Becoming, the Screvi alternative with daily Practices (2026)

What Screvi does well

Screvi describes itself as a “highlights manager & read-it-later app”, and a Screvi alternative has to be measured against both halves, because its site backs up each.

On the highlights side, its integrations page lists Kindle (through a browser extension, the mobile apps or a My Clippings.txt file, with auto-sync every 24 hours), Kobo, Apple Books (synced by a macOS desktop app), Goodreads, Readwise, X bookmarks with daily auto-sync, paper books scanned with OCR in the mobile app, and manual bulk import. Review is built on spaced repetition, which Screvi compares to “the science behind Anki”, with an email digest, home-screen widgets and streaks.

On the reading side, Screvi has a built-in reader for DRM-free EPUBs, PDFs, web articles, RSS feeds and YouTube transcripts, and a podcast player that captures a highlight with one tap by transcribing the last 30 seconds.

Around that sit natural-language search, AI-clustered topics, an MCP connector for Claude and, per its September 2026 changelog, a public API.

Where Screvi is stronger

• A desktop app, widgets and CarPlay. Beyond its mobile apps, Screvi has a macOS desktop app, home-screen widgets and CarPlay support. Becoming offers none of those.
• EPUBs, RSS and podcasts. None of the three has an equivalent in Becoming, whose Reader covers saved articles, newsletters, YouTube videos and imported PDFs.
• Automatic Kindle sync. Screvi states a 24-hour auto-sync. In Becoming you run the Kindle sync yourself when you have new highlights.
• Export and sync. An official Obsidian plugin, Notion sync in beta, Apple Notes, Markdown and PDF export. Becoming has no export integrations.
• One plan, longer trial. Everything is included at a single price, with 14 days to try it against Becoming’s 7.

What Becoming does differently as a Screvi alternative

The two products overlap more than most pairs in this category: Becoming also gathers highlights from everywhere, searches them by meaning and brings them back every day. The difference is what happens next.

The same capture job, with a few different sources

• Kindle from the Becoming app or the Chrome extension, which read your Kindle Notebook, or a My Clippings.txt upload.
• Readwise (one API token), Goodreads, Apple Books, Kobo via KoboReader.sqlite, Google Play Books and annotated PDFs.
• Paper books: photograph marked-up pages from the web app, or attach the photos to an email. Becoming keeps what you underlined, highlighted or bracketed.
• Web articles by selecting text with the extension, and YouTube videos turned into transcript highlights with timestamps that jump to the moment, as described in how to save highlights from YouTube videos.
• X posts, and a personal @in.usebecoming.com address that turns forwarded emails and newsletter subscriptions into highlights.

Imports are deduplicated by content, so connecting overlapping sources never doubles a passage.

Saving something whole is where The Library’s AI reading comes in. Save an article, forward a newsletter, add a YouTube video or photograph a page, and an AI model reads it and pulls out the passages worth keeping, within a monthly allowance included in the plan. Your own highlights, imports, search, tags and Daily Review never touch it.

Search and daily review

Search runs on keywords and meaning together: type the words you remember or describe the idea. Daily Review resurfaces a short stack each day in the app and by email, favors highlights you have seen less, boosts favorites, keeps a streak, and lets you set days, time and count. It is not an Anki-style scheduler; if graded spaced repetition is what you want, Screvi’s review is closer to that.

Themes and Practices

This is the part Screvi does not have. On The Academy, Becoming looks for ideas that recur across your sources, weighted toward recent reading, and proposes a Theme: a 4-week focus grounded in your own highlights. You can also grow one from a single highlight in Daily Review, or describe what you want to work on.

Each day brings a Practice of two to five minutes: Reflect practices help an idea settle, Act practices are small real-life experiments. A checkpoint at the start of the last week asks whether to extend or finish. One Theme runs at a time.

Screvi’s AI clusters your highlights into topics so you can see patterns. A Theme starts from a similar observation and then schedules a month of doing something about it; the reasoning is in how to apply what you read.

AI assistants

Both products expose your library over MCP. Screvi’s connector is presented around Claude, works with other MCP clients, and can be granted write access to save links, highlights, notes and tags. Becoming’s server documents Claude Desktop, Cursor and ChatGPT, signs in with OAuth, combines keyword and semantic matching, and can add highlights and sources; on The Academy it can also generate a Theme or complete the day’s Practice. Every write is confirmed first.

Becoming vs Screvi pricing

The comparison cuts both ways. Against The Library, Screvi costs $2 more a month and $10 more a year, and includes a reader for EPUBs, RSS and podcasts that The Library does not. Against The Academy, the monthly price is identical and Screvi is $10 cheaper per year, while The Academy includes Themes and Practices that Screvi does not. For lifetime access, Becoming is $125 less.

Screvi has one feature set and three ways to pay: $6.99 a month, $59.99 a year, or $299 once for lifetime access. Every option starts with a 14-day trial with no credit card.

Becoming splits by what you want to do. The Library, $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year, is the highlight manager: every import source, AI reading of what you save within a monthly allowance, keyword and semantic search, Daily Review with its email, book suggestions and MCP access. The Academy, $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year, adds Themes, Practices and automatic AI tagging. Founding Member is $174 once for lifetime Academy access. Trials run 7 days, and The Library’s needs no card.

Live prices are on Becoming’s pricing section and on Screvi’s pricing page.

Who should pick which

Stay with Screvi if you want your review on a home-screen widget or in CarPlay; if you want EPUBs, RSS feeds and podcasts in the same app as your highlights; or if your notes live in Obsidian or Notion and highlights need to arrive there.

Pick Becoming if your library is mostly Kindle, paper books, articles and videos, and what you are missing is follow-through: one small, specific practice a day is a different habit from reviewing cards. It also suits you if the entry price matters and you do not need EPUBs, RSS or podcasts.

For the whole field, the Readwise comparison and the roundup of the best Readwise alternatives cover the other options.

How to move your highlights from Screvi to Becoming

Becoming has no Screvi importer, so the clean route goes back to where the highlights came from. Every import is deduplicated by content, so overlapping sources are safe.

1. Kindle. In the Becoming app, or in the web app with the Chrome extension, choose Add source, then Kindle, and sign in to Amazon when asked. Books, highlights and notes come through in the background.
2. Readwise. If your Screvi library was itself imported from Readwise, connect Readwise in Becoming with your token from readwise.io/access_token.
3. Goodreads, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play Books, PDF. Each has its own entry under Add source. Kobo takes the same KoboReader.sqlite file Screvi asks for.
4. Paper books. Open Integrations, choose Photo import, pick the book and add up to 10 pages at a time.
5. Anything that exists only in Screvi. Export it from Screvi as Markdown, then use Add source → Manual highlight import: pick or create the book, paste its highlights separated by bullets or blank lines, and check the preview before saving.

Step-by-step guides for each source are in the help center.