Quick verdict
- What it is
- Store information collected; independent summary not yet available.
- At a glance
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- Free to download
- In-app purchases
Categories and search queries
Official categories
- News
- Productivity
AppCorpus categories
Key functions
| Function | Availability | Access | Scope | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free app | Yes | Free | — | Store published |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Limited free | — | Store published |
Screens
App Store
15 store screenshots
Pricing & paywalls
App Store
- Instapaper Premium — $5.99
- Instapaper Premium — $59.99
Ratings & reviews
App Store
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5/5The best read later app of all time
I’ve been using this on and off for over a decade. Yeah, Pocket caught my eye and I was on it for a bit but I am back to Instapaper for good because it’s simply better. It focuses on what the user needs, not what can make the company money. Pocket harvests your data and makes you pay for text while showing you ads. Instapaper simply lets you save what YOU want to read later. It doesn’t tell you what to read. Doesn’t have a need to try to entice you into staying on the app in hopes you read a suggested article so they get a cut of the ad money. Their premium features are very few but worth it if you like them and they don’t nag you to upgrade. If Mozilla really cared about user privacy like they claim they’d have integrated this app into their browser rather than the other one which may look slick but doesn’t offer much. Speaking of looks, the minimal design of Instapaper is everything you need in this app. No need to complicate it any further. I love this and always will.
Midori Moss · 5 Aug 2026
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3/5Needs fixes many fixes - used to be one of my apps ever
Update after developer review: they’re aware of issues and working on fixes and improvements, so that ups it to 3 stars; happy to go 4 stars once the spacing issue is fixed with upper and lower borders on iPhone X in iBooks pagination mode, then 5 stars once they dim out the Home indicator. Thank you for listening, Instapaper folks. 🙌🏼📖📰👀 Update for 7.5.2 on Jan 23, 2018, which purportedly hides Home indicator when you’re in full screen mode, however, I just tried it, in full screen mode, after closing all apps and restarting, and the home indicator is still there no matter what I try. See below comments with hopes those will get fixed as well as they’re still sane after 7.5.2. Previous: I’ve been a huge fan of Instantpaper for many many years, I love it, but one thing that’s always bugged me, is that there is no full justified text feature to make the margins on either side balance out like you can with Kindle, Nook, iBooks, etc. Also, the pagination feature to use iBooks like page turns on an iPhone 10 just doesn’t work properly, there’s a huge gap at the bottom of every page, while the top part of the screen and the text is way too close to the upper edge, I just need a simple fix, and maybe that will get fixed along with the lack of full justification, that would be so nice, that I would give it five stars again.
joehutsko · 5 Aug 2026
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1/5never loads new content
Tried to read some recently saved articles and waited over five minutes while it slowly loaded old articles one by one but wouldn't show me any of my recent saves. I thought maybe I was too optimistic about my sync settings, so I set the sync settings to the lowest amount. Didn't help. Uninstalled, restarted phone, reinstalled with lowest sync settings... again, one by one my older articles were slowly loaded at a pace of maybe one every 8 to 10 seconds, and I couldn't refresh to get the new saves. What is the point of this? How is this convenient if, by the time the app is ready to show me the article I wanted to read, my window for reading it (say, over a very quick breakfast) has closed? Am I supposed to wait, after saving an article, until the next day to read it, or would the app just continue to slowly load up old content at its leisure while ignoring me? Do I need to keep it open and on screen for one or more *hours* before I can start using it? I paid for premium, too, so i feel like a rube who just wasted his money. Back to Reader, I guess, even though its parsing engine gets worse by the month. At least with Reader I can access my saved content a few seconds after saving.
Dermerat23 · 5 Aug 2026
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5/5Best App Ever.
This is my most favorite app of all time. I read a lot of articles from news sites and blogs. Short form, long form, tech, opinion, basically everything and anything. Instapaper is a great place for me to keep all my favorite articles that I want to read now or later without all the ads and excess. Just the message and that’s it. You can even have Instapaper speed read the articles for you if you’re into that sort of thing, insert notes anywhere into the article, highlight a word and get a definition and/or a Wikipedia snippet right there in the article, there’s dark/light themes, text for people who have dyslexia, change the font by slider to whatever size you want, you can even copy and paste the stripped text wherever you want. Instapaper is an app that you will appreciate so much you’ll be asking where you can donate money to keep it alive forever. It’s the ultimate readers Swiss Army knife.
