Private and open-source alternatives to Instapaper
10 bookmarks and read-later rated against the same public privacy criteria as Instapaper, with our picks first.
What is the best private alternative to Instapaper?
Floccus, Karakeep, linkding, Readeck, Shiori, Unmark and XBrowserSync share the highest score among these alternatives: 80 out of 100 (grade B).
Why look for an alternative?
- Open source: no. Closed source.
- No trackers or telemetry: no. The service uses Google Analytics and Crashlytics, and the Android app contains Google Firebase Analytics and Crashlytics according to Exodus Privacy.
- No ads or data sales: no. Mostly funded by Premium subscriptions, but the free website shows ads, newsletters carry sponsorships, and aggregate usage data is shared with advertisers.
- Independent audit: no. No independent audit is published.
See the full Instapaper rating.
The alternatives
Floccus Grade B
Browser extension and Android app that syncs bookmarks through a user-chosen backend such as Nextcloud Bookmarks, WebDAV, Google Drive or Git.
Floccus scores 80 out of 100 (grade B) on the bookmarks and read-later criteria. It meets 3 of 4 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
Karakeep Grade B
Bookmark manager, formerly called Hoarder, for saving links, notes, images and PDFs with full-text search, page archiving and optional AI tagging; it can be self-hosted or used as the paid Karakeep Cloud.
Based in the United Kingdom (Five Eyes). Karakeep scores 80 out of 100 (grade B) on the bookmarks and read-later criteria. It meets 3 of 4 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
linkding Grade B
Self-hosted bookmark manager with tags, Markdown notes, page archiving, multi-user sharing, a REST API and browser extensions for Firefox and Chrome.
linkding scores 80 out of 100 (grade B) on the bookmarks and read-later criteria. It meets 3 of 4 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
Readeck Grade B
Self-hosted read-it-later and bookmark application that saves articles, pictures and video transcripts, with labels, highlights, collections, e-book export and a browser extension.
Readeck scores 80 out of 100 (grade B) on the bookmarks and read-later criteria. It meets 3 of 4 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
Shiori Grade B
Self-hosted bookmark manager written in Go, with a web interface, command-line tool, import and export, and offline archiving of saved pages.
Shiori scores 80 out of 100 (grade B) on the bookmarks and read-later criteria. It meets 3 of 4 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
Unmark Grade B
Open-source bookmark manager that treats saved links as a to-do list; it can be self-hosted or used through the hosted service at unmark.it.
Unmark scores 80 out of 100 (grade B) on the bookmarks and read-later criteria. It meets 3 of 4 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
XBrowserSync Grade B
Browser extension and Android app that syncs bookmarks with end-to-end encryption through a community-run or self-hosted sync server, without an account.
XBrowserSync scores 80 out of 100 (grade B) on the bookmarks and read-later criteria. It meets 3 of 4 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
wallabag Grade C
Self-hostable read-it-later application that saves the text of web articles for distraction-free reading, with browser extensions, mobile apps, e-reader support and an official hosted service, wallabag.it.
wallabag scores 65 out of 100 (grade C) on the bookmarks and read-later criteria. It meets 2 of 4 criteria: open source and no ads or data sales.
Linkwarden Grade D
Bookmark manager that saves full copies of pages as HTML, screenshots and PDF, with collections, tags, reader view and highlights; it can be self-hosted or used as a paid cloud service.
Based in Canada (Five Eyes). Linkwarden scores 50 out of 100 (grade D) on the bookmarks and read-later criteria. It meets 2 of 4 criteria: open source and no ads or data sales.
Raindrop.io Grade F
Hosted bookmark manager for saving, tagging and organizing links, articles and files in collections, with a web app, browser extensions and desktop and mobile apps.
Based in the United States (Five Eyes). Raindrop.io scores 35 out of 100 (grade F) on the bookmarks and read-later criteria. It meets 1 of 4 criteria: no ads or data sales.