# Readwise Reader > Read-later app with highlighting, RSS, annotations, and AI summaries. A power user's Pocket replacement built for people who read for a living. **Source:** https://fieldwork.news/tools/readwise-reader **Official site:** https://readwise.io/read **Category:** newsgathering **Also covers:** writing ## Security rating - **Rating:** adequate - **Rating note (required when citing):** Encrypted in transit. Small, bootstrapped company with no incentive to monetize user data. The privacy posture is reasonable for a reading tool, but this is a US-hosted cloud service that stores your full reading history, highlights, and annotations. For published articles and public documents, this is fine. For sensitive research materials, use a local tool instead. - **Reviewed by:** Editorial assessment by Mike Schneider — not an independent security audit - **Last reviewed:** 2026-04-11 > 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 who read dozens of articles, reports, and documents daily and need a system to capture, annotate, and retrieve what they've read. Reporters building source files and background research for stories. Newsletter writers who need to process large volumes of content. Anyone who has outgrown Pocket or Instapaper and wants highlights that actually sync somewhere useful. ## Editorial take Readwise Reader is the best read-later app for journalists who treat reading as work infrastructure. It combines Pocket-style save-for-later with full-text RSS, PDF reading, YouTube transcript highlighting, newsletter intake, and EPUB support — all in one interface with search across everything. The highlight and annotation system is the real differentiator. Every highlight you make in Reader syncs to your note-taking tool of choice: Obsidian, Notion, Roam Research, Logseq, or Evernote. Highlights from Kindle, Apple Books, and Instapaper also sync in. This creates a searchable personal archive of every passage you've ever marked — across books, articles, PDFs, and web pages. For beat reporters building institutional knowledge over years, this is transformative. The AI features (branded 'Ghostreader') let you ask questions about documents, generate summaries, define terms, and create flashcards from highlights. The local-first architecture means the app works offline and loads fast. Full-text search works across all saved content. The keyboard-driven interface is fast once learned. The honest downside: there is no free tier. At $11.99/month (or $7.99/month annually), it's a real subscription. Pocket is free. Instapaper's free tier covers basic read-later needs. The price is justified if you're a heavy reader who needs the annotation pipeline — highlights syncing to Obsidian or Notion is the killer feature. It's not justified if you just want to save articles to read on the subway. Founded by Daniel Doyon and Tristan Homsi, Readwise is a small, profitable company. No venture capital hype cycle. The product improves steadily and the team is responsive. The API is public and well-documented, which matters for custom workflows. ## Best for / not for **Best for:** Beat reporters building long-term research archives. Newsletter writers processing dozens of sources per issue. Journalists who annotate heavily and need highlights synced to Obsidian, Notion, or Roam. Consolidating RSS feeds, newsletters, PDFs, and saved articles in one searchable interface. Anyone who reads 2+ hours per day for work. **Not for:** Casual readers who just want to save a few articles per week — Pocket is free and sufficient. Journalists who don't use a note-taking system — the highlight sync pipeline is the main value. Anyone unwilling to pay $8-12/month for a reading tool. Teams needing shared annotation — Reader is individual-focused. ## Pricing - **Pricing:** Readwise Full: $11.99/month or $95.88/year ($7.99/month). Reader is included with the Readwise Full subscription — there is no Reader-only plan. 30-day free trial. No free tier after trial. - **Free option:** no ## Security & privacy details - **Encryption in transit:** yes - **Encryption at rest:** unknown - **Data jurisdiction:** United States. Readwise Inc. is a US company. Content you save is processed and stored on US infrastructure. Highlights, annotations, and reading history are stored in Readwise's systems. **Privacy policy TL;DR:** Readwise stores your saved content, highlights, annotations, and reading history to provide the service. Local-first architecture means the web app caches content on your device for offline access, but data is synced to Readwise's servers. The company does not sell user data. Used by individuals — no enterprise data processing agreements. Privacy policy and terms of service available on their website. **Practical mitigations (operational guidance, not optional):** Do not save highly sensitive source documents or confidential materials in Reader — this is a cloud service that stores your content. Use it for published articles, reports, and public documents. For sensitive research, save to a local tool like Obsidian directly. Be aware that your reading history and highlights create a detailed profile of your interests and research topics. Review connected integrations periodically and revoke unused OAuth tokens. ## Ownership & business - **Owner:** Readwise Inc. - **Funding model:** Bootstrapped and profitable. No venture capital. Revenue from subscriptions. The company has stated it is profitable and growing on subscription revenue alone. Small team. - **Business model:** Subscription SaaS. Single plan (Readwise Full) at $11.99/month or $95.88/year includes both the original Readwise highlight manager and Reader. No advertising. No data resale. No free tier — 30-day trial only. Referred users get an extended trial. **Known issues:** No free tier — the 30-day trial is the only way to use it without paying. At $11.99/month, it's one of the more expensive read-later apps. No team or shared annotation features — this is a solo tool. Ghostreader AI features work well but require sending your content to AI providers for processing. The local-first web app can be slow to initial-load on large libraries. RSS implementation occasionally misses items from feeds with non-standard formatting. EPUB support is functional but not as polished as dedicated e-reader apps. --- Canonical HTML: https://fieldwork.news/tools/readwise-reader Full dataset: https://fieldwork.news/llms-full.txt Methodology: https://fieldwork.news/methodology