DO NOT USE 67899 · 5 Aug 2026
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1/5Update: Crashes all the time
With the new IOS 13 on an iPhone XR, TTS crashes constantly now. It doesn’t matter if I’m in light mode or dark mode, it won’t make it through one article until it crashes. I’m still on a hunt for a replacement app for Instapaper considering how many bugs have yet to be addressed and now these new series of bugs that have cropped up. I even went ahead and paid for the premium part of this app and have regretted it since issues and complaints seem to go unanswered. Please post if you are using a similar app that isn’t plagued with bugs that also has TTS! Old Review: I’m really disappointed in this App. This was my go to app for saving and reading articles for later, surpassing Pocket. Now I’ve switched to Pocket bc of the constant bugs that still plague the App that go unanswered AND most importantly the sudden change of our once free services to having to go to their website and pay for the services. I do not just want to give my credit card out without any option for secure payment, and features like text to speech multiple articles while driving are now paid. Change the App back to what it was before, otherwise you would lose another customer to your competitors.
Cirsp · 5 Aug 2026
Privacy & accessibility
App Store
Privacy
- Data Linked to You — App Functionality — Contact Info — Email Address Developer declared
- Data Linked to You — App Functionality — Identifiers — User ID Developer declared
- Data Linked to You — Contact Info Developer declared
- Data Linked to You — Identifiers Developer declared
- Data Not Linked to You — Analytics — Diagnostics — Crash Data Developer declared
- Data Not Linked to You — Analytics — Usage Data — Product Interaction Developer declared
- Data Not Linked to You — App Functionality — Usage Data — Product Interaction Developer declared
- Data Not Linked to You — Diagnostics Developer declared
- Data Not Linked to You — Usage Data Developer declared
Accessibility
No accessibility labels collected yet.
Versions
App Store
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10
· 28 Jul 2026
Instapaper 10 is a major update. We've adopted Liquid Glass, redesigned large parts of the app, added new features, and made many performance improvements. Sections Menu * Section counts now appear everywhere, and can be turned off in Settings > Behavior > Section Counts. * Folders and Tags can now be sorted by name, newest, oldest, or count. * iPad improvements, including a side-by-side list and menu view in landscape, and full Liquid Glass support in Reader. Article List * Redesigned article list, including a new Condensed Mode and typography options (serif, sans-serif, and accessibility). Configure in Settings > Appearance. * A new swipe action moves articles to the top of your list. Set it up in Settings > Behavior > Swipe Actions. * Playlists are now created automatically from your full article list. You can still build one from selected articles via "..." > Select. Reader * Four new reading fonts: Literata, New York, Open Sans, and Atkinson Hyperlegible. * You can now choose what opens when you tap an article — Reader View (the one you know and love), Web View, the in-app browser, or your default browser. Configure in Settings > Behavior > Article View. New Features * Introducing the Instapaper widget! Add it to your Home Screen to see your Currently Reading or Recently Saved articles. Performance * Faster article downloads and more reliable background sync, with a number of fixes across the board.
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8.4.2
* Fixed crash on launch when app launches on Browse section. * Minor fixes and improvements.
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8.5
* Introducing Note Search, now you can easily search all your notes with Instapaper Premium. * The new Article Notes View lets you view all your notes from within an article by tapping "..." then "View Notes". * Notes are now shown grouped by article by default. You can change this to most recent by tapping "..." then "Sort by Recent". * Redesigned Note options menu to be faster and better designed. * Brought back “Shuffle Sort” after receiving many requests since removing it in the previous release. * Fixed “Share All Notes” not showing for email saves on iOS. * Fixed language detection for text-to-speech. * Other minor fixes and improvements.
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8.5.1
* Fix issues with reading text settings when switching between apps on iPad. * Fix theming on text selection menu icons. * Fix tapping on a link within a footnote. * Other minor fixes and improvements.
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8.6
* Introducing Summaries! You can now view a summary of any article by opening an article, tapping the More icon, and then tap Summarize. You can also view your Summaries by swiping from the right edge of your iPhone or iPad. * Customize the actions in your reader toolbar by long pressing any icon and selecting a new action. * Oldest article sync is now available. If you'd like to sync your articles oldest first, you can navigate to Instapaper Settings > Advanced > Syncing > Home > Oldest First. * Instapaper now supports your iOS default system browser for opening articles. You can switch to the iOS default browser by navigating to Instapaper Settings > Browser > System. * True Black can now be disabled in Instapaper Settings > Advanced > True Black if you prefer Dark Mode slightly less dark. * Toggle to enable or disable scrolling under the status bar available in Settings > Advanced > Full Screen. * Option to remove “via Instapaper” attribution when sharing articles is available with Instapaper Premium in Settings > Advanced > Sharing. * Improved display of code blocks in reader view. * Increased largest font sizes for better accessibility. * Many other bug fixes and improvements.
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8.6.1
* Added setting to disable Summary gesture in Settings > Advanced. * Fixed issue displaying Settings on iPad after dismissing by tapping background. * Fixed dictionary lookup. * Fixed issue when sharing notes after editing a note.
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8.6.2
* Improved sharing to Terminology dictionary app. * Other minor fixes and improvements.
