Linkding vs Wallabag: Bookmarks or Read Later?

Quick Verdict

Linkding and Wallabag solve different problems. Linkding is a bookmark manager — it saves URLs with tags and metadata so you can find them later. Wallabag is a read-it-later app — it saves the full article content for offline, distraction-free reading. If you want to organize links like a filing cabinet, use Linkding. If you want to save articles and actually read them later like Pocket, use Wallabag. Many people run both.

Overview

Linkding is a lightweight, self-hosted bookmark manager built with Python and Django. You save a URL, linkding fetches the title and description, and you tag it for later retrieval. It runs as a single Docker container with SQLite, uses about 50 MB of RAM, and gives you fast full-text search across all your bookmarks. The interface is intentionally minimal — a search bar, a tag sidebar, and a list of links.

Wallabag is a self-hosted read-it-later application built with PHP and Symfony. When you save a URL, Wallabag downloads the entire article, strips out ads and navigation chrome, and stores the clean content locally. You can read saved articles offline, annotate them, send them to a Kindle, and export them in multiple formats. It requires PostgreSQL (or MySQL) plus Redis, and runs as a multi-container stack consuming around 150 MB of RAM.

The core distinction: Linkding saves links. Wallabag saves content.

Feature Comparison

Feature	Linkding	Wallabag
Core function	Bookmark management (URLs + metadata)	Full article archival and reading
Content storage	URL, title, description, notes	Complete article text, images, metadata
Offline reading	No — links require internet access	Yes — full content stored locally
Tagging	Yes — autocomplete, bulk edit	Yes — plus automatic tagging rules
Full-text search	Across titles, descriptions, tags, and notes	Across entire article content
Annotations	No	Yes — highlight and annotate passages
Browser extensions	Chrome, Firefox	Chrome, Firefox (via Wallabagger)
Mobile apps	No native apps (responsive web UI)	Official Android and iOS apps
REST API	Yes — full CRUD with token auth	Yes — OAuth2-based
Import/Export	Netscape HTML bookmark format	Pocket, Instapaper, Pinboard, browser HTML
RSS feed output	No	Yes — feed of saved articles
E-reader integration	No	Yes — send to Kindle/Kobo via email

Installation Complexity

Linkding is one of the simplest self-hosted apps to deploy. A single container, one volume, and three environment variables:

services:
  linkding:
    image: sissbruecker/linkding:1.45.0
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "9090:9090"
    volumes:
      - linkding-data:/etc/linkding/data
    environment:
      LD_SUPERUSER_NAME: "admin"
      LD_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD: "changeme"

That is a working deployment. SQLite is the default — no database container needed. Total setup time: under 2 minutes.

Wallabag requires three containers — the app, PostgreSQL, and Redis:

services:
  wallabag:
    image: wallabag/wallabag:2.6.14
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    environment:
      SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_DRIVER: "pdo_pgsql"
      SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_HOST: "wallabag_db"
      SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_PORT: "5432"
      SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_NAME: "wallabag"
      SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_USER: "wallabag"
      SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_PASSWORD: "changeme"
      SYMFONY__ENV__DOMAIN_NAME: "http://localhost:8080"
      SYMFONY__ENV__SECRET: "generate-a-random-string"
    depends_on:
      - wallabag_db
      - wallabag_redis

  wallabag_db:
    image: postgres:16-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: wallabag
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: changeme
      POSTGRES_DB: wallabag

  wallabag_redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped

Setup takes 5-10 minutes. The first startup runs database migrations that need 30-60 seconds. More environment variables to configure, more services to maintain, more things that can break.

Winner: Linkding, by a wide margin. Single container versus three. SQLite versus PostgreSQL + Redis. Three env vars versus a dozen.

