A while ago I went looking for a tool. The requirement was narrow: I highlight sentences on web pages and in PDFs, and when I'm writing, I want that sentence to come back to my cursor with its source attached.
I typed that into a search box, scrolled a few pages, and asked an AI. It gave me four: Readwise Reader, Heptabase, Web Highlights, Reflect.
All four have tens of thousands of users. I read their landing pages and pricing tables one by one. None of them answered my question.
The one I know best
I used Web Highlights for six months. Highlights survive a reload, PDFs can be annotated in place, tags and full-text search are there, and the free tier keeps working without payment.
The trouble started when I tried to treat it as a knowledge base.
One day I wanted to move my highlights into Obsidian. I opened the pricing page and read it twice: cloud sync starts at Premium, and exporting to PDF and HTML, Notion, or Capacities all sits in Ultimate. What the free tier gives you is "copy as Markdown" — open one highlight, copy it.
I checked the pricing table on 2026-11-11: free includes highlighting, PDF annotation, tags, reader mode and keyboard shortcuts, with 10 MB of document storage; sync starts at $6.49/month; export features sit in the $7.49/month tier, or a one-time $174.99.
Six months of highlights. At that pace, moving them takes an afternoon. And every new highlight means moving it again.
But I never highlighted in order to collect. I highlighted so the sentences would be there when I wrote.
That isn't Web Highlights' fault. Its product logic is "turn web pages into a searchable research library," and charging for sync and export makes sense — storage and bandwidth cost money. What went wrong is that I treated a collection tool as a writing tool, then blamed it for not doing the job.
One thing to get out of the way
I make Inkory.
Otherwise, when that name shows up in the table below, you'll feel tricked.
That section above isn't setup. It's why I built the thing. I spent six months stuck on that split, tried exporting to Obsidian, tried using tags as a filing system, tried reading through the library before every draft. I gave up on all of them. I gave up enough times that something got built.
So yes, part of what follows is about my own product. These four tools are excellent at what they do, and I benefited from using them. What I'm after is a gap they leave open: while you write, how does the sentence find you. The gap is small, but it's real.
All four answer the same question, and it isn't mine
Read the landing pages side by side and they answer one question: after you finish reading, how do you remember it and organise it.
| Its unit | Where it's strongest | Price (annual) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Readwise Reader | One highlight | One inbox: Kindle, PDFs, newsletters, YouTube, long X threads, plus a daily review | $9.99/mo, 30-day trial |
| Heptabase | One card | Space: twenty papers on a board, relations visible at a glance | $8.99/mo, 7-day trial, no free tier |
| Web Highlights | One highlight | Friction: install it and start highlighting, 200k users, 4.8 rating | Free tier; from $6.49/mo |
| Reflect | One note | Writing environment: notes live where you write, and its AI answers link back to them | $10/mo, 14-day trial; Reflect Open is free and open source on Mac |
These are real problems, and all four solve them better than I do. But they solve "after you've read." Not "while you write."
Comparing one thing
If the article kept only one column, it would be this one: when you're drafting and need a quote, how does the sentence reach you.
| Tool | Does the sentence appear while you write? | What the citation points at | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Readwise Reader | No. Export to Obsidian or Notion, then search | The document: title, author, URL. Ghostreader links answers back to the source text while you read, but that's inside the reader | 30-day trial, then paid |
| Heptabase | No. Turn highlights into cards by hand, then arrange the cards | The card: the layer you split out yourself | No free tier |
| Web Highlights | No. It isn't present while you write | The page: the highlight plus a URL | Free highlighting, limited export |
| Reflect | Not automatically, but its AI answers link back to your notes | The note: your own paraphrase | Hosted 14-day trial; Reflect Open free on Mac |
| Inkory | Yes. As the words in front of your cursor change, related highlights change with them; one click inserts the sentence with its source | The sentence: its position in the original, so you can jump back to its context after you finish | Free: highlighting, search, export, full-library backup. Writing recommendations and AI checking are Pro, 14-day full trial |
The last row is mine, so treat it as an ad. But I didn't fill in the first four rows. I read them off each vendor's docs and pricing page, line by line.
