Compare Instapaper and SMRY side by side on features, pricing, and the workflows each one is designed for.
A classic read-later app with clean text extraction and distraction-free reading.
Free, paid from $5.99/mo
Paste an article URL, get a clean reader with AI summaries, audio, and chat.
Free, paid from $6/mo
Here's how Instapaper and SMRY compare across the features people actually look for. They share 4 core capabilities; the differences show up in what each tool focuses on.
| Feature | Instapaper | SMRY |
|---|---|---|
| Capture and save | ||
| Browser extension | Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge | Chrome extension captures from your authenticated session for paywalled and JS-rendered pages |
| Mobile apps | iOS, Android | |
| Save from email | Unique save-by-email address | |
| Save tweets | ||
| Save YouTube videos | URL only | Paste a YouTube URL to get a readable transcript, summary, and TTS |
| Save GitHub stars | ||
| Save PDFs | Premium | |
| Save files (docs, spreadsheets) | ||
| Save audio files | ||
| Save via API | ||
| Auto-sync sources | ||
| RSS auto-sync | ||
| YouTube channel sync | ||
| X bookmarks sync | ||
| GitHub stars sync | ||
| Newsletter inbox sync | Forward-to-save, not a dedicated inbox | |
| Library and reading | ||
| Reader view | 11 themes, custom typography, 6 interface languages | |
| Offline reading | ||
| Full-text search | Premium | No personal library to search across |
| Semantic / AI search | ||
| Highlights | 5 colors, notes per highlight, syncs across devices on Pro | |
| Notes | Per-highlight notes | |
| Tags | ||
| Collections | Folders | |
| Public sharing | Share quote links with rich social previews | |
| Full-text RSS extraction | ||
| AI and agents | ||
| Markdown export for AI agents | Manual highlight export to Markdown only, no per-item markdown URL | |
| Bulk markdown export | Highlights export to Markdown / Notion / Obsidian on Pro, not the full article | |
| MCP server | ||
| CLI tool | ||
| Claude Code skill | ||
| AI summaries | Summaries in 6 languages, plus chat with the article | |
| Public API | ||
| Import and export | ||
| OPML import / export | ||
| Pocket import | ||
| Instapaper import | ||
| CSV / JSON export | HTML + CSV | Highlights only, Pro feature |
| Send to Kindle | Premium | |
| Import Kindle highlights |
Instapaper is free, paid from $5.99/mo and SMRY is free, paid from $6/mo. The tier that fits best usually comes down to how many items you save each month.
Free
Unlimited saves, folders, tags, sync across web/iOS/Android, API access.
Premium
Full-text search, permanent archive, PDF reader, unlimited notes, Kindle send, AI voices, speed reading, ad-free.
Free
20 AI summaries per day, 2 voices, basic AI model, no export, no ad-free reading. Rate limited to 6 summaries per minute per IP.
Pro
Unlimited summaries, 10 voices including a studio-quality voice, premium AI model, highlight export to Notion / Obsidian / Markdown, ad-free reading, priority support. 7-day free trial. Annual is half price ($3/mo effective).
Both tools do their category well, but the specifics differ. Here's what each one is good at and where it tends to fall short.
Instapaper is one of the original read-later apps, still going strong after Betaworks took it back from Pinterest in 2020. The product has always been sharp on one thing: save a web page, read it later in a clean typographic view. Free tier gets you unlimited saves, folders, tags, sync across iOS/Android/web, and a public API. Premium at $5.99/mo or $59.99/yr layers on full-text search, permanent archive, PDF reader, Kindle send, AI voices, and speed reading. Most of the product has shipped in a long tail of small updates rather than big reinventions. The recent wave added tags across every platform, highlights on the open web via the browser extensions, and send-to-Kindle right from the extension.
SMRY started life in late 2023 as an open-source paywall bypass tool that piped articles through archive.org and ran a ChatGPT summary on top. Two years on it has been repositioned as a full AI reading app. You paste a URL (or prepend smry.ai/ to it) and get a clean reader with 11 themes, an AI summary, text-to-speech in up to 10 voices, highlights in 5 colors, an article chat, and a YouTube transcript mode. The product is intentionally narrow. There is no personal library, no inbox, no RSS, no auto-sync from anywhere, and no mobile app. The pricing matches that scope: free with a daily summary cap, or $3 per month on annual ($6 monthly) for unlimited summaries, the premium voice, highlight export, and ad-free reading. The Chrome extension is optional and captures from your authenticated session so JS-rendered and paywalled pages render cleanly.