Readwise Reader is a read-it-later app launched by the Readwise team, designed to solve the problem of content overload by bringing various types of reading material together in one place and providing powerful highlighting, annotation, and AI-assisted features.
Purpose Reader is used to centrally manage daily reading content, including web articles, newsletters, PDFs, EPUB e-books, RSS feeds, YouTube video transcripts, and long X (Twitter) posts. It helps users save, read, highlight, and organize all materials in one place, replacing multiple scattered reading tools.
Main capabilities
- Content saving and reading: Supports saving web articles, uploading PDFs and EPUBs, subscribing to RSS, subscribing to newsletters, importing YouTube transcripts and X posts, and provides a distraction-free reading experience.
- Highlighting and annotation: The highlighting feature is a first-class citizen, supporting highlighting of images, tables, rich text, and more, and can be used on any device.
- Ghostreader AI: Acts as a GPT copilot for reading, supporting asking questions about documents, defining terms, simplifying complex language, generating summaries, and creating flashcards.
- Daily review: Based on the principle of spaced repetition, it resurfaces highlighted content at the right time via email or in the app to help with memory.
- Full-text search: Fast full-text search, so you can find something even if you only remember one word, and it supports offline use.
- Text-to-speech: Can convert any document into natural AI voice narration, with adjustable speed and support for dozens of languages.
- Keyboard reading: Supports pure keyboard navigation, highlighting, and annotation, improving reading fluency.
- Integrations and export: Deeply integrated with Readwise, highlights can be automatically exported to note-taking tools such as Obsidian, Notion, Roam Research, Evernote, and Logseq. It provides an API and command-line interface, and supports an MCP server to connect to AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor.
- Cross-platform sync: Provides a web app, iOS and Android apps, Chrome/Firefox/Safari browser extensions, Mac and Windows desktop apps, and a viewing mode for e-ink devices such as BOOX and Daylight Computer. It supports offline use and can send documents to Kindle.
How to use Users can sign up through the official website and start a 30-day free trial without a credit card. After the trial ends, a Readwise Full subscription is required tocontinue using Reader. The subscription price is $9.99/month billed annually or $12.99/month billed monthly. Students, educators, nonprofit organizations, military personnel, first responders, and users in countries/regions with unfair U.S. pricing can email hello@readwise.io to apply for a 50% discount.
Use cases Suitable for users who need to handle large amounts of reading material, such as founders, professionals, scholars, engineers, knowledge workers, and self-learning enthusiasts. It can be used for mixed reading workflows such as work PDFs, newsletters, e-books, and RSS feeds, helping users extract and remember key information from their reading.
Limitations Details about specific feature limitations beyond the free trial, differences in features across platforms, and usage quotas for AI features are not provided in the materials.