If you are here because Pocket is gone, start with the part almost nobody told you: Pocket’s export was a CSV of links. It never contained the articles.
People who dutifully exported before the deadline have a list of URLs, a meaningful share of which are already dead. That is not a backup of your reading — it is a bookmark file. And it is the single most useful thing to know before you pick whatever comes next.
What actually happened to Pocket
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 22 May 2025 | Mozilla announced the shutdown. Pocket pulled from app stores, subscription renewals disabled, new sign-ups closed |
| 8 July 2025 | Pocket shut down. Annual subscribers refunded prorated and automatically. Export-only mode opened for 90 days |
| 12 November 2025 | Export mode closed. Deletion of all accounts and user data began |
The original deadline was 8 October 2025. Mozilla extended it by about a month, announcing the extension hours before it lapsed. Exports are no longer possible. There is no retrieval path, no archive, no appeal. If you missed it, the data is gone.
Mozilla’s stated reason was that browsing habits had changed and Firefox now has Tab Groups and enhanced bookmarks. The same announcement killed Fakespot. Mozilla had bought Pocket in 2017.
On “Firefox replaced Pocket”: it did not. Firefox bookmarks support tags and export to HTML and JSON, but they store no article text and no reader-view persistence. Tab Groups are tab management. Treat the replacement claim as marketing.
And Omnivore died first
Worth knowing, because it is the same lesson twice. ElevenLabs hired the Omnivore team on 29 October 2024 — an acqui-hire, not a product acquisition. The cloud service was deprecated that November, with exports open only until 16 November 2024.
The code survives: the repository is public, unarchived, AGPL-3.0, and now describes itself as self-hosted only. But it is a heavy multi-service stack and upstream momentum has moved on. Do not recommend it to a normal reader in 2026. Its residual value is as a migration format — Karakeep imports Omnivore JSON.
The pattern is the point. Omnivore died in November 2024. Pocket died in July 2025. Two of the three most-recommended read-later apps of 2023 were gone within nine months of each other. Both gave users a short export window. Only one of those exports contained the actual articles.
The prices
| Tool | Free tier | Paid |
|---|---|---|
| Instapaper | Unlimited saves, sync, folders — but ads on the free web reader and no full-text search | $5.99/month or $59.99/year |
| Readwise Reader | None — 30-day trial only | $9.99/month billed annually, $12.99 billed monthly. 50% academic discount by email before subscribing |
| Raindrop.io | Unlimited bookmarks, collections, highlights and devices; 100 MB uploads/month | Could not verify — prices are JavaScript-rendered and did not load |
| Karakeep | Cloud: 10 bookmarks, 20 MB (a demo). Self-hosted: free forever, unlimited | Cloud Pro $4/month or $40/year |
| Wallabag | Self-hosted free | Official hosting at €11/year — 14-day trial, no card, does not auto-renew |
| Readeck | Self-hosted free | No hosted tier found |
| Matter | “Free forever” basic service | Could not verify — both pricing URLs return 404 |
| Pinboard | — | Could not verify — the site blocks automated fetching |
Three of those “could not verify” entries deserve comment. Raindrop’s public pricing page does not render prices to a non-JavaScript client, which is a transparency demerit for a product whose whole pitch is saving things. Matter’s /pricing and /premium pages both 404 — a figure circulates in comparison articles and we are not repeating it. And Pinboard blocks automated inspection entirely, so even checking its price requires a human.
The only question that matters: does your library survive the company?
After Pocket, the correct question at signup is not “is there an export button.” It is “does the export contain the words?” Link rot means a five-year-old CSV of URLs is perhaps a quarter dead on arrival.
| Tool | Export formats | Full article text? | Highlights and notes? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Readwise Reader | ZIP, CSV, Markdown, plain text, annotated PDF, OPML | Yes — the ZIP contains uploaded files and “the full content of any articles you’ve saved from the web” | Yes, plus continuous sync to Obsidian, Notion, Roam, Logseq |
| Wallabag | ePUB, PDF, XML, JSON, CSV | Yes | Yes, in the JSON export |
| Readeck | EPUB — single article or a whole collection as one ebook | Yes | Yes, stored locally |
| Karakeep | Full archived pages on disk, REST API | Yes when self-hosted | Yes, via API or database |
| Raindrop.io | HTML, CSV, TXT; uploads separately as ZIP | Partial — the Pro “permanent copies” archive is not in the standard backup | Yes |
| Instapaper | CSV for account data; PDF, ePub or RSS per article | Partial — no single bulk text dump | Could not verify in bulk form |
| Pinboard | JSON and HTML | No on the standard tier; page copies on the archival tier | Notes yes |
| Matter | Could not verify | Could not verify | Could not verify |
| Pocket (cautionary) | CSV only, window closed | No — URLs and metadata only | Metadata only |
Lock-in risk, ranked
- 1. Readeck — AGPL-3.0, single binary, your disk, EPUB export of whole collections. Nothing to lose.
- 2. Wallabag — MIT, your database, six export formats, thirteen years old.
