Pocket was the default read-it-later app for over a decade — until Mozilla shut it down in 2025 and millions of reading lists needed a new home. The lesson wasn’t “pick a better company.” It was: own the service your library lives on.
The situation, plainly
When Pocket closed, users got an export window and a deadline. That’s the deal with every free hosted service — it exists at the pleasure of someone else’s strategy. Wallabag is the open-source alternative the Pocket community pointed to for years: same one-tap saving, same clean reading view, but software anyone can run — which means it cannot be discontinued out from under you. We run it for you, and your export always works.
What you get instead
One-tap saving from any browser or phone share sheet, just like Pocket
A clean, permanent copy of every article — readable even after the original page dies
Tags, full-text search, highlights, and offline mobile reading
Direct import of your Pocket export: articles, favorites, and archive
Send-to-Kobo/Kindle for long reads
The honest tradeoffs
Wallabag’s apps are functional rather than flashy — the reading experience is the polish, not the chrome.
Your library is encrypted in transit and access-controlled, but not end-to-end encrypted (the service stores readable article copies to work).
Making the move
Get your Pocket export. Pocket’s export tooling produced a file of your saves — if you grabbed one before the shutdown, that’s all you need.
Import into Wallabag. One import screen: point it at the export file and your library — articles, favorites, archive — comes across.
Install the extension and app. Browser extension for saving, mobile app for reading offline. Five minutes total.
I never exported before Pocket closed — am I stuck?
If the export window has passed, the library may be gone — that’s exactly the failure mode owning the service prevents. You can start fresh in minutes, and this time the archive is yours.
Why Wallabag and not another hosted read-later app?
Because the failure you just lived through was structural, not a features problem. Wallabag is open source: if we ever disappeared, your export imports into any other Wallabag instance — including one you run yourself. That exit door is the point.
Ready when you are
Cancel anytime, 14-day full refund, and your data exports whenever you like — the exit door stays open on purpose.
Pocket was a product of Mozilla Corporation. Wallabag is an independent open-source project. Gateholm is not affiliated with either; names are used only to describe migration compatibility.