The reading tool you actually own.
Marrowkeep keeps your Kindle and article highlights on your own hardware, in a database you run — and it's the only review tool that checks whether you understand what you saved, not just that you can recall the words. Self-host it free, forever. AGPL open source. Cloud sync isn't built yet; when it is, it's $5/month for those who'd rather not run a server.
AGPL open source · your library is one command from an archive you can read · one docker compose up · FSRS-6 spaced repetition · 1,114 passing tests · export to Markdown/CSV/JSON, never paywalled
Live demo — this is the real Feynman check.
“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.”
You don't own your highlights. You're renting them.
Pocket shut down in July 2025. Omnivore closed in November 2024. Both told users their data was safe — right up until the export deadline. If you had years of saved articles in either, you remember the scramble: the panic export, the broken formatting, the stuff that didn't come through.
The shutdown you can't control.
Every closed reading app is a bet that the company outlives your library. When it loses that bet, your highlights are the collateral. You did the reading. You did the highlighting. And a business decision three time zones away decides whether you keep it.
The subscription that charges you to visit your own notes.
Readwise is $120 a year to keep your own highlights reachable. Stop paying and the archive is still “there” — behind a wall, in their cloud, on their terms. Your five years of Kindle notes became a hostage you pay ransom on monthly.
The pile you never actually learned from.
Here's the quieter failure: you have 3,000 highlights and you've internalized almost none of them. Collecting felt like learning. It wasn't. The app rewarded you for saving, never for understanding — so you saved, and saved, and forgot.
Marrowkeep fixes both problems at the root: you own the file, and the review actually makes it stick.
From locked-in to owned in four steps.
No migration service. No data loss. About ten minutes from your old app to a library that's yours.
Import
Drop in your Kindle My Clippings.txt, a Readwise CSV, or a KOReader export. Duplicates are detected and skipped automatically. Or connect the Kindle Sync browser extension and your read.amazon.com highlights import themselves — no USB, no file hunting.
Review
Marrowkeep builds your daily review queue with FSRS-6 — the same spaced-repetition algorithm behind Anki — so you see each highlight right as it's about to fade. Card-flip, cloze, or rating-based, in sessions built to take about seven minutes.
Understand
Pick a book, explain a highlight in your own words, and Marrowkeep checks whether you understood the idea — not just whether you memorized the sentence. It surfaces the gap and re-queues the highlight. This is Feynman mode, and no other reading tool has it.
Own
Your library lives in a PostgreSQL database running next to the app, on your machine. One click exports it — Markdown for Obsidian, CSV, JSON, or a full ZIP — with no paywall. One command, npm run backup, writes a complete archive including your review history. If you ever leave, you leave with all of it.
Ready when you are —
What you actually get.
You review less and remember more.
Instead of a guilt-pile of 3,000 unreviewed highlights, you get a short daily queue of the handful about to slip from memory. Seven-minute sessions that fit a real life.
Powered by: FSRS-6 spaced repetition · card-flip / cloze / rating modes · streak counter · session summary
Your edits are always the source of truth.
Fix a highlight once, in the tool you own, and re-export whenever you like — your Obsidian vault gets your latest version, not a stale copy frozen in someone's cloud.
Powered by: one-click Markdown export · YAML frontmatter · per-book files · never paywalled
Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.
Find any quote in the time it takes to think of it.
"That line about procrastination" — you'll have it in about 100 milliseconds, even across tens of thousands of highlights. Filter by book, tag, favorite, or date.
Powered by: Full-text search over highlights and notes · prefix matching and highlighted snippets · book / tag / date filters
Purposeful practice alone can take you far, but deliberate practice — guided by a teacher with expert-level feedback — takes you further, faster.
Kindle highlights that import themselves.
Highlight on your Kindle as you always do. The browser extension pulls them in from read.amazon.com — no cable, no file hunting, and we never touch your Amazon password.
Powered by: Kindle Sync browser extension · MIT-licensed · pairing-token based
Loss is a great teacher — investigating our own psychological patterns after a loss is a vital step on the way to mastery.
See your knowledge growing, not just piling up.
A single dashboard shows how much you've actually internalized — a retention ring, the books at risk of fading, and a momentum line trending up. Progress you can feel.
Powered by: Memory Health dashboard · FSRS forgetting-curve math · per-book at-risk list · momentum sparkline
Your data leaves the moment you want it to.
