Pocket vs OneTab: Which is better? (2026)
The short answer
OneTab is the only living option here — Pocket died in July 2025 — but it replaces just one sliver of it: parking open tabs. OneTab stores bare URLs in a single browser, so former Pocket readers still need a real read-it-later app.
Feature comparison
| Feature | OneTab | 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
- OneTab
- 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.
- OneTab: OneTab has a free tier. Entirely free: no paid tier, no limits, no account required. The announced end-to-end-encrypted cross-device sync is 'coming soon' with no pricing stated, so whether sync stays free is unknown.
- 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 OneTab
OneTab is a free browser extension from UK-based OneTab Ltd that collapses every open tab into a single list with one click, cutting browser memory use by up to 95% by the developer's estimate. Tabs restore individually or all at once, and any list can be shared as a hosted web page. First released in 2013, it spent years nearly unchanged before a full v2 rewrite in 2026 added folders, in-list search, stars and tasks, and dark mode, with end-to-end-encrypted sync announced as coming soon. It stores only URLs and titles, locally in the browser profile — nothing is transmitted to the developers — and there is no account to create. Extensions exist for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, plus a Mac-only Safari app that lags well behind. Export is a plain-text URL list. The whole product is free, with more than two million Chrome users, no limits, and no paid tier.
Which should you choose?
Pocket died in July 2025, and OneTab is very much alive — but this pairing mostly reveals how little the two overlap. OneTab does exactly one thing: collapse every open browser tab into a list with one click, cutting memory use by up to 95% by its developer’s estimate. It stores URLs and titles, locally, in one browser profile. Pocket stored the articles themselves, synced them to your phone, and let you read offline. A tab parker can’t inherit a read-it-later service’s job.
Choose Pocket if
- Nothing to install — it went offline in July 2025 and all remaining data was purged that autumn.
- Every path back to it is closed, including the app stores.
Choose OneTab if
- Your actual problem is fifty open tabs, not a reading backlog: parking and restoring sessions is instant, free, and account-less.
- Privacy and simplicity outrank features — tab URLs never leave your machine unless you deliberately share a list, and the 2026 v2 rewrite added folders, in-list search, stars, tasks, and dark mode.
- You occasionally hand a set of links to someone: any list becomes a shareable web page in one click.
Understand the fragility before trusting it with anything precious. There’s no sync (the promised encrypted version is still “coming soon”), no mobile apps, no page content, and no full-text search — and uninstalling the extension or clearing browser data can erase your list entirely. There’s no importer either, so a Pocket export has nowhere to go here. The sensible conclusion isn’t either/or: use OneTab as the free pressure valve for tab overload it was always meant to be, and give the reading half of your old Pocket habit to an actual read-it-later app like Instapaper or Matter, which can also absorb your export.
The option both sides overlook
If the real problem is finding things again, neither Pocket nor OneTab 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 OneTab FAQ
Is OneTab a replacement for Pocket?
Only for tab overload. OneTab collapses every open tab into a local list — free, no account, one click — but it saves URLs and titles only. There's no article content, offline reading, highlighting, tagging, sync, or mobile app, so the core Pocket habit of reading saved articles on your phone has no equivalent in OneTab.
Is OneTab free?
Completely. There's no paid tier, no limits, and no account requirement — the extension has been free since 2013 and has over two million Chrome users. The developer has announced end-to-end-encrypted cross-device sync as coming soon without stating a price, but everything OneTab does today costs nothing.
Can OneTab lose my saved tabs?
Yes, and it's the biggest caveat. Your list lives inside one browser profile: uninstalling the extension deletes your stored tabs, and clearing browser data can wipe them too. There's no cloud backup or sync yet. The plain-text export — one URL per line — is your safety net, so export anything you'd hate to lose.