Pocket vs Wallabag: Which is better? (2026)
Executive verdict & bottom line
Wallabag — Pocket's July 2025 shutdown settled this one, and Wallabag is the ownership-first answer: open source since 2013, self-hostable for free or hosted at €11/year, with a Pocket importer built in. It can never disappear the way Pocket did.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Wallabag | 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 · €11/year on wallabag.it (official hosting; also €4 for 3 months, or a €30/year supporter plan) | Free · $72/year (≈$6/mo) or $9/month |
- See site
- Wallabag
- Free · €11/year on wallabag.it (official hosting; also €4 for 3 months, or a €30/year supporter plan)
- 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.
- Wallabag: Wallabag has a free tier; paid plans are €11/year on wallabag.it (official hosting; also €4 for 3 months, or a €30/year supporter plan). 14-day free trial on wallabag.it, no card required. Self-hosting is completely free — Wallabag is open-source (MIT). The wallabag.it hosted service funds development and includes all features on every plan.
- 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 Wallabag
Wallabag is an open-source read-it-later application, started in 2013 in France and maintained continuously since. You can run it on your own server for free or use the official hosted service at wallabag.it, which costs €11 a year (with a 14-day free trial) and funds development of the open-source project. Saved articles are stripped to a clean reading view, can be tagged manually or through rule-based automatic tagging, annotated with notes on selected text, and exported to PDF, ePub, and other formats — a favorite feature for e-reader owners. Wallabag offers browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox, native iOS and Android apps with offline reading, RSS feeds of your saves, public share links for individual articles, and a full REST API. Importers cover Pocket, Instapaper, Readability, and browser bookmark files. The trade-off is polish: the interface is functional rather than beautiful, and there are no AI features.
Which should you choose?
Both of these are Pocket-style reading queues at heart — save an article, get a stripped-down reading view, tag it, read offline on your phone. The difference is custody. Pocket lived on Mozilla’s servers, and when Mozilla lost interest in 2025, sixteen years of user libraries went with it. Wallabag has been open source since 2013: run it on your own server for free, or pay €11/year at wallabag.it, and either way the software can never be taken from you.
Choose Pocket if
- Not an option — the July 2025 shutdown was total, and data unexported by November 12, 2025 is unrecoverable.
- The comparison exists only to help its former users pick a successor.
Choose Wallabag if
- You never want to migrate again. Even if wallabag.it folded tomorrow, your instance keeps running — exactly the exit Pocket never offered.
- You own an e-reader: Wallabag exports articles to ePub and PDF, something Pocket never did.
- You want automation without subscriptions — rule-based tagging files saves automatically, and a full REST API comes with every plan.
Come in with clear eyes about polish. The interface is utilitarian and feels dated beside commercial apps, parsing stumbles on script-heavy pages, and there’s no AI of any kind — no summaries, no semantic search. Self-hosting also means real maintenance: PHP, a database, updates. The hosted service removes that burden for about a dollar a month with no feature gating anywhere. Migration is straightforward, since Wallabag imports Pocket exports directly. For former Pocket users whose main takeaway from the shutdown was “never again,” Wallabag is the most direct translation of that feeling into software — the same reading habit, minus the single point of corporate failure.
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 Wallabag FAQ
Can Wallabag import my old Pocket saves?
Yes. Wallabag ships a Pocket importer alongside importers for Instapaper, Readability, and browser bookmark HTML files. You'll need the export ZIP you downloaded before Mozilla's November 12, 2025 deadline — Pocket export access is disabled, and Mozilla says deletion of unexported data began then (see [Mozilla’s Pocket closure notice](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/future-of-pocket)). Once imported, articles get Wallabag's clean reading view, tags, offline mobile apps, and ePub/PDF export.
Is Wallabag free like Pocket was?
Freer, in a sense. Self-hosting costs nothing — Wallabag is open source — and the official hosted service at wallabag.it is €11/year with a 14-day trial and every feature included. Pocket's free tier was genuinely free but paywalled full-text search and suggested tags behind Premium; Wallabag has no feature gating on any plan.
Why is Wallabag considered shutdown-proof?
Because no company can end it. The code is open source and maintained continuously since 2013, development is funded by cheap wallabag.it subscriptions rather than a corporate parent's goodwill, and even if hosting ceased, a self-hosted instance keeps running with your data in your own database — the escape hatch Pocket users never had.