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8.6.3
* Fix issue where “Search in Article” was not showing properly on iPhone. * Properly clear Now Playing information from lock screen when text-to-speech finishes. * Other minor fixes & improvements.
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8.6.4
* Updated app icons for iOS 18.
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8.6.5
* Fix issue with opening links in system default browser. * Fix issue where Settings did not properly show updates to changed settings. * Other minor fixes and improvements.
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9.0
Introducing Tags for Better Organization * With tags, you can assign multiple labels to a single article, making it easier to find exactly what you’re looking for later. Additionally, archived articles will retain their tags, keeping everything organized long-term. Both Folders and Tags will continue to be supported in Instapaper. * Saving to Instapaper has been improved to support tagging, moving into a folder, or archiving the article. * Tag Search is now supported to filter articles by tags (e.g. #science will filter articles with the science tag). Filtering by multiple tags is also supported. * Multi-select tagging is supported, making bulk organization easier. Additional Features & Improvements * From an article list, view your Notes on any article with one tap. * Multicolumn layout is a great way to take advantage of the entire screen for reading on your iPad. You can enable it by navigating to text settings > Swipe Left > Multi-column (ON). * Other fixes and improvements.
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9.0.1
* Minor fixes and improvements.
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9.0.2
* Reduced delay when saving articles. You can also dismiss the saving screen more quickly by swiping down. * Fixed issue with sharing full-text of article.
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9.0.3
* Fix issue where archiving from reading view would occasionally not work. * Fullscreen support for YouTube videos on iPad. * Improvements for bulk actions. * Fix tint color on video indicators. * Other minor fixes and improvements.
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9.1
* Support for Logged-In Sites! Now you can login to websites on Instapaper in order to ensure you can get the full article content, even when there's a paywall. * Go to Settings > Logged-In Sites > Navigate to website > Login with your credentials > Tap "Save Login". * You can long press an article in list to redownload it, or save new articles to get the full content. * Redesigned Settings page for better organization, and Settings now uses the Instapaper theme. * Save Delay setting is available in Settings > Behaviors to adjust the amount of time that the save shows for. You can set this to "None" to have it disappear as quickly as possible. * Auto-Lock setting is available in Settings > Behaviors. When disabled, it prevents your device's screen from locking while reading. * Line Breaks in Code can now be disabled in Settings > Behaviors. When disabled, lines in code blocks are not wrapped and the code block can be scrolled horizontally. * Fixed issue where article information was not showing on lock screen when using text-to-speech Playlists. * Fixed several bugs with the full screen image viewer. * Many other bug fixes and improvements.
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9.1.1
* Fixed crash when trying to delete account. * Other minor crash fixes.
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9.2
* Resolved issues with pausing/stuttering on text-to-speech, especially with longer aritcles. * Improve dark mode theme colors by increasing contrast. * Other minor fixes and improvements.
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9.2.1
* Significant speed improvements to syncing, 70% reduced syncing times in many cases. * Fixed issue where text-to-speech Playlists sometimes played article titles in the wrong language. * Improved retry logic when article deletion fails. * Other minor fixes and improvements.
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9.2.2
* Fixed Send to Kindle for individual articles * Improved text-to-speech language detection
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9.2.3
Welcome Pocket fans! In this release we built a few new features for you, and fixed a couple of bugs. * Filter "Not Tagged" articles from Home, Archive, or Folders by tapping "..." > Filter > Not Tagged. * Filter archived articles from a tag by tapping "..." > Filter > Home. * Fixed saving from Chrome. * Resume playback properly from Airpods. * Fix for text-to-speech language detection (last one!) * Other minor fixes and improvements.
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9.2.4
* Updated translations. * Fix issue where filter menu was not showing properly with zero articles in list. * Other minor fixes and improvements.
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9.3
* PDF support is now live! Save PDFs from the web, or upload them directly to Instapaper. PDF support is available with Instapaper Premium. * Updated translations. * Minor fixes and improvements.
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9.3.1
* Fix saving from Chrome.
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9.4
* Introducing AI Voices: high-quality, streaming text-to-speech voices. We are launching 17 voices across 8 languages including English, Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese, Hindi, Spanish, Portuguese. More voices and language support to follow! * Redesigned text-to-speech as a floating player throughout the application. You can easily expand the player to navigate to Playlist, select different voices, or manage articles while listening. * Improved play/pause from AirPods and handling audio interruptions. * Fixed issues with YouTube embeds. * Other minor fixes and improvements.
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9.4.1
* Fix issue with iPad going fullscreen when auto-fullscreen disabled.
Alternatives
- feeeed: rss reader and more — Same category + similar ratings
- Pocket Casts: Podcast Player — Same category + similar ratings
Availability by market
- US
Data quality & evidence
- Page completeness
- Live store listing
- Last verified
- 5 Aug 2026
- Sources
- App Store
- Independent summary has not been published yet.