Readwise alternatives for people who want to remember, not just resurface

Readwise is two products under one subscription, and most people who go looking for an alternative want to replace only one of them. The first is a collector: it pulls highlights out of Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, Instapaper, Pocket's successors, PDFs and a long tail of other sources, and puts them in one place. The second is a resurfacer: each day it shows you a handful of old highlights, and its Mastery mode turns the ones you choose into active recall prompts scheduled by a recall-probability model.

The alternatives lists mostly compare collectors. That is fine if the collecting is what you want, and there are cheaper and freer ways to do it. It is not fine if what you actually wanted was to remember what you read, because a collector does not do that, and neither, on its own, does resurfacing.

So this is sorted by job. Four jobs, the tools that do each, as of September 2026, and an honest account of the gap between having your highlights and keeping what was in them. Agent Memo, which appears under the last job, is the tool we make.

First, what Readwise actually does well

Its integrations are the best in the space, by a distance. If your reading is spread across a Kindle, a read-later app and a stack of PDFs, Readwise is the only thing that reliably gets all of it into one library, and its export to notes apps is mature. Its daily review is pleasant. Mastery mode is real active recall, which almost none of the collectors offer.

Its limits are the ones its design implies. It works from highlights, so it depends on you having highlighted the right things while reading. Mastery is opt-in per highlight, so choosing what to review is still on you. And the recall prompt is the highlight itself, which tests whether you remember the passage rather than whether you can produce the idea. It is a subscription, and the price is a common reason people go looking.

Job 1: sync highlights from ebooks

You read on a Kindle or a Kobo or in Apple Books, you highlight, and you want the highlights somewhere you can see them.

• Screvi imports from Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books, adds AI search, and has a daily review based on a classical spaced repetition algorithm. Around $7 a month as of September 2026. The closest direct replacement for the ebook half of Readwise, at a lower price.
• PastReads positions itself as a free alternative for ebook highlights. Free is the point; the review side is thinner.
• Your device's own export, if you only read on one platform. Kindle's notebook export and Apple Books' export both exist, and for a single source a folder of text files is a real option.

None of these tests you on the argument. They give you the highlights back.

Job 2: save articles to read later

You want a queue of things to read, with highlighting, that does not live in a browser tab.

• Instapaper is the oldest and still one of the cleanest; free with a paid tier.
• Matter is the modern one, with a nicer reader and its own highlight sync; free with a paid tier.
• Raindrop is a bookmark manager first, with highlighting and a permanent-copy option; free with a paid tier.
• Wallabag is open source and self-hostable, for anyone who wants their reading queue on their own server.
• Readwise Reader, Readwise's own read-later app, is the thing many people were comparing these against in the first place.

Any of these does the queue. The ones with highlight sync feed Job 1. None does Job 4.

Job 3: save everything and search it

You want a place where every article, video and PDF goes, gets summarised, and can be found again by asking.

• Recall captures articles, YouTube, podcasts and PDFs, summarises them, links related items in a graph, and lets you chat with the collection. It also offers spaced repetition over the saved summaries with generated quizzes. Freemium, with a large user base. The review mode is attached to a retrieval product; the cards come from the summaries, which is one step further from the source than a card written from the passage.
• Remio is in the same category, with AI search and summaries over saved context.

These are second brains. They are built so that you can find the thing again, which is a different goal from not needing to.

Job 4: keep what you read

You do not want your highlights back. You want, six months from now, to be able to state what the book argued without opening anything. This is the job the other three do not do, and the one Readwise's Mastery mode partly does.

Three approaches:

• Readwise Mastery, on the highlights you choose to promote. Real recall, scheduled well. Limited by what you highlighted and by the prompt being the passage rather than a question about it.
• Anki, with cards you write from your highlights. The best schedule available and complete control; the cost is that you write every card, and the export from most collectors to Anki is a manual step. This is the route for people who like writing cards. What Anki gets right and where it falls down.
• Agent Memo, which works from the source rather than the highlight. Capture the article, the PDF, the EPUB, the video or the recording; the agent reads the whole thing and proposes the dozen cards worth keeping, each traceable to the passage it came from; you see all of them before any enter review, and dropping one is a click. The day has a ceiling you set, so a missed week comes back as a fuller session rather than a pile. No highlighting required, and no highlight sync either: it does not pull from your Kindle, so if syncing was the job, it is the wrong tool.

The honest difference between the three is who chooses and what the card is. Readwise: you choose, the card is the highlight. Anki: you choose and you write. Agent Memo: the agent proposes from the whole source, the card is a question with its passage attached, and you keep or drop.

Keeping the passage attached turns a saved highlight into a claim you can verify later.

Side by side

Details as of September 2026; every one of these changes its tiers.

Which one, by what you wanted

You wanted the Kindle sync and the daily email, cheaper. Screvi, or PastReads if free is the requirement.

You wanted a read-later app and Reader was too much. Instapaper or Matter, Wallabag if you self-host.

You wanted somewhere to put everything and ask it questions later. Recall.

You wanted to remember what you read, and highlighting was the part you did. Readwise Mastery, or Anki if you will write the cards.

You wanted to remember what you read, and highlighting was the part you kept not doing. Agent Memo. This is who it is for, and if the sync was what you were after, the row above is honest about it not being there.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free Readwise alternative? For collecting ebook highlights, PastReads. For read-later, Wallabag self-hosted, or the free tiers of Instapaper, Matter and Raindrop. For actually reviewing what you read with a schedule, Anki is free and Agent Memo has a free tier.

Does any alternative sync as many sources as Readwise? Not as of 2026. Its integration list is its moat. If you read across many platforms and want all of it in one place, the alternatives are all narrower.

What is the difference between resurfacing and recall? Resurfacing shows you the highlight again. Recall asks you to produce it, or to answer a question about it, before showing you. The first is pleasant and does little for retention; the second is what the evidence supports. Readwise Mastery, Anki and Agent Memo do the second; the collectors do the first or nothing.

Can I get my highlights out of Readwise? Yes; its export is good, to notes apps and to files. Do it before cancelling.

Do I need to highlight for Agent Memo to work? No. It reads the source and proposes from that. If you already highlight and want those specific passages, Readwise's model fits better.

What to do now

Decide which job you were paying for. If it was the sync, the cheaper collectors do it. If it was remembering, ask whether the highlighting was happening; if it was, turn on Mastery; if it was not, capture the next thing you read at the source and let the agent propose the cards, and keep the ones worth a year.