Wallabag vs Omnivore: Which Read-Later App?
Quick Verdict
Wallabag is the safer choice for most self-hosters. It has a smaller Docker footprint (3 containers vs 9+), pinned version tags, years of stable releases, and an active development team. Omnivore has more features — highlights, annotations, newsletter ingestion, Obsidian/Logseq integration — but the project is community-maintained after its team joined ElevenLabs, and all Docker images use :latest with no version pinning. Choose Omnivore if you need those specific features and accept the maintenance risk.
Overview
Wallabag is a mature, PHP-based read-later app first released in 2013 (originally poche). It extracts article content from web pages, provides tagging, full-text search, RSS feeds for tags, and syncs across devices via official mobile apps and browser extensions. It runs on Symfony with a MySQL/PostgreSQL database.
Omnivore launched as a hosted service that grew to 500,000+ users before the team was acqui-hired by ElevenLabs in October 2024. The cloud service shut down in November 2024 — self-hosting is now the only option. It’s a Next.js/Node.js stack with PostgreSQL (pgvector), Redis, MinIO, and a headless browser for content extraction.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Wallabag | Omnivore |
|---|---|---|
| Article saving | Yes | Yes |
| Full-text search | Yes | Yes (pgvector-powered) |
| Highlights & annotations | No | Yes |
| Labels/tags | Yes | Yes |
| Newsletter ingestion | No | Yes (via SMTP) |
| PDF saving | No | Yes |
| Browser extensions | Chrome, Firefox | Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge |
| Mobile apps | Android, iOS | Android, iOS |
| Obsidian integration | Community plugin | Official plugin |
| Logseq integration | No | Official plugin |
| RSS feed export | Yes (per tag) | No |
| API | REST API | GraphQL API |
| Text-to-speech | No | iOS only |
| E-reader export | Yes (EPUB, PDF, Kindle) | No |
| Multi-user | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Docker containers | 3 (app, DB, Redis) | 9+ (web, API, queue, content-fetch, image-proxy, migration, DB, Redis, MinIO) |
| Pinned Docker tags | Yes | No (:latest only) |
| Active development | Yes (regular releases) | Community maintenance |
Installation Complexity
Wallabag is straightforward: one application container, one database (MySQL or PostgreSQL), and optionally Redis for caching. The Docker Compose file is simple, all images have pinned version tags, and the application has been containerized for years with stable releases.
Omnivore requires 9+ containers including PostgreSQL with the pgvector extension, Redis, MinIO for object storage, a headless browser for content fetching, a separate image proxy, and a migration service that must run before the backend starts. You also need three separate subdomains (web, API, image proxy) for the browser extensions to function. The complexity is comparable to deploying a small microservices platform.
| Metric | Wallabag | Omnivore |
|---|---|---|
| Containers | 3 | 9+ |
| Setup time | 10-15 minutes | 30-45 minutes |
| Subdomains needed | 1 | 3 |
| Environment variables | ~8 | ~20+ |
Performance and Resource Usage
| Resource | Wallabag | Omnivore |
|---|---|---|
| RAM (idle) | ~200-300 MB | ~2-3 GB |
| RAM (active) | ~400-500 MB | ~3-4 GB |
| CPU | Low | Medium (headless browser) |
| Disk (app) | ~100 MB | ~500 MB |
Wallabag runs comfortably on a 1 GB VPS or a Raspberry Pi 4. Omnivore needs at least 4 GB of RAM and won’t run on most SBCs.
Community and Support
Wallabag has 10,000+ GitHub stars, consistent releases (multiple per year), professional documentation at doc.wallabag.org, and an active community. The project has been maintained for over a decade and shows no signs of slowing down.
Omnivore has 15,000+ GitHub stars (partly from its hosted-service era), but the core team left after the ElevenLabs acquisition. Community contributors maintain the repository, and recent releases focus on Android bug fixes. The official blog domain (blog.omnivore.app) has expired, suggesting infrastructure decay. A Discord community still exists.
Use Cases
Choose Wallabag If…
- You want a proven, stable read-later app with years of releases
- You prefer simple Docker deployments (3 containers)
- You need e-reader export (EPUB, PDF, Kindle)
- You want RSS feeds for your saved articles
- You’re running on limited hardware (Raspberry Pi, 1 GB VPS)
- Long-term project viability matters to you
Choose Omnivore If…
- You need highlights and inline annotations
- You want newsletter ingestion (subscribe to newsletters via Omnivore)
- Obsidian or Logseq integration is critical for your workflow
- You want PDF saving and annotation
- You have ample server resources (4+ GB RAM)
- You’re comfortable with community-maintained software
Final Verdict
For most self-hosters, Wallabag is the better choice. It does one thing well — saving and reading articles later — with a battle-tested codebase, simple deployment, and low resource requirements. The lack of highlights and annotations is its main limitation, but the trade-off is stability and simplicity.
Omnivore is objectively more feature-rich, but the deployment complexity (9+ containers, 3 subdomains), lack of pinned Docker tags, and uncertain long-term maintenance make it a harder recommendation. If Omnivore’s unique features (highlights, newsletter ingestion, Obsidian/Logseq plugins) are essential to your workflow, it’s worth the setup effort — just plan for the possibility that you may need to migrate later if community maintenance stalls.
For a middle ground, consider Hoarder — it offers AI-powered tagging and a modern UI with a simpler stack than Omnivore, or Linkding for pure bookmarking with minimal overhead.
Related
Get self-hosting tips in your inbox
Get the Docker Compose configs, hardware picks, and setup shortcuts we don't put in articles. Weekly. No spam.
Comments