Readwise is pretty solid for what it does. It keeps your reading highlights in one place and helps you surface them instantly. It just makes it easy to remember what you read and keep track of important snippets, whether for research or personal purposes. And it has superior integration, letting you sync it with nearly every app under the sun - Kindle, Apple Books, Pocket, Medium, NotebookLM, you name it. The problem is that Readwise is a paid service, so it starts becoming one of those subscriptions you only pay because you’re used to having it in your reading kit, not because it’s necessarily making your reading life better.
I wanted to see if there were free alternatives, and that’s how I came across PastReads. It’s a similar concept in that it syncs with your reading apps or web pages and pulls highlights from them - just with a different interface. I started to slowly replace some of Readwise’s functionality with PastReads, and I kind of regret ever paying for Readwise now…
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What is PastReads?
A free Readwise alternative
PastReads is a home base and manager for everything you highlight while reading. It pulls your highlights from apps like Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and, funnily Readwise, as well as from the open web. There’s also the PastReads Web Highlighter extension I recommend installing for pulling highlights directly from any web page. PastRead’s design is super simple, grounded, and functional, yet it’s still as feature-rich as Readwise. You get a clean library, solid organization tools, and a couple of extras that actually make it a better experience than Readwise.
In day-to-day use, the value of PastReads is pretty obvious, and its use cases vary greatly. It’s a great way to remember what you read instead of shuffling through your books, but it’s also a great tool for studying since the extension lets you save snippets from any online reading material.
The basic use of PastReads is free, offering unlimited highlights and notes, highlighting from any web page, organizing features, global search, and book app integration. There is a paid tier, however, which gives you access to a recap feature, unlimited tags, and export to Notion. Whether you go with the free or pro plan ($5 per month), both give you greater value than Readwise’s $12 monthly plan (and no free option).
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How PastReads stacks up against Readwise
It actually has a better feature set
My first impression of PastReads is that it’s simple, easy, and functional. After signing in, you’ll be directed to your library dashboard and prompted to import highlights from your book apps or web pages. I like that your entire library is in view by default, which is not the case in Readwise, where you have to navigate to your library. And I also love that it has a dark mode.
On the left panel, you’ve got your sources laid out neatly; however, I would prefer it if this panel could slide in and out, as it takes up quite a bit of space. In the middle is your library with your highlights displayed in cards, divided into Books and Web Articles categories. Here, you can also create custom collections to sort your cards by theme - these would be the equivalent of Readwise’s Themed Reviews feature. And at the top, you’ve got some filters, a global search function which instantly surfaces highlights with keywords, Add New for adding sources, and your profile settings.
Where PastReads really shines is in how it handles your highlight cards. You can add tags to your highlights and filter them through these tags. But I especially like that you can edit highlights with a little rich text editor, which is something I expected to be locked behind the paywall. Additionally, PastReads has a Notes function just like Readwise, except it’s also part of the free plan. You can attach notes to individual highlights or add notes separately as their own cards to your library.
One thing that PastReads has that Readwise doesn’t is an instant click-through for any web links you added. Even if you only highlight a couple of words from a page, it will let you visit that page. Recaps isn’t a feature I’ve tried as it’s part of the paid plan, but basically, it sends you updates so you can continuously check in and update your highlights.
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Where PastReads misses the mark
It’s great, but still not as robust as Readwise in some areas
The biggest downside to switching from Readwise to PastReads is the lack of integration options. Readwise has integrations for a whopping 30+ tools, whereas PastReads only has a handful. This also means that if I wanted to integrate it with NotebookLM, I would have to copy everything over manually. Another win for Readwise is its Reader app. This is a dedicated reading app that lets you actually store and interact with your reading materials beyond just the highlights, at no additional cost to your Readwise subscription. And it pairs really well with NotebookLM, too.
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The case for switching to PastReas
Minus the Reader app or NotebookLM integration, I’m pretty much getting the exact same experience from PastReads as I did from Readwise, all for free. If you’re someone who highlights everything, or constantly bookmarks it or copies the text, only to never look at it again, PastReads is such an easy way to actually put that content to use.