Performance and Resource Usage

Metric	Linkding	Wallabag
RAM (idle)	~50 MB	~150 MB
RAM (active)	~120 MB during large imports	~300 MB during article processing
CPU	Minimal	Low — spikes during content parsing
Disk (app)	~30 MB	~200 MB
Disk (data)	~1 KB per bookmark	~50-500 KB per article (full text + images)
Containers	1 (optionally 2 with PostgreSQL)	3 (app + PostgreSQL + Redis)
Startup time	~2 seconds	~30-60 seconds (migrations on first run)

Linkding is roughly 3x lighter on RAM and uses a fraction of the disk space because it stores only metadata, not article content. At 10,000 saved items, a Linkding database is about 10 MB. A Wallabag database with 10,000 full articles could be 1-5 GB depending on how image-heavy the content is.

Linkding runs comfortably on a Raspberry Pi. Wallabag can run on a Pi but the multi-container stack and article processing will feel sluggish on low-end hardware.

Winner: Linkding. It uses fewer resources by an order of magnitude — but that is because it stores less data. Wallabag’s higher resource usage is the cost of storing full article content.

Community and Support

Metric	Linkding	Wallabag
GitHub stars	~7,000+	~10,000+
First release	2020	2013 (as poche, renamed 2014)
License	MIT	MIT
Language	Python (Django)	PHP (Symfony)
Active development	Yes — regular releases	Yes — maintained, slower release cadence
Documentation	Good — GitHub README + wiki	Good — dedicated docs site
Third-party integrations	REST API, browser extensions	Mobile apps, browser extensions, e-reader support, RSS

Wallabag has been around longer (since 2013) and has a larger community. It has official mobile apps, which Linkding lacks. Linkding is newer but has grown quickly because of its simplicity — it hits the “just works” sweet spot that attracts self-hosters tired of complex setups.

Both projects are actively maintained and MIT-licensed. Neither is at risk of abandonment.

Use Cases

Choose Linkding If…

• You want a fast, searchable index of URLs you have visited or want to revisit
• You primarily save links for reference, not for reading later
• You value minimal resource usage and single-container simplicity
• You run a low-powered server (Raspberry Pi, cheap VPS)
• You want to replace browser bookmarks with something searchable and tagged
• You already use Raindrop.io or Pinboard and want a self-hosted equivalent
• You do not need offline reading or article archival

Choose Wallabag If…

• You save articles to read later and want the full content available offline
• You want to read on mobile without ads, popups, or cookie banners
• You highlight and annotate articles as you read
• You send articles to a Kindle or Kobo for distraction-free reading
• You want automatic tagging rules to organize incoming content
• You are replacing Pocket or Instapaper specifically
• You want RSS feeds of your saved articles to pipe into other tools like FreshRSS

Run Both If…

You want a lightweight bookmark index and full article archival for selected content. Linkding handles the bookmarks (quick saves, reference links, resources). Wallabag handles the reading list (long articles you actually plan to read). Both have APIs, so you could automate sending certain Linkding bookmarks to Wallabag for full archival.

Final Verdict

These are complementary tools, not competitors. Linkding is a bookmark manager. Wallabag is a read-it-later app. Comparing them is like comparing a file cabinet to a reading nook — both store information, but the intent and workflow are different.

For most self-hosters who just want to save and organize links: Use Linkding. It is fast, lightweight, and does bookmark management better than anything else in the self-hosted space. Deploy it in under two minutes and forget about it.

For anyone who saves articles to actually read later: Use Wallabag. The full content archival, clean reading view, mobile apps, and Kindle integration make it the definitive self-hosted Pocket replacement.

If you want both bookmarking and read-later in a single app: Look at Linkwarden, which combines bookmark management with full-page archival and collaborative collections — though it is heavier than either Linkding or Wallabag individually.

Related

• How to Self-Host Linkding
• How to Self-Host Wallabag
• How to Self-Host Linkwarden
• Self-Hosted Alternatives to Pocket
• How to Self-Host FreshRSS
• Best Self-Hosted Bookmark & Read Later Apps
• Docker Compose Basics