Pocket vs Obsidian Web Clipper: Which is better? (2026)
The short answer
Obsidian Web Clipper — with Pocket discontinued in July 2025, Obsidian's free, open-source clipper is the stronger half of this pair for anyone who wants saved articles as Markdown they own forever. It builds a permanent vault, not a casual reading queue.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Obsidian Web Clipper | Marqly | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | See site | Free | Free · $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month |
- See site
- Obsidian Web Clipper
- Free
- Marqly
- Free · $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month
Pricing
- Pocket: Pocket has shut down and no longer accepts new users. Mozilla shut down Pocket on July 8, 2025. Saves could be exported until October 8, 2025, after which all user data was permanently deleted. Premium subscribers received prorated refunds.
- Obsidian Web Clipper: Obsidian Web Clipper has a free tier. The clipper and the Obsidian app are completely free, including commercial use (policy since February 2025). The only paid add-ons are optional: Obsidian Sync from $4/month billed annually ($5 monthly) for cross-device sync, and Obsidian Publish at $8/site/month for public sharing.
- 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.
About Pocket
Pocket was one of the most popular read-it-later services on the web. Launched in 2007 as Read It Later and acquired by Mozilla in 2017, it let people save articles, videos, and links from any browser or app, then read them later in a clean, distraction-free view — online or offline — on iOS, Android, and the web. A free tier covered core saving and reading, while Pocket Premium added a permanent article archive, full-text search, and suggested tags. Pocket was built into Firefox and grew a large audience around its editorial Discover recommendations. In May 2025 Mozilla announced it was discontinuing the service: Pocket stopped working on July 8, 2025, exports remained available until October 8, 2025, and remaining data was then permanently deleted. Anyone who kept a Pocket export ZIP can still import those saves into most modern bookmark managers and read-it-later apps.
About Obsidian Web Clipper
Obsidian Web Clipper is the official, open-source browser extension for Obsidian, the local-first Markdown note app. It runs on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari — including Safari on iOS and iPadOS — and saves pages, selections, or highlights as clean Markdown files in your vault, where they stay on your own disk with zero lock-in. Per-site templates decide how each clip is titled, tagged, and filed, pulling metadata through selector and Schema.org variables. An optional Interpreter feature runs natural-language prompts at clip time — summarize, extract, translate — using your own API key from Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, and others, or a local Ollama model at no cost. Everything is free, including commercial use of Obsidian since early 2025. The trade-off is that cloud conveniences are add-ons: cross-device sync via Obsidian Sync starts at $4 per month, and public sharing via Obsidian Publish costs $8 per site per month.
Which should you choose?
If Pocket’s discontinuation in July 2025 taught one lesson, it’s the one Obsidian Web Clipper is built on: content you rent can vanish; files you own can’t. The official Obsidian extension saves pages, selections, or highlighted passages as clean Markdown in a vault on your own disk — readable by any text editor, importable anywhere, impossible to shut down. Pocket’s servers took sixteen years of libraries with them; a folder of Markdown files has no servers to lose.
Choose Pocket if
- That door closed in 2025 — first the service in July, then the data in October.
- Its absence is precisely the argument for local-first tools.
Choose Obsidian Web Clipper if
- You want permanent ownership: every clip is plain Markdown you keep forever, with zero lock-in and zero required subscription — free even for commercial use.
- You’ll exploit the automation: per-site templates auto-title, tag, and file clips from page metadata, and highlighter mode captures just the passages you mark rather than whole pages.
- You want clip-time AI on your terms — the Interpreter can summarize, extract, or translate using your own API key or a free local Ollama model.
The trade-offs mirror the philosophy. Nothing is automatic across devices: sync means Obsidian Sync at $4/month or a DIY setup, there’s no web app, and organizing and finding clips is manual — no auto-tagging, no semantic search. It’s also only useful if you actually run Obsidian. Note the migration gap too: there’s no bulk import, so a rescued Pocket export belongs in Wallabag, Raindrop.io, or Instapaper instead. For the local-first reader who wants tomorrow’s saves to be genuinely theirs, though, this is the strongest free answer the Pocket shutdown ever received.
The option both sides overlook
If the real problem is finding things again, neither Pocket nor Obsidian Web Clipper fully solves it. Marqly auto-tags and summarizes every save with AI and lets you retrieve any of them by describing what you remember — plus a highlighter, YouTube summaries with transcripts, and save-as-PDF. There's a free tier with no card required.
Pocket vs Obsidian Web Clipper FAQ
Can Obsidian Web Clipper import my Pocket archive?
No. The clipper captures pages as you browse — full pages, selections, or highlighted passages saved as Markdown — and offers no bulk import of Pocket exports or browser bookmarks. Your rescued Pocket file needs a different destination, such as Wallabag, Raindrop.io, or Instapaper, all of which ship dedicated Pocket importers.
Is Obsidian Web Clipper really free?
Entirely. The clipper is free and open source, and since February 2025 Obsidian itself is free for all use, including commercial. The only optional costs are Obsidian Sync from $4/month for cross-device syncing, Obsidian Publish at $8/site/month, and your own API usage if you enable the Interpreter's AI — a local Ollama model costs nothing.
What can Obsidian Web Clipper do that Pocket couldn't?
Own the output. Clips become plain Markdown files on your disk, immune to any shutdown — the fate that erased Pocket libraries in 2025. Beyond that: a highlighter mode that captures just the passages you mark, per-site templates that auto-title, tag, and file clips from page metadata, and clip-time AI prompts to summarize, extract, or translate.