No export paywall and no 'contact us to cancel.' One click gives you Markdown, CSV, JSON, or a full ZIP; one command writes a complete archive including your review history. Close Marrowkeep tomorrow and your library is a gzipped JSON file you can read in a text editor.
Powered by: One-click export (.zip) · restorable JSON backups, rehearsed in CI · a PostgreSQL database you run
Every other tool checks if you remember the words. This one checks if you understand the idea.
Cloze cards and flashcards test recall — whether the sentence is still in your head. That's useful, and Marrowkeep does it. But recall isn't understanding. You can recite a highlight perfectly and still not be able to explain it. Feynman mode closes that gap.
Marrowkeep hands you a highlight you saved and asks you to explain it in your own words. It then checks your explanation against the source and shows you exactly where your understanding falls short — the part you glossed over, the connection you didn't make. Highlights where you found a gap get re-queued with a boosted interval, so the ideas you almost understand come back until you do.
This is the difference between a library of things you saved and a mind that actually changed. No other reading tool in the category does this. It's the reason Marrowkeep exists.
Feynman mode works with no account and no AI key — a guided self-assessment checklist surfaces the gap for free, on every tier. Add your own AI key and it scores your explanation against the source automatically. Either way, it's included free. This is where Marrowkeep earns its keep!
Live demo — this is the real Feynman check.
“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.”
The questions you're actually asking.
Safer than any cloud, because there is no cloud. Your library lives in a PostgreSQL database running on your own machine — no third-party servers, nothing to breach on someone else's infrastructure. Settings shows you the exact host and database, so you can check rather than take our word for it. Export it anytime as JSON, CSV, or Markdown, and npm run backup writes a complete archive — a gzipped JSON file you can gunzip and read in a text editor. We don't say “trust us” — we removed the need to.
Free forever if you self-host. Cloud when you want the convenience.
Readwise is $120 a year. Marrowkeep is $0 to own — or up to half the price if you'd rather we host it.
Start here
Self-Hosted
You value control and can run Docker
free forever
- Import · Library · FTS5 search · FSRS-6 · Memory Health
- Feynman mode (self-check)
- Export — JSON/CSV/MD/ZIP, never paywalled
- Multi-device sync + hosted backup
- Managed AI (no key to manage)
- Email-to-read, RSS
- CommunityCommunity
Cloud
Multi-device readers who'd rather not run a server
or $50/yr
Annual = 2 months free
- Import · Library · FTS5 search · FSRS-6 · Memory Health
- Feynman mode (self-check)
- Export — JSON/CSV/MD/ZIP, never paywalled
- up to 5 devicesup to 5 devices
- 200 actions/mo200 actions/mo
- Email-to-read, RSS
- Community + emailCommunity + email
Cloud Pro
Heavy learners who want it all
or $100/yr
Annual = 2 months free
- Import · Library · FTS5 search · FSRS-6 · Memory Health
- Feynman mode (self-check)
- Export — JSON/CSV/MD/ZIP, never paywalled
- unlimited devicesunlimited devices
- 1,000 actions/mo1,000 actions/mo
- Email-to-read, RSS
- PriorityPriority
Every tier includes the full FSRS-6 review engine, full-text search, Feynman mode, and one-click export. Paid tiers add convenience — sync, hosted backup, and managed AI — not access to your own data. Cloud and Cloud Pro aren't built yet; join the waitlist and we'll email you the day they're live.
There is no risk. That's the whole point.
Free forever, no card, no trial clock.
Self-hosting isn't a free trial that expires — it's free, permanently. No credit card to start, no countdown, no “your trial ends in 3 days” email. Run it for a decade and pay nothing.
Your data can always leave.
Export to Markdown, CSV, JSON, or a full ZIP with one click, on every tier, forever. We will never put a paywall between you and your own highlights. Switching away is a button, not a battle.
Open source means you can't be abandoned.
The code is AGPL. If we raise prices you hate, or shut down, or just go a direction you don't like — the version you're running is yours to keep and to fork. You are not betting on our company surviving. You're running software you own.
Cloud isn't built yet — join the waitlist below.
We built the exit before we built the pitch.
Keep what you read. Understand what you keep.
Free to self-host, open source, yours forever. Cloud sync from $5/month when Cloud launches.
No account. No card. One docker compose up. Your data never leaves your machine.
AGPL-3.01,114passing testsdocker compose upWe launched this week. No inflated testimonials, no fake numbers — just the code, the tests, and the license. Judge it yourself.