocket was one of the most popular read-it-later services on the web. Launched in 2007 as Read It Later and acquired by Mozilla in 2017, it let people save articles, videos, and links from any browser or app, then read them later in a clean, distraction-free view — online or offline — on iOS, Android, and the web. A free tier covered core saving and reading, while Pocket Premium added a permanent article archive, full-text search, and suggested tags. Pocket was built into Firefox and grew a large audience around its editorial Discover recommendations. In May 2025 Mozilla announced it was discontinuing the service: Pocket stopped working on July 8, 2025, exports remained available until October 8, 2025, and remaining data was then permanently deleted. Anyone who kept a Pocket export ZIP can still import those saves into most modern bookmark managers and read-it-later apps.
About Instapaper
Instapaper is the original read-it-later service, created by Marco Arment in 2008 and now run independently as Instant Paper, Inc. It saves articles from any browser or app into a clean, typography-first reading queue that syncs to iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle, and the web, with dependable offline reading. The free tier includes unlimited saves, folders, and basic highlighting; Premium at $5.99/month or $59.99/year unlocks full-text search across your account, a permanent archive of saved articles, unlimited notes, a PDF reader, speed reading, AI-powered text-to-speech playlists, and send-to-Kindle delivery. Highlights and notes can sync to services like Readwise, and a documented developer API supports third-party clients. Instapaper deliberately stays minimal: there is no AI tagging, summarization, or recommendation layer, and organization is limited to folders. After Pocket shut down in July 2025, Instapaper added a direct Pocket import and became one of the main destinations for former Pocket users.
Which should you choose?
These two invented the category together — Read It Later (later Pocket) in 2007, Instapaper in 2008 — and for years they were near-twins: save an article from anywhere, read it later in a clean view, offline on your phone. The differences were temperamental. Pocket leaned social and algorithmic, with Discover recommendations and deep Firefox integration; Instapaper stayed quiet and typographic, obsessing over line spacing and adding send-to-Kindle. Mozilla ended the argument by pulling the plug in July 2025.
Choose Pocket if
- There is no scenario where you can — the service went offline on July 8, 2025, and any account data left unexported past October 8, 2025 was destroyed.
- Even the mobile apps are gone from both app stores.
Choose Instapaper if
- You want the least disruptive Pocket migration available: a direct Pocket import, the same save-read-archive rhythm, and a business that has run continuously since 2008.
- Reading is the point. Its typography-first reader remains the purest in the category, with dependable offline reading on iPhone, iPad, and Android.
- You own a Kindle — Premium delivers saved articles straight to it, alongside a permanent archive, speed reading, and text-to-speech playlists.
The familiar frustrations survive the switch, though. Like Pocket’s free plan, free Instapaper can’t search the full text of your own saves — that requires Premium at $5.99/month or $59.99/year — and notes are capped at five per month. There’s no AI tagging or resurfacing, organization stops at folders, and parsing occasionally mangles complex pages. Those are quibbles against the bottom line: Instapaper is a stable, independently run service that outlived its old rival, and for anyone whose Pocket habit was fundamentally about reading saved articles in peace, it’s the closest thing to not switching at all.
The option both sides overlook
If the real problem is finding things again, neither Pocket nor Instapaper 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.
Pocket vs Instapaper FAQ
What happened to Pocket, and where did its readers go?
Mozilla announced in May 2025 that it was ending Pocket to focus on Firefox; the service stopped working on July 8, 2025, exports closed October 8, 2025, and remaining data was deleted. Instapaper responded by adding a direct Pocket import tool and became one of the main destinations for former Pocket users.
Does Instapaper import Pocket exports?
Yes. After Pocket's shutdown, Instapaper added a dedicated import for Pocket export files, making it a natural landing spot for anyone who downloaded their archive before the October 2025 deadline. Your saved articles come across into Instapaper's queue, where the free tier covers unlimited saving, folders, and offline reading on mobile.
Is Instapaper free the way Pocket was?
Mostly. The free tier includes unlimited saves, folders, offline reading, and basic highlights — similar territory to free Pocket. Premium costs $5.99/month or $59.99/year and adds full-text search, a permanent archive, unlimited notes, send-to-Kindle, speed reading, and text-to-speech playlists. Like Pocket, free accounts cannot full-text search their own saves.