Want Private Highlights? 8 Glasp Alternatives Compared

Glasp is a social web highlighter: you highlight web pages, PDFs and YouTube videos, import Kindle highlights, export to Notion or Obsidian, and see what other people highlight. It also adds AI summaries and chat. The social part is also the main reason people look for an alternative.

Why people switch from Glasp (as of October 2026):

• Highlights are public by default. Glasp’s own help article says free users can only create public highlights; private highlighting is a Pro feature ($15/month, or $150/year).
• Free AI use is tight. The free plan includes 3 basic YouTube summaries a day, 3 advanced summaries a week, 20 PDF chat messages and 20 AI chat credits a month.
• You want something more specialised: spaced-repetition review, academic citations, team annotation, or content creation from what you read.

The best Glasp alternative depends on which of these matters most to you. Here’s how the main options compare.

Price, free plan and platforms side by side

Prices are from each tool’s official site, in US dollars, as of October 2026.

Each option, matched to a need

Readwise

Best for: remembering what you read.

Readwise solves a simple problem: you highlight valuable passages, then never look at them again. It imports highlights from Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo and 40+ other sources (including Instapaper, Medium, X and paper books by photo scan), then resurfaces them through a Daily Review using spaced repetition.

Its companion app, Reader, is a read-it-later app for articles, PDFs, EPUBs, newsletters, RSS feeds, YouTube videos and X threads, with highlighting, text-to-speech and an AI assistant (Ghostreader). Highlights export to Notion, Obsidian, Evernote, Roam, Logseq and others.

Pros:

• Syncs highlights automatically from dozens of sources
• Spaced repetition helps you actually retain what you read

Cons:

• No free plan after the 30-day trial
• The cheapest plan (Lite) leaves out tags, notes, exports and Reader

Pricing: Highlights Lite $6.99/month ($5.59/month billed yearly); full Readwise with Reader $12.99/month ($9.99/month billed yearly). Students get 50% off.

Availability: web, iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Chrome, Firefox and Safari extensions (Reader).

Web Highlights

Best for: private highlighting without an account.

Web Highlights is the closest match if Glasp’s public-by-default model is your problem. You can use it without signing up, and its FAQ says highlights are stored locally in your browser. Select text on any webpage, PDF or YouTube video, choose a color, and it’s saved to your dashboard with tags and notes.

It exports to Notion and Capacities (direct integrations), Obsidian, HTML and Markdown, and it now includes on-device AI summaries and chat, flashcards with spaced repetition, and Kindle import.

Pros:

• Free, unlimited highlighting with no account needed
• Local storage by default
• Strong export options for Notion and Obsidian

Cons:

• Cloud sync across devices requires Premium
• No social discovery, if that’s the part of Glasp you liked

Pricing: free; Premium $6.49/month or $56.99/year, with a 7-day trial.

Availability: Chrome, Edge and Firefox extensions, Android app, web app.

Hypothesis

Best for: free, open annotation and class discussions.

Hypothesis lets you annotate web pages and PDFs and discuss them with others. It is run by a public-benefit company that develops open-source software based on open standards, and it is always free for personal use and collaboration. It is aimed at higher education and integrates with learning platforms such as Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle and D2L.

Pros: free for individuals; built for collaborative annotation; open standards.

Cons: AI summaries aren’t part of its feature set; no mobile app is mentioned; on Firefox and Safari it works through a bookmarklet rather than an extension.

Availability: Chrome extension (also works in Edge and Brave), bookmarklet for other browsers, LMS integrations.

Raindrop.io

Best for: people who mainly bookmark and only sometimes highlight.

Raindrop.io is a bookmark manager that also saves highlights. The free plan includes unlimited bookmarks, collections and highlights. Pro adds notes on your highlights, full-text search, a web archive and an AI assistant.

Pros: generous free plan; apps on every major platform.

Cons: adding notes to highlights requires Pro; it is a bookmark manager first, not a reading tool.

Availability: Mac, iOS, Android, and Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge extensions.

Diigo

Best for: building a large, tagged research library.

Diigo is a long-running bookmarking and annotation tool. You can highlight and add sticky notes on web pages and PDFs, save cached copies of pages, organise everything with tags and outlines, and share in groups. That makes it one of the more complete tools for online research, with more to learn and configure than newer tools.