- 3. Karakeep self-hosted — AGPL-3.0, content archived locally. Export tooling is thinner than Wallabag’s, but the database being on your machine trumps a nice export button.
- 4. SingleFile or ArchiveBox — the files are the archive.
- 5. Readwise Reader — the best hosted option by a distance. You still depend on a company, but you can walk out with the goods.
- 6. Raindrop.io — metadata and highlights come out clean; the archived page copies you paid for do not.
- 7. Instapaper — no single complete-library-with-text export. Bulk retrieval is a chore.
- 8. Pinboard — good metadata portability, poor text portability, one-person operation.
- 9. Matter — unverifiable export story on a closed iOS-only product. Highest risk.
Only Readwise Reader and the self-hosted three pass the “show me the export before I import” test.
What each one actually does
| Full-text search | Highlighting | Offline | TTS | Newsletters | RSS | Obsidian/Notion sync | Mobile | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instapaper | Premium only | Yes, unlimited notes on Premium | Yes | Yes, AI voices — iOS and Android | Yes, save-by-email | No | Via API | iOS, Android, web |
| Readwise Reader | Yes | The core of the product | Yes | Yes | Yes | Full RSS reader, OPML in and out | Native, first-class | iOS, Android, web |
| Raindrop.io | Pro only | Unlimited, even free | Partial | No | No | No | Via API | iOS, Android, web, macOS |
| Karakeep | Full-text and semantic | Yes | Via apps | No | No | Yes | REST API | iOS, Android |
| Wallabag | Yes | Yes | Yes | Basic | Limited | Yes | Community plugins | iOS, Android, GNOME |
| Readeck | Yes | Yes | Reader-side | No | No | Limited | API | Web-first, no native apps |
| Matter | Yes | Premium only | Yes | Premium only | Premium only | Limited | Reported, unverified | iPhone and iPad only — no Android |
Two things nobody else in this list does: Karakeep archives video with yt-dlp and runs OCR on images, and Readeck reads and searches video transcripts. And Readwise Reader is the only product here that is simultaneously a competent RSS reader, newsletter inbox, PDF and EPUB reader, and highlight-sync engine.
The self-hosted three — and their actual licences
We have been caught out twice this year by tools described as open source that turned out to be source-available. So we checked the repositories directly.
| Tool | Licence | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Wallabag | MIT | Permissive. Do essentially anything |
| Karakeep (formerly Hoarder) | AGPL-3.0 | Copyleft with a network clause |
| Readeck | AGPL-3.0 | Same |
| Omnivore | AGPL-3.0 | Dead as a service |
| SingleFile | AGPL | — |
| ArchiveBox | MIT | — |
All genuinely open source. No Business Source Licence, no Elastic Licence, no Commons Clause, no open core with the good parts paywalled. The AGPL network clause only constrains you if you run the software as a public service — for personal use it is irrelevant.
What they cost to run
- Readeck is the cheapest and easiest by a wide margin — “a single executable file with no dependencies.” Baseline 512 MB RAM, 200 MB storage, about 300 KB per saved bookmark. Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, Windows, and a Raspberry Pi 2. A hundred thousand bookmarks is about 30 GB.
- Wallabag is PHP and a database, comfortable on a 1 GB VPS. More moving parts, a decade of stability. Or pay €11 a year for official hosting and skip all of it — the single best value line item in this article.
- Karakeep is the heaviest: Docker Compose with a worker, a Chrome container for archiving, Meilisearch for search, and optionally a local model for AI tagging. Budget 2 to 4 GB of RAM, and expect storage to grow fast.
What you give up: polished native mobile apps, reliable newsletter inbox addresses, best-in-class extraction on hostile paywalled sites, text-to-speech, and — the big one — you become the on-call engineer for your own backups. A self-hosted archive with no offsite backup is more fragile than Pocket was.
The free routes that genuinely work
- Browser bookmarks with tags. Free, exports to HTML and JSON. But zero article text, which is the exact failure mode Pocket exporters hit. This is Mozilla’s recommended replacement and it is not a read-later app.
- Safari Reading List. Free, iCloud sync, and the underrated part: it can store offline copies of pages. More than Firefox bookmarks give you. Apple-only, no tags, no search inside saved text.
- SingleFile plus a synced folder. The AGPL browser extension saves a complete page — images, CSS, fonts — into one self-contained HTML file. Your operating system indexes them. Zero cost, zero dependency, readable in 2046. The only option here with a genuinely indefinite lifespan.
- ArchiveBox (MIT). Feed it bookmarks and it produces HTML, SingleFile copies, screenshots, PDF, WARC, extracted text, and media. Needs Chromium and Docker. The researcher’s answer.
- Obsidian plus a web clipper. Free for personal use, Markdown on disk. Not a reading queue, but an unkillable archive.
