Readwise

You highlight a passage in a book and a week later you no longer remember what it said. Readwise was built to solve exactly that. The service pulls in your highlights from Kindle, Apple Books and other sources, and regularly brings the most important ones back to you.

Readwise started with one thing: importing Kindle highlights and showing them again with spaced repetition. No big platform, no note-taking system. According to the company, it has been built without investors since 2017 and is profitable, supported by subscribers.

Later came Reader, an app for reading articles later. With it, Readwise moves from just reviewing to the reading itself. Reader is part of the most expensive plan.

The core of Readwise is spaced repetition. With this method, information comes back at ever longer intervals. You see a highlight today, then in a few days, then in a few weeks. That way a passage sticks better.

In practice you get a review every day, by email or in the app. You see a selection of older highlights, so even what you read months ago comes around again. You can also search your whole library, which helps with a half-remembered quote.

For paper books there is OCR. You photograph a page and mark the passage, and the text lands in your library as a highlight. That way what you read on paper does not stay outside your archive.

Syncing covers a lot of ground. Readwise pulls highlights from Kindle, Apple Books, Instapaper and other sources. With Readwise Full you forward them automatically to Notion, Obsidian or Logseq. Readwise then becomes a collection point: you read wherever you like, Readwise catches the highlights and your notes app receives them on its own.

If you want to build something yourself, there is an API and a CLI.

Readwise has no free plan. The first 30 days are free, after which you choose between two plans. Prices are in dollars.

Readwise Lite costs $ 6.99 a month, or $ 5.59 a month when paid yearly ($ 67.08 a year). You get the daily review, search across your highlights and sync with all your sources. Tags, notes, the export to your notes app and Reader are not included.

Readwise Full costs $ 12.99 a month, or $ 9.99 a month when paid yearly ($ 119.88 a year). With it you get tags and notes, export to Notion, Obsidian and other apps, Reader, and early access to new features with a locked-in price.

Students and academics can ask for a 50% discount by email. If you refer a friend, your trial is extended by 30 days.

One detail worth knowing: Readwise earns commission through Amazon links in the daily review. It also runs an affiliate programme in which writers earn commission on sign-ups. Keep that in mind when you read a glowing review elsewhere.

Thirty days is plenty to test the core. Connect your Kindle or Instapaper, let the highlights import and do the review every day. Watch two things. Does the review really become part of your routine, or do you skip it after a week? And does the export to your notes app work the way you want? The value stands or falls on those two points.

Readwise is not a notes app. It collects and resurfaces highlights from other sources. The comparison with Obsidian and Logseq is therefore a bit lopsided, but still useful. Those two are notes apps, not collection services.

Obsidian is a notes app with local Markdown files. You can import highlights there with plugins or by hand. Choose Obsidian if you prefer to process highlights yourself.

ObsidianA powerful, offline-first note-taking app that helps you build a personal knowledge network with Markdown files, bi-directional links, and a visual representation.From $ 4/moFree plan

Logseq also works with local files and links between notes, and is stronger at connecting your own thoughts than at managing highlights from outside. Readwise and one of these two are not mutually exclusive: Readwise Full sends your highlights there automatically.

Raindrop.io is a bookmark manager. It saves links, articles and videos in collections, and with Pro its own copy of every page. Choose Raindrop.io if you mainly want to collect and find things again, and care less about reviewing. Raindrop has a Readwise integration, so you can use these two side by side as well.

No. The first 30 days are free, then you choose Readwise Lite or Readwise Full. Students can ask for a 50% discount.

Lite gives you the daily review, search and sync. Full adds tags, notes, export to Notion and Obsidian and the Reader reading app.

Yes, with Readwise Full you send highlights automatically to Obsidian, Notion and Logseq. Lite does not include that export.

Yes, with OCR. You photograph a page and the marked text lands in your library as a highlight.