Wallabag vs Karakeep: Which is better? (2026)
The short answer
Karakeep for AI-powered organization on your own hardware; Wallabag for a proven reading queue with the cheapest official hosting anywhere. Both are open source — the split is AI ambition versus thirteen years of stability.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Wallabag | Karakeep | 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 | Free · €11/year on wallabag.it (official hosting; also €4 for 3 months, or a €30/year supporter plan) | Free · Self-hosted: free. Karakeep Cloud Pro: $4/month | Free · $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month |
- Wallabag
- Free · €11/year on wallabag.it (official hosting; also €4 for 3 months, or a €30/year supporter plan)
- Karakeep
- Free · Self-hosted: free. Karakeep Cloud Pro: $4/month
- Marqly
- Free · $48/year (≈$4/mo) or $8/month
Pricing
- Wallabag: Wallabag has a free tier; paid plans are €11/year on wallabag.it (official hosting; also €4 for 3 months, or a €30/year supporter plan). 14-day free trial on wallabag.it, no card required. Self-hosting is completely free — Wallabag is open-source (MIT). The wallabag.it hosted service funds development and includes all features on every plan.
- Karakeep: Karakeep has a free tier; paid plans are Self-hosted: free. Karakeep Cloud Pro: $4/month. The self-hosted app is fully free and open source; AI features need your own OpenAI-compatible API key or a local Ollama model. Karakeep Cloud (public beta) has a $0 tier capped at 10 bookmarks and a Pro tier at $4/month — the exact annual price is not published.
- 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 Wallabag
Wallabag is an open-source read-it-later application, started in 2013 in France and maintained continuously since. You can run it on your own server for free or use the official hosted service at wallabag.it, which costs €11 a year (with a 14-day free trial) and funds development of the open-source project. Saved articles are stripped to a clean reading view, can be tagged manually or through rule-based automatic tagging, annotated with notes on selected text, and exported to PDF, ePub, and other formats — a favorite feature for e-reader owners. Wallabag offers browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox, native iOS and Android apps with offline reading, RSS feeds of your saves, public share links for individual articles, and a full REST API. Importers cover Pocket, Instapaper, Readability, and browser bookmark files. The trade-off is polish: the interface is functional rather than beautiful, and there are no AI features.
About Karakeep
Karakeep is an open-source "bookmark everything" app, launched as Hoarder and renamed in early 2025. It is built for self-hosting: a Docker install stores links, notes, images, videos, and PDFs on your own server, with full-page archiving to guard against link rot. AI does the filing — automatic tagging and summaries run through any OpenAI-compatible API or a local Ollama model, so nothing has to leave your machine. Search is Meilisearch-backed full text, with semantic and hybrid modes added in 2026. Around the core are browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, iOS and Android apps with offline reading, highlights, shareable public lists with RSS feeds, a REST API, and an MCP server for AI agents. Imports cover Pocket, browser bookmark HTML, Omnivore, Instapaper, Linkwarden, and mymind exports. A hosted Karakeep Cloud is in public beta, with a Pro tier at $4 per month.
Which should you choose?
This is two generations of self-hosted saving. Wallabag has been shipping since 2013: a mature PHP application that turns saved pages into a clean reading queue, with rule-based tagging, ePub export, and official mobile apps. Karakeep launched as Hoarder and took its current name in early 2025, and it’s AI-native by design — automatic tagging and summaries run through any OpenAI-compatible API or a fully local Ollama model, and Meilisearch-backed search gained semantic and hybrid modes in 2026. Where Wallabag preserves an article’s text, Karakeep hoards everything: page copies, screenshots, PDFs, even video downloads via yt-dlp.
Choose Wallabag if:
- You want a reading workflow — queue, offline apps, annotations — rather than a media vault.
- You’d rather pay €11/year at wallabag.it than run Docker; it’s a stable, long-established hosted option.
- E-reader export to ePub and PDF matters to you.
Choose Karakeep if:
- You want AI filing without a cloud dependency — tagging and summaries can run entirely on local Ollama.
- Search quality is the priority: full-text plus semantic and hybrid modes beats keyword matching.
- You like plumbing — REST API, webhooks, a CLI, and an MCP server for wiring in AI agents, plus a Safari extension Wallabag lacks.
The hosted stories diverge sharply. Wallabag.it is boring in the best way: all features on every plan, a 14-day trial, and pricing that funds the project. Karakeep Cloud is still a public beta whose free tier caps at 10 bookmarks, with a $4/month Pro tier. Self-hosting Karakeep means Docker plus bring-your-own AI keys — real setup work, though no worse than maintaining a PHP stack. If you want software that will feel the same in five years, take Wallabag. If you want your bookmarks to organize themselves, Karakeep is the most capable open-source way to get there.
The option both sides overlook
If the real problem is finding things again, neither Wallabag nor Karakeep 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.
Wallabag vs Karakeep FAQ
Does Wallabag have any AI features?
No — none at all. Wallabag offers no AI summaries, no semantic search, and no smart tagging; its automatic tagging is rule-based, filing saves according to conditions you define. Karakeep provides all three AI capabilities, but you supply the engine: an OpenAI-compatible API key or a local Ollama model running on your own hardware.
Which is easier to run on your own server?
Both demand real effort, just different kinds. Wallabag is a PHP application with a database and ongoing update maintenance. Karakeep is a Docker install, plus API keys or a local model if you want the AI features. If you'd rather not host at all, Wallabag's €11/year wallabag.it is far more established than Karakeep's beta Cloud.
Which preserves saved pages more completely?
Karakeep. It performs full-page archiving — a page copy, a screenshot, a PDF, and even video downloads through yt-dlp — so saves survive link rot in multiple formats. Wallabag stores a parsed, readable version of the article text, which is ideal for reading but can render poorly when its parser meets complex, script-heavy sites.