Highlight web pages and YouTube videos with AI summaries.
Productivity
Glasp is a social web highlighter that has quietly become one of the most interesting knowledge tools on the market by refusing to fit into any of the standard categories. It is not a read-later app like Readwise Reader. It is not an AI research assistant like Liner AI or Perplexity. It is not a note-taking app like Notion AI. What Glasp is, cleanly stated, is a place where you highlight web pages and YouTube videos and — this is the part that changes the tool — those highlights are public by default, discoverable to other Glasp users, and increasingly enriched with AI summaries and study aids.
The one-line positioning: Glasp is the highlighter for readers who want their notes to be part of a public knowledge commons, not just a private archive. Its distinctive value is the social layer. Follow other people who highlight in your areas of interest and see their highlights on the same articles you read. Discover new sources through what interesting people are marking as important. Publish your own highlight collections as a de facto learning-in-public profile. This is a different pitch from every other tool in the category.
The tool is free. That is not a limited free tier — the whole thing is free, with AI features included, and the business model is a mix of enterprise partnerships and eventual paid pro features that have not fully rolled out as of 2026. Because it is free, and because the social layer creates genuine network effects, Glasp has attracted a specific kind of user: knowledge workers, indie researchers, students, and lifelong learners who treat reading as a public practice rather than a private one.
Glasp is not the tool for every use case. If your reading is sensitive, confidential, or you simply want a private archive, the public-by-default posture is either a burden or a dealbreaker. If your research is a serious multi-document workflow, Humata and Liner AI do more. But for the specific job of "I want to highlight interesting things I read, see what other smart people are highlighting, and get AI-assisted summaries of long content," Glasp does something genuinely differentiated — and it does it for free.
Glasp's feature set has widened significantly since its launch as a pure highlighter, and in 2026 it sits somewhere between a social bookmarking tool and a lightweight AI research assistant.
Web highlighting via browser extension. Highlight any passage on any web page in four colors, add optional notes, and every highlight is saved to your Glasp profile with the source URL and timestamp. The extension is fast, unobtrusive, and works on essentially every page.
YouTube transcript highlighting. Highlight specific passages of a YouTube video's transcript with one click, and Glasp jumps to that timestamp when you revisit. Combined with the AI summary feature, this makes Glasp one of the best tools on the market for taking notes on long-form YouTube content — podcasts, lectures, video essays.
AI YouTube summaries. Generate a structured summary of any YouTube video — key points, timestamps, main arguments — from the transcript. Comparable in shape to Eightify but built into a tool you are already using for highlighting.
AI article summaries. Same feature for web articles. Generate a summary, extract key points, or ask questions of the article. Not as feature-rich as a dedicated tool like ChatPDF, but useful for quick article triage.
Public profile with highlight feed. Every user has a public page at glasp.co/@username showing their recent highlights. This is the social layer's foundation — you can be discovered, and you can discover others.
Follow other users. Follow highlighters in your areas of interest and see their new highlights in a feed. Some Glasp users have thousands of followers; a highlight from a well-known knowledge worker becomes a mini-endorsement.
Discover feed. Browse trending highlights, articles, and topics across the Glasp community. This is the feature that turns Glasp from a personal tool into a discovery engine.
Export options. Every highlight can be exported as markdown, sent to Notion, Notion AI, Roam, Obsidian, Readwise, or downloaded as CSV. Data portability is treated as a right, not a paywall.
AI clone. A newer feature that trains a personalized AI assistant on your highlights and lets you (and optionally others) ask questions of it. Interesting in principle, mixed in execution — quality depends heavily on how many highlights you have accumulated.
Study kits. Auto-generated study guides, flashcards, and quizzes from your highlights on a given topic. Aimed at students, useful for lifelong learners.
Book collections. Curated public reading lists of highlights across multiple sources on a theme. Turn a research trail into a shareable resource.
Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge support. Broadest browser coverage in the highlighter category. Mobile support is via web app plus limited iOS extension; not as strong as Liner's mobile app.
