Here's how Raindrop and SMRY compare across the features people actually look for. They share 6 core capabilities; the differences show up in what each tool focuses on.
Feature
Raindrop
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
Save tweets
Partial
Save YouTube videos
Partial
Paste a YouTube URL to get a readable transcript, summary, and TTS
Save GitHub stars
Save PDFs
Full-text search Pro only
Save files (docs, spreadsheets)
PDF, EPUB, images, video
Save audio files
mp3, wav, aiff, flac
Save via API
Auto-sync sources
RSS auto-sync
Via IFTTT applet
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
Pro
No personal library to search across
Semantic / AI search
Pro (Stella)
Highlights
5 colors, notes per highlight, syncs across devices on Pro
Notes
Per-highlight notes
Tags
Collections
Nested
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
Official server
CLI tool
Claude Code skill
AI summaries
Pro (Stella)
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, TXT only
Highlights only, Pro feature
Send to Kindle
Import Kindle highlights
Pricing
Raindrop is free, paid from $3/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.
Full-text search, permanent web archive, 10 GB/month uploads, Stella AI assistant, annotations on highlights.
$3/mo
SMRY
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.
Free
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).
$6/mo
Strengths and weaknesses
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.
What Raindrop does well
Best-in-class UI for organising a large library of saves
Nested collections and tags for serious curators
Native apps on every major platform including browsers
Genuinely usable free tier with unlimited saves
Official MCP server for Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, and more
Where it falls short
Not a reading app; reader view is secondary
Export formats limited to HTML, CSV, and TXT (no markdown or JSON)
No native RSS subscription or newsletter intake
Highlights are basic compared to Readwise Reader or Matter
What SMRY does well
Zero-friction reading: paste a URL or prepend smry.ai/ and you have an article in seconds, no signup
Genuinely cheap: $3/mo on annual for unlimited summaries, 10 voices, and ad-free reading
Multiple extraction paths under the hood, so it works on more sites than a single-method bypass tool
AI summaries available in six interface languages (EN, PT, DE, ZH, ES, NL)
Chat with the article, with your highlights used as context
Highlight export to Notion, Obsidian, Markdown, and JSON
YouTube transcript view with summary, chat, and TTS
Where it falls short
No personal library: SMRY is a single-article tool, not a place where your saves accumulate, search, or organise
No auto-sync from RSS, X bookmarks, YouTube channels, GitHub stars, or a newsletter inbox
No mobile app and no offline reading
No public API, no MCP server, no agent-ready markdown URLs
Highlights export, but the article itself doesn't export as a clean per-item markdown URL for AI agents
Rate limited to 20 AI summaries per day on the free tier and 6 per minute per IP
Paywall access depends on extraction methods that publishers can patch, with no guarantee for any specific site
About Raindrop
Raindrop is a bookmark manager with polished apps on every major platform, a generous free tier with unlimited bookmarks, and a surprisingly thorough AI layer for Pro users. Pro is $3/mo ($28/yr) and unlocks full-text search across saved pages and PDFs, the Stella AI assistant, a permanent web archive, reminders, and annotations on highlights. Highlights themselves are free on every tier.
The product quietly got ambitious on AI in 2025. There's an official MCP server at /rest/v2/ai/mcp that works with Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, VS Code with Copilot, Windsurf, and Zed, plus an open REST API with OAuth and token auth.
About SMRY
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.