Save articles, videos, and stories from any publication.
Free, paid from $4.99/mo
- Simple, polished reading experience
- Strong native apps across iOS, Android, and web
- Defined the read-later category for over a decade
Compare Pocket and SMRY side by side on features, pricing, and the workflows each one is designed for.
Save articles, videos, and stories from any publication.
Free, paid from $4.99/mo
Paste an article URL, get a clean reader with AI summaries, audio, and chat.
Free, paid from $6/mo
Here's how Pocket and SMRY compare across the features people actually look for. They share 3 core capabilities; the differences show up in what each tool focuses on.
| Feature | SMRY | |
|---|---|---|
| Capture and save | ||
| Browser extension | Chrome extension captures from your authenticated session for paywalled and JS-rendered pages | |
| Mobile apps | iOS, Android | |
| Save from email | Send-to-Pocket 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 | ||
| 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 | ||
| 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 | Premium | 5 colors, notes per highlight, syncs across devices on Pro |
| Notes | Partial | Per-highlight notes |
| Tags | ||
| Collections | ||
| Public sharing | Partial | 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 | Highlights only, Pro feature | |
| Send to Kindle | ||
| Import Kindle highlights |
Pocket has shut down, so pricing below is for reference only. SMRY is free, paid from $6/mo.
Free
Save unlimited items, basic offline reading.
Premium
Permanent library, full-text search, unlimited highlights, suggested tags, premium fonts, 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.
Pocket has shut down and is no longer available. Any of the active alternatives is a safer bet.
Pocket launched in 2007 as Read It Later, pioneered the modern read-later category, and was acquired by Mozilla in 2017. For nearly two decades it was the default way to save web articles and read them later on any device, with a clean reader view and optional offline access. Mozilla shut Pocket down on July 8, 2025. All user data was permanently deleted on November 12, 2025. The apps and extensions no longer work, and any integrations built against the Pocket API have stopped. If you still have an export file from before that date, most modern alternatives (Instapaper, Readwise Reader, Raindrop, Matter, Keep) can import it.
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.