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.
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.