Glasp is free. This is unusual enough in the 2026 AI tool landscape to require its own explanation.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Full product — highlighting, AI summaries, social features, exports, study kits |
| Pro (rolling out) | Announced but not fully launched | Additional AI features, priority support, private highlights |
The free tier is not a demo. It is the actual product, with the actual AI features enabled, and there is no meter that runs out mid-workflow. The company has spent years signaling that a Pro tier is coming — with private highlights as the flagship differentiator — but as of 2026 the full paid product remains partially rolled out.
The revenue model behind the free tier is a mix of educational partnerships, enterprise licensing of the discover-feed technology, and eventual Pro conversion of power users. Whether this is a sustainable business is a fair question — and one that a careful user should factor in. Free forever is a bold promise; free until further notice is more honest. Export your highlights regularly and treat the tool as complementary rather than critical to your research infrastructure.
The honest read: Glasp being free changes the "should I try this" math meaningfully. There is no subscription decision, no trial to abandon before it converts, no risk beyond time. For a solo user who already reads on the web and would like to highlight and take AI-assisted notes, trying Glasp costs nothing. That is not marketing — that is the actual price.
Pros
Cons
Lifelong learners building a public reading practice. People who take reading seriously as an ongoing practice — engineers reading essays, writers reading fiction, researchers reading across disciplines — and who see value in a public record of what they have engaged with. Glasp is one of the few tools designed for this posture.
Students taking notes on YouTube lectures and podcasts. The transcript highlighting plus AI summary workflow is genuinely productive for university courses on YouTube, MOOCs, and educational podcasts. This is one of the strongest uses of the tool.
Content creators researching topics in public. Bloggers, essayists, and video creators who want their research trail to be visible to their audience. A Glasp profile becomes a de facto "here is what I have been reading" companion to a substack or newsletter.
Researchers who want to discover new sources through what others are highlighting. The discover feed is real. Following a few well-chosen highlighters in your field surfaces papers, essays, and articles you would not have found through Google Scholar or Twitter.
Language learners reading foreign-language content. Highlight passages you find difficult, come back to review them, generate summaries in your native language. A workflow that fits Glasp well and is not deeply supported elsewhere.
Anyone who reads a lot on the web and wants a personal archive of what they have thought was important. This is the base use case — the personal highlight archive — and Glasp does it well even if you never engage with the social layer.
Bad fit. Anyone with sensitive research needs — legal, medical, corporate strategy — where public highlights would be inappropriate. Anyone who wants a serious multi-document research workspace — Humata is the pick. Anyone who wants a proper knowledge management system — Notion AI or Obsidian do more.
Glasp's competitive landscape spans social bookmarking tools, highlighter tools, and AI research assistants, with no single tool doing everything Glasp does.
Liner AI — the AI-first highlighter competitor. Liner has stronger AI features and better mobile apps but is not social by default. If AI research is your priority and privacy matters, Liner wins. If discovery and social layer matter, Glasp wins.
Readwise Reader — the read-later and highlight competitor. Reader has stronger inbox management, better mobile UX, and deeper integration with existing highlight sources (Kindle, Instapaper). Paid subscription. Different job — Reader is for consuming, Glasp is for consuming and sharing.
Hypothesis — the academic-focused open-source social highlighter. Similar public-annotation model to Glasp but focused on academic use. Free and open source. If your work is scholarly, worth comparing.
Instapaper and Pocket — the classic read-later tools. Neither is social, neither has serious AI, both are still functional. If you want a clean read-later inbox and nothing else, these are simpler.
Perplexity — different category, but often the alternative for people who thought they wanted a highlighter and actually want an AI research assistant. Perplexity does not highlight; it answers questions.
Notion AI — different category, but relevant as the workspace where many Glasp users export their highlights. Complementary rather than competitive.
Eightify — the YouTube-summary-specific tool. Overlaps with Glasp on one specific workflow and is more focused there. Glasp is broader; Eightify is narrower and slightly deeper on YouTube.
