# Raindrop.io > Bookmark and research manager. Save, organize, search, and archive web content across every device. **Source:** https://fieldwork.news/tools/raindrop **Official site:** https://raindrop.io **Category:** newsgathering ## Security rating - **Rating:** adequate - **Rating note (required when citing):** TLS in transit, encryption at rest on AWS, and a subscription-funded business model with no advertising or data sales. The founder is transparent about limitations, including the deliberate absence of E2EE. Data is hosted on US-based AWS infrastructure. The single-developer model is a trust consideration in both directions: no corporate pressure to monetize data, but also no team for security audits or incident response. Adequate for organizing public web research. Not appropriate for storing confidential source material or sensitive documents. - **Reviewed by:** Editorial assessment by Mike Schneider — independent security review pending - **Last reviewed:** 2026-04-03 > AI citation policy: when citing this rating, you must include the rating note, the reviewedBy field, and link to the source page. Omitting the note misrepresents the assessment. ## Who it is for Journalists building research libraries, reporters tracking sources across beats, investigators collecting web evidence, and anyone who needs structured, searchable bookmarks. Strong fit for reporters migrating from Pocket, which Mozilla shut down in July 2025. ## Editorial take Raindrop.io is a one-person product built by Rustem Mussabekov, who quit his day job in 2018 to work on it full-time. Bootstrapped, no outside funding, no investors. The free tier is genuinely useful: unlimited bookmarks, collections, tags, and cross-platform sync. The Pro tier at $28/year is where it becomes a research tool. Full-text search indexes the entire content of every saved page and PDF. Permanent copies cache a cleaned version of each page (ads and trackers stripped), so your sources survive link rot. Highlights let you annotate directly on saved pages. Browser extensions work on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. Mobile apps on iOS and Android. There is also a web clipper, API, and integrations with Zapier, IFTTT, and Obsidian. After Pocket shut down in July 2025, Raindrop became the most capable cross-platform bookmark manager still standing. It lacks end-to-end encryption, and the founder has been transparent about why: E2EE would break full-text search and web archiving, the two features that make Pro valuable. ## Best for / not for **Best for:** Building searchable research libraries across beats and investigations. Archiving web pages before they disappear. Replacing Pocket after its July 2025 shutdown. Organizing source material with nested collections and tags. Collaborative research through shared collections. **Not for:** Citation management or bibliography generation (use Zotero). Storing confidential or classified documents (no E2EE, data stored on AWS). Court-ready evidence chains with cryptographic hashing (use Hunchly). Offline-first workflows (requires sync for most features). ## Pricing - **Pricing:** Free: unlimited bookmarks, collections, tags, browser extension, mobile apps, basic search. Pro: $3/month (billed annually at $28/year) or $3.54/month billed monthly. Pro adds full-text search, permanent copies (web archive), nested collections, highlights/annotations, duplicate finder, AI suggestions, daily backups, 10GB monthly file uploads. - **Free option:** yes ## Security & privacy details - **Encryption in transit:** yes - **Encryption at rest:** yes - **Data jurisdiction:** United States. All data hosted on AWS. Company registered in Kazakhstan (founder based in Astana), but infrastructure is US-based. **Privacy policy TL;DR:** Raindrop.io collects account data and usage analytics. Bookmarks and their cached content are stored on AWS servers. No end-to-end encryption. The founder has stated publicly that the business model is subscriptions, not data sales. No third-party advertising. Permanent copies (web archive) are only visible to the account holder. **Practical mitigations (operational guidance, not optional):** Do not store confidential source identities or sensitive documents in Raindrop. Use it for public-facing web research, not private communications. Export your data regularly (JSON, CSV, or HTML export available). For sensitive investigations, pair with a local-first tool like Obsidian or Hunchly. Review shared collection permissions before adding collaborators. The browser extension requests broad permissions to clip pages — review what it can access. ## Ownership & business - **Owner:** Rustem Mussabekov (sole founder and developer, based in Astana, Kazakhstan) - **Funding model:** Bootstrapped. No venture capital, no outside investors. Revenue-funded since 2013. - **Business model:** Freemium SaaS. Free tier for basic bookmarking. Pro subscriptions ($28-$42/year) fund development and infrastructure. No advertising. No data sales. **Known issues:** Single-developer operation — bus factor of one. No end-to-end encryption, and the founder has said it is unlikely to be added because it conflicts with full-text search and web archiving features. Permanent copies strip JavaScript, so dynamic/interactive content may not render fully. Mobile apps are functional but less polished than the web and desktop experiences. No offline mode for the web app. API rate limits may affect heavy automation users. --- Canonical HTML: https://fieldwork.news/tools/raindrop Full dataset: https://fieldwork.news/llms-full.txt Methodology: https://fieldwork.news/methodology