Instapaper vs Readeck
We give Instapaper a 3.8 GPA and Readeck a 3.4, out of 4.0. Instapaper grades higher on ease of use. Readeck grades higher on value for money. They get the same grade on the free plan, features and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Instapaper
Read-later app that strips articles down to clean text
Free plan · from $5.99/mo
How we grade them
| 3.8GPAInstapaperExcellent | 3.4GPAReadeckVery good | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | BPremium is $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year, a little above the middle for reading apps. It adds full-text search, a PDF reader, a permanent archive, unlimited notes, Kindle digests and AI Voices. Fair enough, though we'd have liked search without paying. | AIt's free, open-source software with no paid plan today. What you pay for is wherever you host it. A paid hosted service has been announced for 2026, but no price is published yet. |
| Free plan and trial | AUnlimited saves, sync across web, iOS and Android, folders, offline reading and even API access, all free. Most people could stay here. The caps are 5 notes a month, and 10 AI summaries and 10 speed-read articles a month, and the website shows ads. | AThe complete application is free under the GNU AGPL v3.0, and nothing is held back. There's no paid tier to be nudged towards. |
| Features | AA clean reading view with your choice of fonts, margins and spacing, offline reading on phones, highlights and notes that export to Markdown, Obsidian, Evernote or Notion, text to speech, AI summaries and delivery to Kindle, Kobo and Boox eReaders. Search, PDFs and the permanent archive are Premium. | AIt saves the text and images of a page onto your own instance, pulls in video transcripts so you can read and search them, and lets you highlight, label and add Markdown notes. A saved search becomes a collection, and any collection exports as a single EPUB file. |
| Ease of use | A4.6 from about 3,500 App Store ratings. Save a page and it comes back as clean text, synced to your phone to read offline. That's the whole routine. | DYou host it yourself, and for now that's the only option. It comes as a single binary or a container image with SQLite recommended, which is light as these things go, but it's still your server to set up and keep going. |
| Platforms and integrations | AWeb, Mac, iPhone, Android and a browser extension, plus Kindle, Kobo and Boox eReaders. Highlights go out to Obsidian, Notion and Evernote, and there's API access on free accounts too. One gap: AI summaries aren't on Android yet. | AA web app with official Android and iOS apps that read offline, and a Firefox and Chrome extension that saves pages as your browser sees them, logins included. E-readers reach it over OPDS, and it works with Obsidian and KOReader. |
| Best for | reading saved articles without the clutter | a private read-later archive on your own server |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Instapaper and Readeck. How we grade
Where they differ
- Instapaper starts at $5.99 per month, or $59.99 per year. Readeck is free.
- Readeck is open source and self-hostable, according to its own site.
- Readeck also covers bookmarks.
In commonFree planWebmacOSiOSAndroidBrowser extensionWorks offlinePublic APIRead laterHighlights
At a glance
| Instapaper | Readeck | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free |
| Starts at | $5.99 per month, or $59.99 per year | Free |
| Free plan | Unlimited saves, sync across web, iOS and Android, folders and API access. Notes are capped at 5 a month, and AI summaries and speed reading at 10 a month each. | Free, open-source software under the GNU AGPL v3.0 that you host yourself. A paid hosted service is announced for 2026, with no price published yet. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| macOS | ||
| iOS | ||
| Android | ||
| Browser extension | ||
| Made by | Instant Paper, Inc. | Readeck |
| Price read from | instapaper.com | readeck.org |
| Checked | Oct 5, 2026 | Oct 6, 2026 |
Who each one suits
Instapaper
- Saving long articles to read later without ads or page clutter
- Reading saved articles on a Kindle, Kobo or Boox eReader
- Commuters and travelers who read or listen offline
Readeck
- People who want a private read-later archive on their own server
- E-reader owners who export articles as EPUB or browse over OPDS
- Readers who highlight and annotate long articles
Worth knowing
Instapaper
- Full-text search, the PDF reader and the permanent archive all require Premium.
- Free accounts get 5 notes a month, and 10 summaries and 10 speed-read articles a month.
- AI summaries are not yet available on Android, according to Instapaper's docs.
- Free accounts see ads on the Instapaper website; Premium removes them.
Readeck
- Readeck must be self-hosted for now; the hosted service announced for early 2026 is still listed as coming, with no price set.
- A public share link for a bookmark stays valid for only 24 hours.
- There is no store for paywall logins; pages behind a login are saved through the browser extension instead.
- Saving several text selections from a page at once works only in the Firefox extension.
Key features
Instapaper
- Decluttered reading view
- Removes ads, navigation and other page clutter from a saved article and reformats it for reading, with adjustable fonts, margins, line spacing and text size.
- Offline reading and sync
- The iOS and Android apps download unread articles so they can be read without a connection, and reading lists stay in sync across devices.
- Highlights and notes
- Highlight passages and attach notes, then export them as plain text, Markdown or HTML or send them to Obsidian, Evernote or Notion.
- Kindle, Kobo and Boox delivery
- Kobo eReaders link directly to an Instapaper account, free accounts included. Scheduled and manual Kindle digests require Premium.
- Text to speech
- The iOS and Android apps read saved articles aloud at 0.5x to 2x speed. AI Voices and multi-article playlists come with Premium.
- Summaries and speed reading
- Generates an AI summary with the key sentences of an article, and can flash text one word at a time. Each is free for 10 articles a month.
Readeck
- Articles, pictures and videos
- Saves the readable content of a web page, keeping its text and images on your instance, and adapts when a link points to an image or a video.
- Labels, favorites and collections
- Bookmarks can be archived, marked as favorites and labelled. Full-text search finds them again, and a search query can be saved as a dynamic collection.
- Highlights and notes
- Highlight and annotate the important parts of saved text, browse the highlights from all your content, and add a Markdown note above a bookmark.
- Video transcripts
- When a saved video has a transcript, Readeck retrieves it so it can be read, highlighted, searched and exported like an article.
- E-book export and OPDS
- Any article, or a whole collection, exports as a single EPUB file, and e-readers that support OPDS can open the Readeck catalog directly.
- Apps and browser extension
- Official Android and iOS apps read saved content offline, and the Firefox and Chrome extension sends the page as your browser sees it, including sites you are logged in to.
Plans
Instapaper
Free$0
Unlimited saved articles, videos and pages, sync across web, iOS and Android, folders and API access. Notes are limited to 5 a month.
Premium$5.99
per month, or $59.99 per year
Full-text search, PDF reader, permanent archive, unlimited notes, Kindle digests, AI Voices and text-to-speech playlists, and an ad-free website.
Readeck
Self-hosted$0
The complete application as a single binary or container image for your own server, with SQLite as the recommended database.
Ways to pay less
Instapaper
- Annual discount
Save over 15% with the yearly plan
Instapaper's Premium page says the yearly plan saves over 15%: $59.99 a year instead of $5.99 a month.
Readeck
No public discounts listed.