Twitter/X bookmarks and Substack Reads — informal social highlighting practices that some Glasp users adopt in parallel. Not real competitors, but real substitutes for the "public reading" use case.
Go to glasp.co and sign up with Google. Signup is fast, and the tool wants you highlighting within a few minutes.
Install the browser extension for your browser of choice. Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge are all supported. Without the extension, you have a viewer for other people's highlights, not a tool for your own.
Highlight a real article. Something you were going to read anyway — not a demo. Pick a passage that struck you and add a note explaining why. This is the workflow that makes Glasp valuable; without the note-adding habit, you have a bookmark tool.
Try the YouTube transcript feature on a video you would watch anyway. A lecture, a podcast, or an interview. Highlight the useful passages and generate an AI summary at the end. This is one of Glasp's sharpest workflows and worth testing on your own material.
Follow three or four Glasp users in your interest area. Search the discover feed for topics you care about and follow the highlighters whose recent picks look interesting. This is what makes the social layer worthwhile.
Export your highlights weekly to a private tool. Notion, Obsidian, or plain markdown. Even if Glasp is free forever, having your knowledge portable is good hygiene. The export is easy; use it.
Give it two weeks before deciding. Like any personal knowledge tool, Glasp compounds. The discover feed gets better as you follow more people; the highlight library gets more useful as it grows. Judging on day three is unfair.
Is Glasp really free? Yes, the current product is free with no meter. A Pro tier has been announced for private highlights and additional features but is not fully rolled out. Treat "free forever" as a promise, not a guarantee — and export your highlights regularly regardless.
Are all my highlights public? Yes, by default. This is the whole model. If your reading is sensitive, this is either a dealbreaker or a reason to be selective about what you highlight in Glasp.
Which AI models does Glasp use? Glasp routes across frontier models for its summary and study features. Model versions are not exposed to users. Quality has improved consistently over 2024-2026.
Can I export my highlights? Yes — to Notion, Roam, Obsidian, Readwise, CSV, or markdown. Full export is supported and easy. Data portability is a core commitment.
Does Glasp work on YouTube? Yes — the YouTube transcript highlighter is one of the tool's strongest features. Highlight passages of a video's transcript, jump back to those timestamps, and generate AI summaries of long videos.
Is there a mobile app? There is a mobile web experience and limited iOS support, but the tool is best on desktop with the browser extension. Mobile is not the reason to be here.
How is Glasp's community? Small but engaged. Not Twitter-sized. Real for niche knowledge topics — indie hackers, product design, philosophy, machine learning — and thinner for broader interests.
Should I trust Glasp with my knowledge base? As a complement to a private tool like Notion or Obsidian, yes. As the sole home of your intellectual life, no — no free product should be that. Export regularly.
Glasp is the right tool for readers who want their reading to be a public, social practice and wrong for readers who want a private archive. That is a real split, and it is the split that determines whether Glasp will earn a place in your workflow or not. There is no middle ground — the public-by-default posture is either the point or the problem.
For the users Glasp fits, the tool is one of the sharpest in the category. The YouTube transcript highlighting plus AI summary workflow is genuinely productive. The social layer, small as it is, produces real discovery value. The export options make Glasp a safe complement to any private knowledge base. And the price — actually free, not "free tier" — makes the decision to try it essentially costless. In 2026, that is a rare combination.
The caveats are honest. Glasp is not the deepest AI tool in the category — Humata and Liner AI both do more research-focused work. It is not a workspace — Notion AI and Obsidian do more organization. It is not a mobile-first tool — the desktop extension is the whole experience. And the business model behind a genuinely free product with real AI features is a fair question that a careful user should factor in. Export your highlights, keep your knowledge portable, and treat Glasp as one tool in a stack rather than the whole stack.
Start at glasp.co, install the extension, and highlight something real. If the social layer sparks discovery and the YouTube workflow improves how you take notes on video content, you have found a useful tool that costs nothing. If it does not, you have lost nothing but a few minutes of browser extension setup. That is one of the cleanest evaluation propositions in the AI tool market — and, for a specific kind of reader, one of the more rewarding.