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The best Readwise alternatives in 2026

By Nico, Founder of Becoming · Published

Readwise set the template for the highlight manager: pull highlights out of Kindle and everywhere else, keep them in one library, and send a few back each day. People look for a Readwise alternative for different reasons: a lower price, a Kindle export and nothing more, a read-later app rather than a highlight library, or years of highlights they want to lead somewhere.

This roundup covers six products that are live today. Every price and feature comes from each product’s own site, checked on September 21, 2026, with sources at the end. One disclosure: Becoming is our product. It goes first because this is our blog, and it gets the same treatment as the others.

Readwise, as the baseline

Readwise’s pricing page lists two plans:

  • Readwise Lite, $5.59 a month billed annually or $6.99 month to month: daily review by email and app, browsing and searching your library, and highlight sync from all sources. Tags and notes are Full-only.
  • Readwise Full, $9.99 a month billed annually or $12.99 billed monthly: adds export to Notion and Obsidian and access to the Readwise Reader app.

The first 30 days are free, and the same page offers students and academics a 50% discount. Readwise’s home page describes syncing from Kindle, Instapaper, Apple Books and more, and automatic export to note-taking tools such as Evernote, Notion and Roam. That breadth of connections is its clearest strength, and the thing to weigh against every product below. Our side-by-side is Becoming as a Readwise alternative.

The best Readwise alternatives at a glance

ProductWhat it isPrice on its own siteFree option
BecomingHighlight library, daily review, 4-week Themes with daily Practices$4.99/mo (The Library), $6.99/mo (The Academy)7-day trial
ScreviHighlight manager and read-it-later app$6.99/mo, $59.99/yr, $299 lifetime14-day trial
GlaspSocial web and PDF highlighter with AI summariesFree; Pro $12.50/mo billed annuallyFree plan
Clippings.ioKindle highlight organizer and exporterFree; Professional $1.99/mo billed yearlyFree plan
InstapaperRead-later app with highlights and notesPremium $5.99/mo or $59.99/yrFree account
MatterRead-later app for iPhone, iPad and webPremium sold in-app; no price on its websiteFree tier

1. Becoming (our product)

What it is. A highlight manager with a second half. The first half is the familiar one: capture, search, daily resurfacing. Imports cover Kindle (from the Becoming app or the Chrome extension), Readwise, Goodreads, Apple Books, Google Play Books, Kobo, a Kindle’s My Clippings.txt, annotated PDFs, and photos of pages marked in a paper book. The extension saves web articles, YouTube videos and X posts, and a personal @in.usebecoming.com address takes newsletters. The Reader is a read-later queue for those articles, newsletters, videos and PDFs, where you highlight as you read, and The Library’s AI reading pulls the highlights that matter out of anything you save whole, a photographed page included. Search works on exact words or on meaning, a Daily Review brings a few highlights back each day in the app and by email, and a built-in MCP server lets Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP-capable assistant read your library.

None of the other sites in this roundup describe the second half. Becoming looks for ideas that keep showing up across your sources and proposes a Theme: four weeks on one idea. Each scheduled day brings one Practice, a two-to-five-minute action or reflection drawn from the highlights behind the Theme. A Theme can also start from a single highlight in the Daily Review, or from a description of what you want to work on.

Who it’s for. Readers who want everything a highlight manager does and have noticed that rereading a good idea is not the same as doing something with it.

Pricing. The Library is $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year: imports, the Reader, AI reading of what you save, Daily Review, search and MCP. The Academy is $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year and adds Themes, daily Practices and automatic AI tagging. Founding Member is $174 once, for lifetime Academy access. Both subscriptions start with a 7-day free trial; details are in the pricing section.

The honest limit. Becoming does not push highlights out to Notion or Obsidian the way Readwise Full does. If that export is the center of your workflow, weigh it.

2. Screvi

What it is. A digital commonplace book, in Screvi’s own words: a highlights manager and read-it-later app in one. Its site lists imports from Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, Goodreads, Twitter/X, YouTube and Readwise, plus PDF, EPUB, RSS, web articles, newsletters and podcasts. It has an article reader, an EPUB reader for DRM-free books, a daily spaced-repetition review, a home screen widget, AI search in natural language, and sync to Notion and Obsidian with a Claude connection.

