Pocket vs Linkwarden: Which is better? (2026)
Executive verdict & bottom line
Linkwarden — Pocket has been gone since July 2025, and Linkwarden answers the anxiety its shutdown created: every link you save is archived as a screenshot, PDF, and readable copy on infrastructure you can own. It's a preservation tool, though, not a reading app.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Linkwarden | Marqly | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | See site | Free · Cloud: $3/month per user billed yearly (25% off) or $4/month billed monthly | Free · $72/year (≈$6/mo) or $9/month |
- See site
- Linkwarden
- Free · Cloud: $3/month per user billed yearly (25% off) or $4/month billed monthly
- Marqly
- Free · $72/year (≈$6/mo) or $9/month
Pricing
- Pocket: Pocket has shut down and no longer accepts new users. Mozilla shut down Pocket on July 8, 2025. Export access and the API were disabled on November 12, 2025, and data deletion began then. Source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/future-of-pocket (verified 2026-10-06). Premium subscribers received prorated refunds.
- 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 $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.
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, export access and the API were disabled on November 12, 2025, and data deletion began then. Source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/future-of-pocket (verified 2026-10-06). Anyone who kept a Pocket export ZIP can still import those saves into most modern bookmark managers and read-it-later apps.
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?
Pocket’s death broke its users’ libraries twice: the service disappeared, and every page that had since gone offline disappeared with it, because Pocket stored pointers, not pages. Linkwarden is built on the opposite premise. Every link you save is automatically preserved as a screenshot, a PDF, and a readable text copy — and can be pushed to the Wayback Machine — so your library outlives both the original sites and, if you self-host, the company itself.
Choose Pocket if
- There’s nothing to choose — it has been gone since July 2025, with all unexported data erased that October.
- Its role in this comparison is cautionary, not competitive.
Choose Linkwarden if
- Link rot is your nightmare scenario: full-page archiving on every save is the core feature, not a paid add-on.
- You want ownership with a hosted fallback — self-host the AGPL code for free with every feature included, or pay $3/month per user (billed yearly) for Cloud after a 14-day trial.
- You work with others: collaborative collections with per-user permissions and public sharing are rare in this category.
The mismatch to understand before switching: Linkwarden is a preservation and research tool, not a reading app. There’s no reader queue, no text-to-speech, no reading progress — the things that made Pocket pleasant on a commute simply aren’t the job here. Its iOS and Android apps only arrived in late 2025 and still trail the web experience. Former Pocket users who mostly read should pair their export with Instapaper or Matter instead; those who mostly collected research and references they cannot afford to lose will find Linkwarden strictly better than Pocket ever was — it imports Pocket files directly, full-text searches the archived copies rather than just titles, and offers optional AI tagging that can even run on local models.
The managed alternative: Zero-setup cloud with AI retrieval
If you want the power of AI retrieval without configuring Docker containers, managing local models, or dealing with unsearchable link graveyards, Marqly delivers a complete managed solution. Marqly provides whole-library search, web highlights, and distraction-free reading on the Free tier, with Pro adding automated AI tagging, summaries, and semantic search by meaning.
Pocket vs Linkwarden FAQ
Is Linkwarden a good Pocket replacement?
For collectors, yes; for readers, no. Linkwarden imports Pocket exports and permanently archives every saved page — screenshot, PDF, and readable copy — which Pocket never did. But it has no reader queue, text-to-speech, or reading progress, because it's built for preserving references rather than working through articles. Reading-focused Pocket users should consider Instapaper or Matter.
How much does Linkwarden cost?
Self-hosting is free: Linkwarden is open source under AGPL-3.0 with every feature included, so your only cost is your server. The managed Cloud plan is $3/month per user billed yearly ($4 monthly) with a 14-day trial and support for up to 30,000 links per user — but there is no permanent free cloud tier.
Could Linkwarden lose my data the way Pocket did?
The design makes that far harder. Self-hosted, your links, archives, and database live on your own hardware. Even on Cloud, you can export bookmarks as HTML or JSON, download archived screenshots and PDFs, and use the REST API for full programmatic export. And because the code is open source, no corporate decision can erase the software.
