Sponge as a Pocket alternative after the shutdown

Pocket no longer exists, so there is no library left to move: the question is where the saves you make from now on should go. Mozilla shut the read-it-later service down on July 8, 2025, kept the export page open until October 8, 2025, and permanently deleted user data after that date. The Pocket API stopped answering the same day the export window closed.

Sponge is one option for those new saves. It is a private library for articles and PDFs: you save a public link or file, keep a readable copy with your highlights and notes, and let your own AI agent research from your saved sources through a scoped HTTP API or a local MCP server.

Sponge is in Preview. You can sign in at sponge.computer and save a link today; Status and limits lists which parts are verified and which are still being checked.

How Pocket’s features map to Sponge

• Saving a link. Pocket kept saved articles and videos for later reading, organized with tags and favorites. Sponge saves the page’s text as a saved copy, the original plus a readable version, and marks it partial when it could capture only part of the page.
• Reading. Pocket was a reading app with a discovery side; its recommendations were curated enough that Mozilla kept the idea in Firefox after the shutdown. Sponge is a private library and reader with no feed and no suggestions. Nothing becomes public unless you publish a document or reviewed research yourself.
• Highlights and notes. Pocket let you highlight saved text, three highlights per article on the free plan and unlimited on Premium, and whatever you marked was lost in the data deletion. In Sponge a highlight anchors to a passage of the saved copy’s text and a note sits beside it, so your marks last as long as your library does.
• Agent access. Pocket had a third-party API, offline since October 8, 2025. Sponge is built for agents. It issues scoped credentials that expire, with library:read, library:write, and document:write. Every write carries an idempotency key, and each document edit must name the revision it builds on, so a stale write cannot overwrite a newer version.
• Export. Pocket’s export page closed on October 8, 2025. Through its API, Sponge exports each saved source as a bundle of the original bytes, the capture records, and your annotations, each file verified by checksum.

Can you still migrate from Pocket?

No. The export window closed on October 8, 2025, and Mozilla deleted the data behind it. You can still move whatever you copied out before then: a downloaded export, links synced into a notes app or RSS reader, and your browser history. Save each link with the loop described in Move a Readwise Reader library to Sponge; only its export step is specific to Reader.

What Sponge does not replace

• Sponge has no discovery feed or recommendations, so nothing replaces Pocket’s “Recommended” section.
• Sponge cannot save a page that needs a sign-in from its URL alone. For sources behind accounts you control, How Sponge uses Ghostget describes the local route.
• Sponge saves public web pages, PDFs with extractable text, and supported text files. You read them in the browser or through the API.

Choosing a replacement

Sponge fits if you miss having one private place for saved pages, highlights, and notes, and you want an agent to work from them. If you miss the recommendation feed or Pocket’s reading apps, Sponge does not replace them; the other comparisons cover reading apps that come closer.