Marqly vs Glasp: Which is better? (2026)
The short answer
- Choose Marqly — Anyone who saves more than they can organize — researchers, students, and heavy readers who want to find things again by describing them. It adds semantic search (find by meaning), full-text search, save all open tabs, browser bookmarks import that Glasp doesn't offer.
- Choose Glasp — Learners who want to highlight in public — building a shareable knowledge profile and discovering what smart people underline — with strong YouTube AI on the side. It offers Android app, public API, which Marqly doesn't.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Marqly | Glasp |
|---|---|---|
| AI auto-tagging | ✓ | ✓ |
| Semantic search (find by meaning) | ✓ | — |
| AI summaries | ✓ | ✓ |
| YouTube AI (summary, chat, transcript) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Chat with your saves | ✓ | ✓ |
| Web highlighter | ✓ | ✓ |
| Notes on highlights | ✓ | ✓ |
| Save page as PDF | ✓ | ✓ |
| Full-text search | ✓ | — |
| Save all open tabs | ✓ | — |
| Public sharing (boards/collections) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pocket import | ✓ | ✓ |
| Browser bookmarks import | ✓ | — |
| Offline reading | — | — |
| iOS app | ✓ | ✓ |
| Android app | — | ✓ |
| Browser extension | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free tier | ✓ | ✓ |
| Public API | — | ✓ |
| Self-hostable | — | — |
| Price | Free · $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month | Free · Pro $15/month or $150/year; Unlimited $36/month or $360/year |
- Marqly
- Free · $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month
- Glasp
- Free · Pro $15/month or $150/year; Unlimited $36/month or $360/year
Pricing
- Marqly: Marqly has a free tier; paid plans are $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month. 7-day free trial of Pro. Free tier needs no card; Pro unlocks chat with saves and video chat.
- Glasp: Glasp has a free tier; paid plans are Pro $15/month or $150/year; Unlimited $36/month or $360/year. Free plan includes unlimited public highlights only — private highlights require Pro. Free AI caps are tight (3 YouTube summaries/day, 20 PDF chat messages/month). Prices rose ~20-25% in May 2026; subscriptions are non-refundable. Student discount on Pro yearly with an academic email.
About Glasp
Glasp is a social web highlighter founded in San Francisco in 2021 by Kazuki Nakayashiki and Kei Watanabe. Its extension highlights text on web pages and PDFs, attaches notes, and — the distinctive part — publishes highlights to a public profile where a community feed lets people learn from each other's reading. The company also makes the popular YouTube Summary extension, and paid plans add advanced YouTube summaries, channel tracking, PDF chat, audio transcription, and an AI clone that answers questions from your highlights. AI-suggested tags help organize saves, and imports cover Pocket, Instapaper, Medium, Readwise, and Kindle. Exports are strong: Markdown, CSV, HTML, and JSON, plus Notion auto-sync, an Obsidian plugin, and a developer API with an MCP connector. Extensions ship for Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox alongside iOS and Android apps rebuilt in 2026. Highlighting is free and unlimited but public; private highlights require Pro at $150 a year, with an Unlimited tier at $360.
Where Glasp wins
- The social layer is genuinely unique — public profiles and a community feed let you learn from what others highlight
- Core highlighting is free and unlimited; only privacy and AI features sit behind the paywall
- Best-in-class YouTube AI — Glasp makes the hugely popular YouTube Summary extension, with transcripts and channel tracking
- Broadest platform coverage in the highlighter niche: Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, iOS, Android, and a mobile Safari extension
- Excellent export and integrations: Markdown, CSV, HTML, and JSON, plus Notion auto-sync, an Obsidian plugin, Readwise, and a developer API with MCP connector
- Dedicated Kindle highlight import and export
Where Glasp falls short
- Free highlights are public by default — keeping highlights private requires Pro at $150/year
- Free AI limits are tight: 3 YouTube summaries a day and 20 PDF chat messages a month
- Prices rose about 20-25% in May 2026, the Unlimited tier is expensive, and subscriptions are explicitly non-refundable
- No full-page archiving, full-text search, or offline mode — it's a highlight layer, not an archive
- Two-person team, which is a real support and longevity risk
About Marqly
Marqly is an AI bookmark manager built around a browser extension for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari, plus a web app and an iOS app. Every save is tagged and summarized automatically, and semantic search lets you retrieve any bookmark by describing what you remember instead of matching exact keywords. On YouTube, an AI card next to the player adds a streaming summary, a playback-synced transcript, and transcript-grounded chat. A built-in highlighter marks up any website in six colors with notes that persist across visits, boards collect links and highlights into shareable public pages, and any page can be captured as a clean PDF locally in the browser. Imports from Pocket, Raindrop, and standard browser bookmark exports make switching quick. A free tier requires no card; Pro is $48/year or $8/month with a 7-day trial.
Where Marqly wins
- Semantic search finds saves by meaning — describe what you remember, no exact titles needed
- AI tags and summarizes every save automatically, so nothing needs manual filing
- YouTube AI card puts summaries, transcript, and Q&A right on the watch page
- Highlights in 6 colors persist on the page itself and sync to your library
- Screen-faithful save-as-PDF handled locally in the browser
- One-click imports from Pocket, Raindrop, and browser bookmark files
Where Marqly falls short
- No Android app yet (the web app works in Android browsers)
- No offline reading mode
- No public API or self-hosting option
- Chat with saves and video chat require Pro
Marqly vs Glasp FAQ
Which is better, Marqly or Glasp?
It depends on the job. Glasp is a better fit if you need Android app, public API. Marqly wins when finding saves again matters most: it adds semantic search (find by meaning), full-text search, save all open tabs on top of standard bookmarking, so you can retrieve any save by describing it.
Is Glasp free?
Glasp has a free tier; paid plans are Pro $15/month or $150/year; Unlimited $36/month or $360/year. Free plan includes unlimited public highlights only — private highlights require Pro. Free AI caps are tight (3 YouTube summaries/day, 20 PDF chat messages/month). Prices rose ~20-25% in May 2026; subscriptions are non-refundable. Student discount on Pro yearly with an academic email.
Can I switch from Glasp to Marqly?
Yes. Export your data from Glasp (most tools export standard bookmark HTML or CSV), then import the file into Marqly — AI tags everything automatically and semantic search works across all of it.
Does Glasp have AI search?
Glasp offers AI tagging, AI summaries, chat with saves. Marqly covers the full AI layer — auto-tagging, summaries, semantic search, and chat with your saves — plus YouTube summaries, transcripts, and video chat on the watch page.
Is Marqly free?
Yes — Marqly has a free tier with no card required. Pro is $48/year (about $4/month billed annually) or $8/month, with a 7-day free trial. Pro unlocks chat with your saves and chat with YouTube videos.