Which one, for whom
| If you… | Use | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Just want Pocket back | Instapaper | Free tier saves unlimited; $5.99/mo or $59.99/yr for search and no ads |
| Highlight heavily and want notes in Obsidian | Readwise Reader | $9.99/mo billed annually. No competitor matches the sync |
| Need permanent research archives | ArchiveBox + Readeck or Wallabag | Free, or €11/yr for hosted Wallabag |
| Read a lot of newsletters | Readwise Reader | The only tool treating newsletters, RSS and saves as one inbox |
| Want to spend nothing | SingleFile + synced folder, or Raindrop free | £0 |
| Want it to exist in 10 years | Readeck or Wallabag | Free, self-hosted |
On the first row: Instapaper is the closest thing to Pocket in spirit and interface, alive since 2008, and actively shipping — a new website with a three-column reader in July 2026, Instapaper 10 on iOS, and AI text-to-speech on Android after a full engine rewrite. Just go in knowing its bulk export is metadata; the text comes out per article.
On the last row, the honest version: no hosted service can credibly make a ten-year promise. Pocket had Mozilla behind it and still died. Omnivore was open source and its cloud still died. Ten-year durability is a property of files on your disk, not of a company’s roadmap.
What each one is genuinely bad at
- Instapaper — paywalls full-text search, the one thing a read-later app most needs. Ads on the free web reader. Folders rather than proper tags. No RSS. No single bulk export with text.
- Readwise Reader — by far the most expensive at $120 a year, no free tier at all, and a dense UI that casual users bounce off. It is a knowledge-management system that happens to read articles.
- Raindrop.io — full-text search behind Pro, which is the wrong side of the paywall in 2026; the archived copies you pay for are excluded from the standard backup; no TTS.
- Matter — no Android app, core features all Premium, pricing not discoverable on its own website, no published export documentation. Smallest team, least transparency, highest risk.
- Karakeep — heaviest to self-host, docs strong on import and thin on export, cloud free tier is ten bookmarks. Young, and renamed from Hoarder, so older guides use the wrong name.
- Wallabag — dated interface, unloved mobile apps, extraction fails on aggressive paywalls.
- Readeck — essentially no native mobile apps, no TTS, no newsletter inbox, single-maintainer risk.
- Pinboard — one person, forever. No article text on the standard tier. Its own site blocks automated inspection.
Questions people are asking right now
Can I still get my Pocket data back?
No. Export closed 12 November 2025 and deletion began that day. If you have an old CSV on a hard drive, that is all that exists — and it contains URLs and metadata, not article text.
What did the Pocket export actually contain?
URL, title, timestamp, tags, read status. Not the articles.
Did Mozilla refund Pocket Premium?
Yes. Annual subscribers were refunded prorated and automatically on 8 July 2025. Monthly renewals had been disabled on 22 May.
Is Instapaper still alive?
Yes, and actively developed. July 2026 brought a new website with a three-column reader, Instapaper 10 for iOS, and AI text-to-speech on Android.
What happened to Omnivore — can I still use it?
ElevenLabs hired the team in October 2024 and the cloud service was deprecated that November, with exports closing 16 November. The AGPL-3.0 code is still public, and it is now self-hosted only. You can run it; most people should not.
Are the self-hosted options really open source?
Yes. Wallabag is MIT, Karakeep and Readeck are AGPL-3.0. No Business Source Licence, no Commons Clause, no open-core bait and switch in this set.
What is the cheapest way to never lose my reading again?
SingleFile — a free browser extension — saving each article as one self-contained HTML file into a synced folder. No account, no vendor, readable forever. Add hosted Wallabag at €11 a year or Readeck on a Raspberry Pi if you want a queue on top.
Which export do I actually trust?
Readwise Reader’s ZIP, which explicitly contains uploaded files and the full content of saved web articles. Everything else hosted gives you metadata plus, at best, per-article downloads.
What we could not verify
- Raindrop.io Pro pricing — any tier, any currency. Prices render in JavaScript only.
- Pinboard pricing — the site disallows automated fetching. Check it manually.
- Matter Premium pricing, export capability, free-tier caps, and whether it is still actively developed. Both pricing URLs 404 and no changelog was found. A figure circulates in comparison articles; we did not verify it and neither should you.
- Whether Instapaper’s bulk export includes highlights and notes. Its export pages are blocked to automated inspection.
- Karakeep’s export formats. The docs cover import thoroughly and export not at all.
- Whether Readeck has any paid hosted tier. None shown; absence of evidence only.
- The exact Pocket extension date. Mozilla’s own page says 12 November 2025; one news outlet says 6 November. We used Mozilla’s.
The short version
- Pocket’s export was links, not articles. That is the lesson, not the shutdown.
- Ask to see the export before you import. Only Readwise Reader and the self-hosted three pass.
- Instapaper if you want Pocket back, and it is genuinely still being built.
- Readwise Reader if you highlight — $120 a year, no free tier, and nothing else comes close on sync.
- Hosted Wallabag at €11 a year is the best value in the category and does not auto-renew.
- SingleFile into a synced folder costs nothing and outlives every company here.
- No hosted service can promise ten years. Pocket had Mozilla and still died.
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