X will not give you your bookmarks. There is no official CSV button, the data archive ZIP does not include bookmarks, and the native bookmark UI is a scroll-only list with shallow text search. So if you want a real backup, you are picking between scrapers, paid exporters, automation platforms, and the free route nobody talks about.
This blog usually places Keep somewhere in the middle of a tool list. For this topic Keep lands first, because the Keep Chrome extension is the only option I know of that does a full export and a full import into a real app for free. No item cap, no paywall after the first 500, no "Export Pass" charge to unlock your own data. If you just need the shortest path to a usable backup, that is it.
The rest of the options are still worth knowing. A few are better than Keep if you are headed somewhere Keep is not.
Why this is hard in the first place
The normal escape hatch for any X account is Download an archive of your data. Settings, Your account, Download an archive. It shows up as a ZIP a few days later.
The archive includes your posts, DMs, media, Moments, Lists, followers, following, interests, and ad history. Bookmarks are not in there. I checked the help page when writing the X bookmarks guide and the contents have not changed since. This is the thing most people assume the archive has, and it is the thing it does not have.
The native bookmark UI is also not built for retrieval. The paginated timeline does load everything (our own extension relies on that to do a full export), but infinite scroll gets laggy at volume, the in-page search only looks at tweet text, and there is no jump-to-date, no filter, no export button. The data is there. Getting to a specific old bookmark by hand is the problem.
Which means every export option below is a tool that walks the paginated timeline for you and hands you a file.
Keep's Chrome extension, the free full-library export
The Keep browser extension ships an X bookmarks exporter. It opens your bookmarks list in a tab, walks the full timeline through your logged-in session, and builds a single JSON file you can download. From there, Keep's import page takes that file and lands every bookmark in your library in one step.
The two things that matter here:
- No cap. The exporter walks the entire timeline. If your account has 12,000 bookmarks and the timeline still loads them, the export includes 12,000.
- No paywall. Export is free, import is free. The tweet text, photos, author, and any X article metadata are already inside the export JSON, so nothing needs to be re-fetched on import. You do not need a paid Keep plan to do any of this.
How it works in practice. Install the extension, sign in to X in the same browser, click the Keep extension icon, and start an X bookmarks export. The extension scrolls x.com/i/bookmarks under its own rate-limited pacing, captures each bookmark (tweet text, author, media references, outbound URLs, and any X article ID), and writes them into a keep-x-bookmarks-<timestamp>.json file. No X API key. No scraper auth. It is the same session you already have open.
Once you have the JSON you have two options. Keep the file as a portable backup, since the format is documented and self-contained. Or open settings then import in Keep, pick Import X bookmarks, and upload it. Details on the import path live in the import docs and the X integration docs.
The catch, to be honest about it. The extension has to use your browser session, so you need to be signed in and keep the tab alive during the export.
Worth knowing how this compares to the official API route. X does publish a bookmarks endpoint (GET /2/users/:id/bookmarks), but it sits behind X's paid developer tiers and in practice tends to cap out at roughly 800 to 1,000 bookmarks per user before pagination runs dry. Our main Keep app uses that API for ongoing sync of new bookmarks, which works well because new ones arrive at the top of the list. For a full historical export the API falls short, so the extension walks the in-session timeline instead, which is not subject to that cap. That is why Keep can offer a full-library export for free.
Third-party exporters, and why pricing matters here
There are a handful of dedicated bookmark exporters. They mostly exist because the official archive does not include bookmarks and the native UX falls over at scale. Here is how they compare as of April 2026. Prices change, so check each linked page before you buy.
Dewey. The best known exporter in the category, and a genuinely clean product. Dewey's free tier covers manual sync and basic export. Pro is $10 a month (or $7.50 billed annually), with a $225 lifetime option on top.
Dewey and Keep overlap on the features that matter for a backup. Both ship a Chrome extension, AI auto-tagging, and full-library export. The difference is price. Dewey gates a one-off export behind a $50 48-hour Export Pass unless you upgrade to Pro, while Keep's extension and importer are both free.
If you want Dewey's specific social-bookmarks-only shape (nested folders, Notion and Google Sheets sync, a custom RSS feed of your saves), Dewey is still the right pick. For a searchable, portable backup alone, there is no case for paying the $50.
Tweetsmash. The other dedicated exporter worth knowing about. Tweetsmash is also social-bookmarks-first, with a Chrome extension, AI chat over your bookmarks, email digests, newsletter creation, and Notion, Google Sheets, or Zotero integrations. Pricing is paid-only once the seven-day trial ends. Plans run $14 a month, $99 a year, or a $198 lifetime pass, with a $49 one-time "exports only" option for people leaving Twitter (pricing as of April 2026, check Tweetsmash's pricing page for current numbers).
If Dewey is the "organize and curate" shape, Tweetsmash is the "read and chat with your archive" shape. Same paywall on the export step either way.
BookmarkSave. A free Chrome extension that exports X bookmarks to PDF, CSV, Markdown, or TXT. The publisher advertises unlimited exports processed locally in your browser. If you only need a file out, with no destination app to live in, it is a reasonable pick.
What happens after export is where BookmarkSave and Keep diverge. BookmarkSave hands you a file. Keep hands you the file and imports it into a searchable library with AI auto-tagging, a CLI, an MCP server, and an HTTP API. Both are free.
