Burkmak vs Readspace

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.

Readspace brings followed publications, writers, and newsletters into a reading feed and creates a five-minute daily briefing. The chronological feed contains sources a user follows, without engagement ranking or suggested posts. Its Daily Digest groups coverage of the same development across selected sources and links to them. Readers can explore more than 120,000 sources and import or export subscriptions as OPML. A browser extension can find a site's RSS feed when available. Reading tools include summaries, key-point highlighting, and translation. Newsletters can be received through a private Readspace email alias and placed in a Newsletters folder. The maker says reading has no ads or trackers and that reading activity is not sold or used for targeting. Readspace is open source and can be self-hosted; that option has no usage limits, but lacks the hosted catalog, requires OPML imports, and bills AI through the user's provider. Basic is free with limits on feeds, saved articles, and daily tools. Pro costs $5.99 a month, billed monthly, with fair-use limits.