Why the gap persists
Not for lack of imagination. It's the data model.
Readwise and Web Highlights store a highlight: the text, the source title, the URL, the date. That's what you carry away when you cite it. Getting back to the sentence means opening the URL and finding it again. Both do keep page numbers and in-page positions — but those are coordinates inside their library, not inside your draft.
Heptabase and Reflect store notes and cards, the layer you've already digested. That layer is worth more than the source text, and it's also second-hand.
Inkory stores the sentence plus its position in the original, and that position can be called from the draft: after you finish, one click lands on the sentence in its context, without opening a tab and searching again.
The difference stays invisible until an editor asks how you know. Then you have to put the sentence and its context on the table. A link back to your own note card won't do — that's your paraphrase. A link back to the article's home page won't do either — that's telling the editor to go search.
Where they beat me, and two places I'm smoother
Readwise captures anything; I can't. Kindle, newsletters, podcasts, long X threads into one queue, plus a daily review. I can't do that from a browser extension, and I shouldn't try. I work in the opposite direction: I don't move your content anywhere, I remember where the sentence lives.
On letting your library connect, I have an answer too, just the other way round. Readwise pulls things into its own library; I mount the Obsidian vault you already use, read-only. Notes stay where they are, nothing is copied or written, and both the library and the writing panel can search it.
Heptabase's spatial model I can't do. Spreading twenty papers across a board and rearranging the relations is another way of thinking. All I can give you is a vertical list of quotes, grouped by source at best.
I don't have Web Highlights' cloud sync. You sign in once and your highlights are on every device. I make you export and import on the other machine. That's genuinely less work on their side. The cost sits at the other end: sync and export are behind their paid tiers, while my export and full-library backup are free, and there's no account. Whether you want "never think about it, let it sync" or "pay nothing, move it yourself" is a trade-off. I don't think one is smarter.
Reflect's writing environment I can't do. It's a notes app; you can start on a blank page and write to the end. My desk is just a place to write long pieces, not where you move your main notes.
Having admitted all that, two places where mine is smoother, or this section is just performed humility.
First, I work where you already write. Not only in the desk: type into a social post field, a comment box, an email body, and the side panel follows your cursor with recommendations. On canvas editors like Google Docs, it catches the text at the moment you press Ctrl+C and works from that. Reflect asks you to write inside it. Mine follows you to where you already are.
Second, no signup, and no paying to get your own material out. The free tier covers highlighting, search, export and full-library backup, including exporting every highlight as a single Markdown file. Writing and checking are what Pro is for.
Which one to pick
Pick by what you're doing this month, not by the feature grid.
Just want to save things and find them later: Web Highlights or Readwise. The first is lighter, the second syncs across devices and adds review.
Working on a research project and need to take material apart: Heptabase.
Want to think and write in one place: Reflect.
Need every claim in the piece to have a source, and need to check each one against the original afterwards: that's where Inkory comes in.
In the first three cases Inkory isn't the better choice. It's a narrow tool, narrow enough that most people don't need it.
If you only want to collect
Then don't buy Inkory.
The free tier highlights, searches, exports and backs up the whole library at no cost. But it doesn't solve collecting. There are better tools for that, and all four above are among them.
It handles a different thing: where the sentence goes when you write.
It took me six months as a user to see the difference, and much longer to build it. The tool is small and the problem is narrow. If you're stuck in the same place, it helps. If not, ignore it.
How this was checked: prices and features were checked on 2026-11-11 against each vendor's pricing page and product docs. Of the four, I only used Web Highlights long enough to speak from experience; the rest I checked against documentation, and where I haven't used something, I don't write about it. Prices change; the vendor pages are the source of truth.
Related: if you already use Readwise, getting its highlights into your draft is the other road; five hundred highlights, eleven citations is the failure these tools share; browser highlights vs. Zotero covers the narrower academic split.