Beyond these three, the Chrome store has a long tail of bookmark-export extensions with low install counts and freshly-published developer names. Not worth naming, not worth trusting with your data.
Automation platforms (Zapier, Make, IFTTT)
You can wire an X bookmarks trigger to almost any destination through Zapier, Make, or IFTTT. Each has templates like "new X bookmark to Notion row" or "new X bookmark to Google Sheet."
Two things to know before you build one.
First, X's platform changes broke a lot of these integrations in 2023 and 2024, and the rebuilt versions use the official X API, which now charges. Zapier's X triggers work on Zapier's paid plans because a Zapier action against X costs Zapier a paid X API call. So "free on Zapier free" does not really exist here anymore.
Second, these are forward-only. A Zap wired up today watches for new bookmarks. It will not go back and pull the 4,000 you already have. For historical backfill you still need one of the exporters above.
They earn their slot when you want new bookmarks to flow somewhere continuously. Old bookmarks to a file, new bookmarks to a Google Sheet and a Slack channel, both working at once. That is what automation platforms are good at.
RSS from X (mostly gone, worth a mention)
Old guides used to suggest pointing an RSS reader at rsshub.app or Nitter instances for a "my bookmarks" feed. In 2026 most public Nitter hosts are down and RSSHub's X routes break or require auth for bookmark-scoped feeds. You can still get a per-user X RSS feed out of RSSHub if you self-host it, but that is a weekend project, not a click.
If you already run an RSSHub instance and want to pipe the feed into your read-later app, it is fine. If you do not, skip it.
Picking a destination (Notion, Obsidian, Raindrop, Readwise, or Keep)
The exporters above get you a file. Where you land the file matters just as much as how you export it.
Notion. Import from CSV is clean. A bookmark export lands as rows in a Notion database, and you can slice by tag, author, or date however you like. Notion does not have an official X bookmarks importer, so you are always going through CSV or JSON from somewhere else. Good destination if you already live in Notion and want the entries structured. Capture after the import is manual.
Obsidian. There is no official Obsidian X import, and the community plugins that did this are mostly stale. The workable path is to export to markdown (either from Keep's JSON with a small script, or from a Dewey CSV through a converter) and drop the files into your vault. Obsidian is the right destination if you want each bookmark as its own note with backlinks to the author and topic. It is also the highest-friction destination on this list. That friction is a feature for the people who want it.
Raindrop.io. Clean bookmark UI, native X integration, and import flows that take CSV and a handful of other formats. Raindrop Pro runs around $3 a month billed annually (verify on Raindrop's pricing page) and unlocks unlimited collaborators, nested collections, and full-text search on the content of your saves. Free Raindrop has a cap of 10,000 bookmarks total across your whole account, so a big X export can eat most of that on its own. Fine destination if you want a visual bookmarks app.
Readwise Reader. Reader has a first-class X bookmarks sync. Connect your X account in Reader and new bookmarks flow in automatically, compiled into long-form articles when they are threads. Pricing is $9.99 a month (billed annually) or $12.99 a month billed monthly, with a 50% student discount, verifiable on Readwise's pricing page. Reader is where to land if you want to actually read and highlight what you bookmarked, not just archive it. I use Reader for highlight-heavy articles. It is the best reading app in the category.
Keep. The destination I know best, and the one this blog runs on. Keep imports the extension's JSON directly, stores every bookmark as clean markdown with tweet text and photos intact, and exposes the whole library over a CLI, an MCP server, and an HTTP API. That last part is the reason to pick Keep specifically for this: once your bookmarks are in, any MCP-compatible client (Claude, Cursor, a custom agent) can read across the whole archive. You can ask "pull every bookmark I saved last year about onboarding flows" and get real answers. Keep does not do passage-level highlighting inside a tweet. If highlight-first reading is what you want, Readwise Reader is the better call.
Rough shape of who wins on what.
- Full-archive backup with zero cost: Keep's extension export plus Keep import.
- Daily reading and highlighting of what you save: Readwise Reader.
- A visual, colour-coded bookmarks library: Raindrop.
- Structured rows you slice like a database: Notion, with CSV in from one of the exporters.
- Note-network where each bookmark becomes a zettel: Obsidian, with a markdown converter in between.
Ninety-second version
If you want the whole thing condensed.
- Install the Keep extension and sign in to X in the same browser.
- Run an X bookmarks export from the extension. Keep the JSON file.
- Open settings then import in Keep, pick Import X bookmarks, upload the JSON.
If you want the file to go somewhere other than Keep, stop after step 2. The JSON format is documented and self-contained. You can script it into Notion, Obsidian, Raindrop, or a CSV without going through Keep at all.
Related reading if you want the background
For the full backstory on how the bookmarks product works (privacy, the soft cap, why they disappear) the X bookmarks guide covers it.
If you are landing here because you are evaluating tools, not just exporting, the Pocket alternatives, Raindrop alternatives, Readwise Reader alternatives, and Dewey alternatives pages list the honest trade-offs.
Getting your bookmarks back under your own roof
The pattern across every option on this page is the same. X will not hand you your bookmarks. Every tool that does is working around that. Some charge for the workaround. Keep does not.
Keep auto-imports every new X bookmark once you connect your account, and the extension handles the historical backfill for free. Start saving bookmarks automatically.