Readwise Reader vs Toby: Which is better? (2026)
The short answer
Toby wins for organizing active browser work — sessions, project spaces, and team sharing. Readwise Reader wins for content you mean to read later. Tab management and read-it-later are different jobs; buy for the job you actually have.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Readwise Reader | 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 | $9.99/month billed annually ($119.88/year) or $12.99/month billed monthly (Full plan) | 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 |
- Readwise Reader
- $9.99/month billed annually ($119.88/year) or $12.99/month billed monthly (Full plan)
- 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
- Readwise Reader: Readwise Reader costs $9.99/month billed annually ($119.88/year) or $12.99/month billed monthly (Full plan). 30-day free trial. No permanent free tier — after the 30-day trial you must subscribe. Reader is only included in the Full plan; the cheaper Lite plan ($5.59/month billed annually) covers classic Readwise highlight syncing without the Reader app.
- 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 Readwise Reader
Readwise Reader is the read-it-later app from the team behind Readwise, the popular highlight-syncing service. Launched in public beta in 2022, Reader combines saved articles, RSS feeds, email newsletters, PDFs, ePubs, Twitter threads, and YouTube videos into a single triage-oriented inbox available on the web, iOS, Android, and via browser extensions. Its Ghostreader assistant uses AI to summarize documents, define terms, and answer questions against the text, and YouTube videos come with synced transcripts you can highlight like an article. Everything feeds the core Readwise loop: highlights and notes sync to Notion, Obsidian, Evernote, and other tools, with spaced-repetition review built in. Reader is bundled exclusively with the Readwise Full plan at $9.99/month billed annually ($119.88/year) or $12.99/month billed monthly, after a 30-day free trial; there is no permanent free tier. A documented API and active development round out a distinctly power-user product.
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?
Toby and Readwise Reader both rescue you from tab overload, but they rescue different things. Toby rescues the workspace: open tabs become drag-and-drop visual collections on your new-tab page, whole sessions stash and restore in one click, and collections group into spaces you can share with teammates — or publish as links anyone can view without an account. Toby AI will even name and sort your open tabs automatically. Reader rescues the content: articles, newsletters, RSS, PDFs, ePubs, and YouTube transcripts saved in full, triaged in a keyboard-driven queue, highlighted, summarized by Ghostreader AI, and exported to Notion, Obsidian, and Roam.
Choose Toby if:
- Your tabs represent projects, not reading — research sessions, client work, recurring tool sets
- You work on a team: shared spaces, member invites, and SSO on the Team plan are rare in this category
- Restoring a working context in one click would save you daily friction
Choose Readwise Reader if:
- Your tabs are unread articles and videos that deserve a real reading workflow
- You want the actual page content saved, searchable, and readable offline on iOS and Android
- Highlights flowing into your notes system matter
Bottom line: the free tiers expose each product’s edges. Toby’s Starter caps at 60 saved tabs total — workable for sessions, cramped for hoarding — while Reader offers no free tier at all, just a 30-day trial before $119.88/year. If links are placeholders for work, Toby earns its keep. If links are placeholders for reading, only Reader actually finishes the job.
The option both sides overlook
If the real problem is finding things again, neither Readwise Reader 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.
Readwise Reader vs Toby FAQ
Are Toby and Readwise Reader competitors?
Barely. Toby organizes live browsing: open tabs save into visual collections on your new-tab page, sessions restore in one click, and spaces can be shared with a team. Reader stores content for later: full articles, newsletters, PDFs, and YouTube transcripts in a reading queue with highlights and AI. Many people could justify both.
Which is cheaper, Toby or Readwise Reader?
Toby, at every level. It has a free Starter plan (capped at 60 saved tabs), then Productivity at $4.50/member/month billed yearly ($54/year) and Team at $8/member/month ($96/year). Reader has no free tier and one price: $9.99/month billed annually ($119.88/year) or $12.99 monthly, after a 30-day trial.
Does Toby save page content like Readwise Reader does?
No. Toby stores links only — no page archiving, no highlights, and no full-text search, so if a page disappears, so does what it said. Reader saves the content itself for offline reading, search, and highlighting across its apps. For anything you'd grieve losing to link rot, Toby is the wrong container.