Burkmak vs Cubox

Burkmak is a free, MIT-licensed, self-hosted read-it-later application for saving links, reading articles, highlighting passages, syncing with Kobo, and exporting notes to Obsidian. Its reader extracts articles into a clean view with highlights and notes, while tags, read states, favorites, and search organize per-user libraries. Links can be captured through the web app, Android share sheet, or desktop browser bookmarklet. Kobo support provides an OPDS catalog for EPUB and KEPUB downloads plus native store-protocol synchronization that writes reading state back. An Obsidian plugin transfers article notes, highlights, and metadata through Burkmak’s export API. Docker Compose deployment includes backend and web containers, a data volume, and amd64 and arm64 images; the volume stores the SQLite database, cached articles, images, and EPUBs. Product requirements state that server-fetched content remains on the self-hosted instance and no third-party analytics are used. Native Kobo synchronization requires HTTPS, physical-device support remains pending, and the architecture targets one instance rather than horizontal scaling or high availability.

Cubox is an AI read-it-later app for saving and organizing material to read across devices. It supports offline access, full-text search, highlighting, and highlight export. Users can start for free, while Cubox Pro costs $29 a year and includes unlimited saves and highlights, webpage parsing and snapshots, multiple highlight colors, customizable reading style, nested folders and tags, Email Drop, and API access. Cubox Pro+AI costs $49 a year and adds an AI reading assistant, AI insights with summaries and points, and AI ghost highlights; this plan includes a 14-day free trial that can be canceled any time. Native apps are listed for Mac, iPhone and iPad, Android, and E-Ink, along with extensions for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari. The service lists more than ten saving extensions. Paid subscriptions are available across platforms without a login limitation. Cubox says it is ad-free, does not sell or use personal data, and keeps data after membership expires. Users can export links and annotations at any time.