A Pocket alternative that keeps the page.
Pocket, the read-it-later app Mozilla owned, shut down in 2025. If you used it to keep articles for later, here is what happened, what to look for in a replacement, and the apps people moved to.
Guides
By Sharier, founder of DefyRot
Updated October 21, 2026
The quick answer
Pocket shut down on July 8, 2025. The closest replacements are Instapaper (a read-later app), Raindrop.io (bookmarks, with permanent copies on its paid plan), Readwise Reader (a paid reading app) and the open-source Wallabag and Karakeep. If what you want is to keep the articles themselves, offline and safe from dead links, DefyRot saves a full readable copy of each page in your browser.
What happened to Pocket
Mozilla announced on May 22, 2025 that it was closing Pocket. The app stopped working on July 8, 2025, and users could export their saves until October 8, 2025, after which their data was deleted. There is no official successor.
The lesson for many people: a saved list that lives on someone else's server can disappear with the service, and a saved link is only as good as the page behind it.
What to look for in a replacement
- It keeps a copy of the page, not just the link, so the article survives when the original goes.
- It works offline, on a plane or a bad connection.
- You can export everything in an open format, so you are never locked in again.
- Search across what you saved, not only titles.
- Privacy: who can read what you saved.
Read-it-later apps people moved to
- Instapaper: a long-standing read-later app with a clean reading view and apps for phone and computer.
- Raindrop.io: a bookmark manager with collections and tags; its paid plan keeps permanent copies of saved pages.
- Readwise Reader: a paid reading app for articles, newsletters, PDFs and highlights.
- Wallabag: open source; host it yourself or use a hosted instance.
- Karakeep (formerly Hoarder): open source and self-hosted, for people who run their own server.
| App | Type | Open source | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instapaper | Read-later app | No | Reading articles on phone and computer |
| Raindrop.io | Bookmark manager | No | Organising many bookmarks |
| Readwise Reader | Paid reading app | No | Highlights, newsletters and PDFs |
| Wallabag | Read-later server | Yes | Self-hosting |
| Karakeep | Bookmark and read-later server | Yes | Self-hosting |
| DefyRot | Chrome extension with a local vault | No | Keeping full copies offline and recovering dead links |
Where DefyRot fits
DefyRot is a Chrome extension for people who save pages to use them later: developers, researchers and writers. It saves a clean Markdown copy of each page inside your browser, so it opens offline and stays readable even if the original link dies, in which case DefyRot opens your copy automatically.
- Local-first: your pages live on your machine, not on our server.
- Free for 50 pages. Pro adds unlimited pages, full-text search, encrypted sync between computers and export of the whole vault as a ZIP of Markdown files.
- Works in Chrome and other Chromium browsers. There is no phone app yet.
Moving your old Pocket saves
If you downloaded your Pocket export before the October 2025 deadline, keep that file: it lists every link you saved. Many apps can import it directly. For the articles that matter most, open each link while it still works and save a full copy, so you are not relying on the link alone.