5 best alternatives to Pocket deferred reading service

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Pocket has not closed yet, but no one knows what will happen tomorrow. A life hacker will help you find a replacement right now.

In late February, Mozilla bought Pocket, which has long become the default deferred reading service for many. Firefox creators are not going to close the service yet and plan to use it to attract mobile users. However, we know how these stories end: at best, Pocket will become a Firefox feature, and at worst, it will simply close. Therefore, the time has come to look for alternatives.

1. Raindrop

• Price: freemium.
• Subscription: $ 19 per year.
• Platforms: web, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, browser extensions.
• Import from Pocket: there is.
• Multimedia support: there is.

The closest analogue of Pocket in philosophy, appearance and functionality. Raindrop is a service for storing and organizing bookmarks, so it does not have offline viewing and simplified formatting (except for mobile applications, it is implemented in the browser there). The service is available on all popular platforms, has extensive options for sorting and organizing bookmarks, including smart tagging, and also allows you to fine-tune the display of content.

Raindrop is free, but has a paid subscription that opens subfolders, smart tags, Dropbox backups, and the ability to upload up to 1GB of images per month.

Raindrop →

2. Instapaper

• Price: is free.
• Subscription: No.
• Platforms: web, Android, iOS, Apple Watch.
• Import from Pocket: there is.
• Multimedia support: there is.

One of the oldest deferred reading services that can send content to the Kindle in the form of digests. More recently, it also supports embedding media in articles. Instapaper has text display settings with stripped formatting. The possibilities for organizing saved texts are not as great as in Raindrop, but the minimum necessary collection folders are present.

Previously, Instapaper had a premium subscription with advanced features. They are all available for free now.

Instapaper →

Instapaper Instant Paper, Inc.

Instapaper www.instapaper.com

3. Basket

• Price: is free.
• Subscription: No.
• Platforms: web, Android.
• Import from Pocket: there is.
• Multimedia support: there is.

A worthy replacement for Pocket with support for clean formatting and offline viewing. With Basket, you can save articles to a collection by sorting them using folders, tags and colored labels. There is a full-fledged search with filters, as well as the ability to share content via social networks or using a public link to the article.

The service is available as a web version and a mobile application for Android and is completely free.

Basket →

Basket read later RedElegant app

4. Candy

• Price: is free.
• Subscription: No.
• Platforms: Chrome.
• Import from Pocket: No.
• Multimedia support: there is.

A service with excellent design and functionality, which will allow you to save not only entire articles, but also individual excerpts from them. Supports text formatting, can correctly display media files on pages.

The interface is implemented very conveniently: in the form of a side panel that opens by pressing a floating button. There are no special features for organizing content in Candy, records are in one stream, but they can be pinned and viewed last added.

The service is completely free, but so far only available for Chrome. The iOS mobile app is currently in beta testing, and the Android version is under development.

Candy →

5. Save to Google

• Price: is free.
• Subscription: No.
• Platforms: Chrome.
• Import from Pocket: No.
• Multimedia support: No.

Save to Google can be classified as an alternative to Pocket only at a stretch, it is more of a bookmarking service. At the same time, it is suitable for those who use Pocket as a collection of articles, and not as a tool for lazy reading. Sorting of content is carried out using tags, there is a visual representation of articles in the form of tiles with the ability to preview.

The Save to Google extension is completely free.