Burkmak vs Instapaper

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.

Instapaper saves internet content for later reading and organization. A single action can save articles, videos, recipes, song lyrics, and other pages; saved articles and videos sync across supported devices and can be read offline. Readers can highlight and comment on article text, then store, retrieve, quote, and share selected passages. The free plan includes unlimited article, video, and page saves, folders, synchronization, and API integration, with a limit of five notes per month. Premium adds full-text search, a permanent archive of articles, PDF reading, unlimited notes, Kindle integration, and mobile AI Voices and text-to-speech playlists. Premium costs $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year. Supported platforms include the web, iOS, Android, macOS, and a Chrome extension; listed devices also include Kindle, Kobo, and Boox eReaders. Speed reading is listed as processing articles up to three times faster.