Self-hosted bookmarks and read-it-later: a Pocket and Raindrop alternative
If you've ever watched a read-it-later service change its terms, get acquired, or announce a shutdown, you know the feeling: years of saved articles and bookmarks, suddenly someone else's decision. The fix is to host the shoebox yourself. Two apps cover the two halves of the job: Linkding for bookmarks, and Readeck for reading.
Linkding — fast, minimal bookmarks
Linkding is a lean, quick bookmark manager — the self-hosted answer to Raindrop or Pinboard. Save a link, tag it, find it again. That's the whole promise, and it keeps it well: a clean interface, tags and search that stay fast as your collection grows, bulk actions, and a browser extension plus a bookmarklet so saving is one click from anywhere.
- Fast and minimal — no bloat, no lag, even with thousands of links.
- Tags and search that make a big collection actually findable.
- Browser extension and bookmarklet for one-click saving.
- Import your existing bookmarks and stop worrying about the export button on someone else's service.
Pick Linkding if: you want to organize links you'll come back to.
Readeck — read-it-later that keeps the article
Readeck is the read-it-later half — the Pocket replacement. Save an article and it extracts the actual content into a clean, distraction-free reading view and stores it, so it's still there even if the original page changes or vanishes. Highlights, labels, and a tidy library turn "I'll read that later" into something you actually can.
- Clean reader view with the clutter stripped out.
- Keeps a copy of the article — link rot doesn't take your reading list with it.
- Highlights and labels to organize what you've saved.
Pick Readeck if: you want to save articles to read later and keep them for good.
Which one — or both?
| If you want to… | Run |
|---|---|
| Organize links and bookmarks you'll return to | Linkding |
| Save articles to read later, kept safe from link rot | Readeck |
They're not really competitors — they're two ends of the same habit, and plenty of people run both: Linkding as the permanent reference shelf, Readeck as the "read this soon" pile. Both are light and easy to host.
The self-hosting reality
Both are small apps with a database and a volume — about as gentle as self-hosting gets. You still own the updates, TLS and backups, but for a bookmark app those are a light touch. Run it on a VPS, or deploy either in one click and stop trusting your saved reading to a service that might not be here next year.
Deploy Linkding → · Deploy Readeck → — or see the full catalog.