Who it’s for. Anyone who wants the closest like-for-like replacement for Readwise, exports included, and values apps everywhere: its pricing page lists iOS, Android, web, browser extensions and a macOS desktop app.

Pricing. $6.99 a month, $59.99 a year, or $299 once for lifetime. All three include the same features and start with a 14-day trial, no credit card.

Full comparison: Becoming as a Screvi alternative.

3. Glasp

What it is. A social highlighter. Glasp’s extensions for Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox highlight web pages and PDFs, and its about page describes the goal as taking highlights out of private note apps and into the open for others to learn from. Around that sit AI features: YouTube summaries, PDF chat, audio transcription and a chat over your own highlights. It has iOS and Android apps, and the same page lists integrations with Obsidian, Notion and Readwise among others.

Who it’s for. People who mostly read on the web, like learning in public, and want a capable free tier. Highlights on the free plan are public; private highlights are paid.

Pricing. Free includes unlimited public highlights and capped AI features. Pro is $12.50 a month billed annually ($150 a year) and adds unlimited private highlights, higher AI limits and daily auto-sync to Notion. Unlimited is $30 a month billed annually ($360 a year). The pricing page lists a 40% student discount on Pro.

Full comparison: Becoming as a Glasp alternative.

4. Clippings.io

What it is. A focused tool: “the easy way to organise your Kindle highlights,” in its own words. It imports from Kindle devices and Kindle apps, from Amazon-purchased books and personal documents, through a browser extension or a My Clippings.txt upload. What sets it apart is where highlights can go next: Evernote, Notion, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and OneNote, and file formats including Word, Excel, PDF, text, Markdown, EPUB and JSON. Extensions exist for Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Brave.

Who it’s for. Students, authors and academics who read on Kindle and need highlights in a document or a notes app, with no interest in daily review or a wider library.

Pricing. Free forever to import, view and edit Kindle highlights. Professional is $1.99 a month billed yearly and removes the export limits. It is the cheapest paid option here by a wide margin.

Full comparison: Becoming as a Clippings.io alternative.

5. Instapaper

What it is. A read-later app: save articles, then highlight and add notes as you read. It belongs here because many people use Readwise mainly to collect article highlights, and Readwise itself lists Instapaper as a source.

Who it’s for. Readers whose highlights come mostly from long articles rather than books, and who want a calm reading queue first.

Pricing. The basic account is free. Instapaper Premium is $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year; its premium page lists full-text search across your articles, a permanent archive, a PDF reader, unlimited notes, Kindle integration, text-to-speech playlists on mobile and speed reading.

Full comparison: Becoming as an Instapaper alternative.

6. Matter

What it is. “The modern read-later app for iPhone, iPad, and web,” in Matter’s words. It saves articles, threads, PDFs, YouTube videos and podcast episodes, delivers newsletters into the app, follows individual writers, turns articles into audio, and supports highlighting, tags and offline full-text search. Its developer documentation covers a REST API and a command-line tool.

Who it’s for. Apple-device readers who care about reading design and audio, and whose highlights come from articles and newsletters.

Pricing. Matter’s website doesn’t publish a price. Its App Store listing describes a free tier with an uncapped read-later library, tags and full-text search, and a Premium subscription, bought in the app, that adds HD text-to-speech, newsletter syncing, unlimited highlighting and notes, integrations and Send to Kindle. Check the listing for the current price in your region.

Full comparison: Becoming as a Matter alternative.

How to choose

Start from where your highlights are born and where you want them to end up.

  • Kindle, and you only need them out: Clippings.io, for $1.99 a month or free.
  • Articles and newsletters: Instapaper or Matter. They are reading apps first; highlights are a by-product of reading there.
  • The web, in public: Glasp.
  • Everything, exported to Notion or Obsidian: Readwise Full or Screvi.
  • Everything, and you want the ideas to change what you do: Becoming. The Library covers the highlight-manager job, AI reading included, at $4.99 a month, and The Academy adds Themes and Practices at $6.99.

Two checks before paying anyone. First, confirm how you would get your highlights out again; Readwise offers an API token, which is how Becoming imports a whole Readwise library, books, articles and podcasts with their notes. Second, be clear about what the highlights are for. If the answer is “to remember them,” any product with a daily review will serve. If the answer is “to live differently,” the review is only the first step, and how to apply what you read walks through the rest.

Sources

Checked on September 21, 2026: