Ask HN: What Pocket alternatives did you move to?

I use Obsidian Web Clipper [0] with the Relay Obsidian plugin [1] (I'm the author) for syncing.

Web clipper converts websites to markdown and puts them into your Obsidian vault, and then Relay can sync subfolders in your vault to make sure you have a copy on all of your devices (even between a work and personal vault for example).

Relay is also collaborative, so I frequently clip things, clean them up a bit, and move them into shared folders (like docs pages).

I like the feeling of local-first combined with a malleable UX. Especially for the pocket use-case, offline-capable is a must for me so I can catch up on reading when I'm flying or otherwise off-grid.

[0] https://obsidian.md/clipper

[1] https://relay.md

I came to the realization (through another commenter on HN) that I never actually read things I save. It’s just where my good intentions go to die. If it’s not worth reading in the moment, I don’t read it. I’ve been using a little bit of AI summaries to get more context from an article if I’m not actually going to read it, or want to see if it’s worth reading.

I'm self hosting Readeck (https://readeck.org/en/) and I really like it. It's nicer than Pocket was, the website extraction seems to work better, and it can't ever be shut down.

For my Kobo, I wrote a mod that lets me redirect Pocket API requests, and a small proxy server that translates Pocket API calls into Readeck calls.

So far it's working flawlessly and my Kobo is using its built in Pocket viewer for Readeck instead. I'm hoping to open source it soon so others can use it.

I ended up on Readwise Reader after trying a few different options. It unapologetically caters to power users and is clearly built by people who actually use and care about the product, so I'm finding it to be a pretty solid improvement over Pocket.

They also have put some effort into making their mobile app work reasonably well on eInk displays, so it's pretty great on a Boox tablet. It has real pagination, which is a feature that I was pretty annoyed about losing in Pocket when Pocket rewrote its mobile app.

Hey, this is Pao, the guy building https://fika.bar.

Fika is a place to save, discover and share content built upon 3 products:

- A local-first bookmark manager (Works 100% offline) - A feed reader: With feed discovery from your bookmarks. - A blog/newsletter platform

The only thing it currently does not have is e-reader integration yet. But you get the other 2 products bundled together which make a lot of sense.

“Add to Reading List” on iOS Safari

Nothing but bookmarks and archive.org and PDFs. Every time I update the browser, I make sure to take a manual backup of the bookmarks.

I replaced it two years ago with a small something I built for myself and serves me well [0], haven’t looked back since.

[0]: https://aldur.blog/micros/2025/07/07/pocket/

Instapaper. It's simple and sleek. Provides direct import from Pocket.

I realized that all I needed was basically a way of syncing bookmarks across a bunch of different platforms (linux, mac, iOS, android) and browsers, and I didn't really need any of the fancier features like offline access. I had claude code one-shot a simple python web app that saves links to sqlite. I stuffed it in a docker container and hosted it on my home server. I set up a public portal using cloudflare tunnels to access it when I'm not on my LAN. I wrote a little bookmarklet that saves a page and is compatible with the various browsers I use.

Throwing another answer in for Instapaper. It’s not as new and flashy as something like Readwise or Matter, but also doesn’t try to do too much.

Killer features of Instapaper for me include the kindle digest and IFTTT integration (which I use to mirror my archived articles to Raindrop.io)

I have a little side project I started a couple years ago for this: https://linksort.com/

I work on it when I can. I'd like to add an import from Pocket feature but I haven't had a free weekend in a while.

The project is fully open source: https://github.com/linksort/linksort

I use https://fabric.so

Just started using Curio - https://curi.ooo/

Ages ago I made a PWA (cras) that install on my phones and it's a share-target, so I've been adding to that.

Self hosted, like four PHP scripts and Sqlite.

I replaced it with a tiny app that I built for myself, that just has the features of Pocket that I was using.

https://bukmark.me/

Wallabag. I switched from Pocket to Wallabag years ago because I didn't like sponsored content and ads in Pocket. I originally started paying for it as a subscription directly from wallabag.it, but then I started self-hosting it. Wallabag has an option to import all of your articles from Pocket too. It's a fantastic service.

Readwise Reader and Obsidian Web Clipper.

For me Kobo support is the most important feature. But haven't found a substitute.

Also no word from Kobo (Rakuten) about this. Very disappointing.

How about Karakeep if you want to run it locally. You can also have it tag your bookmarks automatically if you connect it to a LLM.

> But nothing came out of my research.

Seriously? I call bullshit. Type "pocket alternative" into your favorite search engine and you'll find a bunch of sites that recommend a few good alternatives. This is a pretty good question for reddit.com/r/selfhosted as opposed to hn, and it's well covered there.

https://openalternative.co/alternatives/pocket has a good list

https://github.com/search?q=bookmark+&type=repositories&s=st... is a good search as well that surfaces several good options (Karakeep, LinkWarden, Shiori, etc.

Personally, I went with Karakeep hosted as a docker container on my NAS, mostly because my pocket list is pretty much dump and forget and the UI and backend language looked the nicer of the top options.

Selhosted Wallabag + ReadKit app on iOS synchronized with Wallabag instance.

I wrote a plugin for Obsidian called Slurp which cleans a web page's html and converts it to markdown.

https://ln.ht/ isn't bad

Bookmarks and Reader Mode.

If you have an iPhone, just use reader view, then print it but don’t select a printer and then share it. A PDF pops out. Then shove that in iCloud Drive or on your phone and read it later.

No services or set up involved, works reliably and you can keep the PDF forever.

Some time ago I went to Vivaldi and since then I use its Reading List.

wallabag. Actually been using it for years, with a short detour to the now-gone Omnivore.

Instapaper

Never used Pocket, but I moved to Raindrop.io (from Pinboard) for my bookmarks. I believe it can import Pocket.

Instapaper

I’m an Apple user and switched to GoodLinks at first but later migrated to AnyBox because the latter one can create PDF and WebArchive snapshots of the webpages.

I use fika.bar. it's really nice!

Raindrop

I switched to Wallabag. 14 day free trial (an actual free trial that doesn't require CC info). There's a Pocket import function. I found it useful to filter the .csv that Pocket downloaded me into two .csv's, one for unread articles and one for archived articles, that I respectively imported into Wallabag as the import feature allowed for "mark as read" on imports.

About 10% of the articles I had didn't download due to Captcha requirements or paywalls that had been added since I had archived the article in Pocket. Once my articles imported to Wallabag, I filtered the unread list from 0 to 3 minutes which showed me all the ones that were paywalled or only saved snippets. I fixed them with the Wallabag browser extension, which has an option to save content direct from browser.

I now have Wallabag on my Android phone, Boox ereader (runs Android), and Kobo ereader (via KOReader). No issues and I'm liking it better than Pocket.