Pros: highlighting, sticky notes and page archiving in one place; group collaboration.

Cons: the interface is dated; the free plan has ads and lifetime caps on bookmarks and highlights; its Chrome extension hasn’t been updated since mid-2024.

Pricing: free Basic plan; Standard about $40/year; Professional (adds unlimited PDF storage) about $59/year.

Availability: Chrome extension and web.

Weava

Best for: students who need citations.

Weava is a simple research highlighter for web pages and PDFs. You organise highlights into color-coded folders, and it generates citations in APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard styles. Highlights export to Word, Excel, TXT and CSV, and Premium adds shared folders for group projects.

Pros: unlimited highlights and notes on the free plan; automatic citations.

Cons: no AI summaries are mentioned on its site; free storage is 100 MB; the Chrome extension hasn’t been updated since early 2024 and has mixed user ratings, so check it works for you before relying on it.

Pricing: free plan; Premium $3.99/month.

Availability: Chrome extension.

Liner

Best for: AI-assisted research with highlighting on the side.

Liner has shifted from a highlighter to an AI research assistant (Liner Search, Liner Scholar and Liner Write), but its Chrome extension still includes web and PDF highlighters. You can ask questions about the content you’re reading, summarize pages, PDFs and YouTube videos, and get answers with citations.

Pros: strong AI research features; apps on desktop and mobile.

Cons: highlighting is now secondary; the free plan allows one file upload a day and shows ads.

Pricing: free plan; Pro $17.99/month ($14.99/month billed yearly).

Availability: Chrome and Edge extensions, iOS, Android, Mac, Windows and web.

TubeOnAI

Best for: turning what you read and watch into new content.

TubeOnAI isn’t a highlighter. It’s an AI summarizer and content repurposing tool, so it fits Glasp users who use Glasp’s YouTube and article summaries, not its highlighting. It summarizes YouTube and other public videos, podcasts, web articles, PDFs and Google Docs, then turns those summaries into blog posts, X threads, newsletters or LinkedIn posts using 150+ templates or your own prompts. You can ask follow-up questions about a summary and keep sources in Collections.

Pros: handles videos, podcasts, articles and documents in one place; built-in repurposing.

Cons: no web highlighting or Kindle import; heavier use needs a paid plan.

Pricing: free Starter plan (400 credits); Essential $9/month, Pro $19/month, with a 7-day free trial on paid plans.

Availability: web app, Chrome extension, iOS and Android.

Not a Glasp alternative: Scribe

Scribe appeared in an earlier version of this list, but it solves a different problem. It records your on-screen actions and turns them into step-by-step guides for training and documentation. It summarizes actions, not reading, so choose it only if you need process documentation.

Which Glasp alternative should you choose?

• You want private highlights for free: Web Highlights.
• You want to remember Kindle and web highlights long term: Readwise.
• You annotate with a class or team: Hypothesis.
• You mainly bookmark: Raindrop.io.
• You need citations for papers: Weava, or Diigo for a bigger library.
• You want AI research answers: Liner.
• You want to create content from videos and articles: TubeOnAI, which has the repurposing features Glasp lacks.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are Glasp highlights public?

Yes, by default. On the free plan you can only create public highlights; private highlighting requires Glasp Pro.

Which tool is best for students who use Notion or Obsidian?

Readwise syncs highlights and notes into Notion and Obsidian automatically. Web Highlights is a free option that also exports to both.

Can any of these tools summarize YouTube videos?

Yes. TubeOnAI and Liner both summarize YouTube videos, so you get the key points without watching the entire video. Readwise Reader can also save YouTube videos to your reading queue.

How does Readwise help me remember things?

Readwise uses spaced repetition. Its Daily Review shows you a small selection of your past highlights at intervals, so you revisit them before you forget them.

Which tool is best for researchers or academic writers?

Weava generates citations in APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard, and Diigo is built for large tagged research libraries. Hypothesis suits group annotation in a course.

What’s the best free alternative to Glasp?

Web Highlights offers free, unlimited highlighting without an account, stored locally. Hypothesis is free for personal use, and Raindrop.io has a generous free plan.

Do I lose my highlights if I stop paying?

It depends on the tool, so check its data policy before you cancel. Most of the tools here let you export highlights (for example to Markdown, CSV, Notion or Obsidian), so exporting before you downgrade is the safest option.