tinykoitinykoi vs Karakeep: two takes on keeping everything
· Comparisons · 4 min read
In tinykoi vs Karakeep, both aim to keep everything you save, and both archive pages. The practical differences are cost structure and control. Karakeep is free to self-host and has a much larger Pro storage allowance, while tinykoi's free hosted plan has no bookmark cap and includes full-text search.
Karakeep details come from its pricing page, docs and repository, and were checked in October 2026. Where its docs do not say, this post makes no claim.
Price and plans
Karakeep's cloud plan is free for 50 bookmarks, with Pro at $4 a month. Self-hosting is free.
tinykoi's free plan has no bookmark cap, and Pro is $3 a month or $24 a year. tinykoi is hosted only.
If you plan to keep a large library and you do not want to run a server, the 50-bookmark limit on Karakeep's free cloud plan means paying quickly. If you do want to run a server, Karakeep's free self-hosting is hard to beat. The decision is mostly about which of those describes you.
tinykoi vs Karakeep in a table
| tinykoi | Karakeep | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Hosted only | Cloud, or self-hosted for free |
| Free tier | No bookmark cap | Cloud: 50 bookmarks |
| Archived copy | Pro | Yes |
| Full-text search | Every plan | Pro |
| Search by meaning | Pro | Experimental |
| AI tagging | Pro | Pro |
| Highlights | Yes, with notes | Yes |
| Files in the reader | PDFs, text and Markdown | PDFs |
| Duplicates | Never saves a second copy | Handled |
| Broken link checks | Pro, about monthly | Failed saves only |
| Trash | Yes, 30 days | No |
| Export | HTML, CSV | Yes |
| Uploads | 100 MB a month Free, 10 GB Pro | 100 MB stored, 50 GB on Pro |
| Largest file | 100 MB Free, 300 MB Pro | 50 MB |
| API | Key-based REST API | Yes |
Where Karakeep is ahead
Self-hosting is free. If you want your own server, your own storage and no subscription, Karakeep gives you that. tinykoi does not.
Archiving is part of the product. Karakeep's docs list archived copies as a feature, with no Pro label. On tinykoi, archived copies are Pro.
Storage on Pro. Karakeep Pro lists 50 GB stored. tinykoi Pro allows 10 GB of uploads a month. For someone keeping a large amount of files, that gap is real, though the two figures count different things (stored against uploaded per month).
Where tinykoi is ahead
Full-text search without paying. tinykoi searches every word of every saved page on the free plan and shows the lines that match. Karakeep lists full-text search as Pro.
A free hosted tier without a cap. tinykoi's free plan has no bookmark limit. You do not hit 50 bookmarks and then face a decision.
A trash. Deleted tinykoi bookmarks wait 30 days. Karakeep has no trash.
Link health that covers rot. Karakeep's checks cover failed saves only. tinykoi on Pro checks your links about once a month and flags the ones that have stopped working, with a link to the archived copy. That is the thing you want when a page dies two years after you saved it.
A higher single-file ceiling on Pro. 300 MB against Karakeep's 50 MB limit.
A cheaper Pro. $3 a month, or $24 a year, against $4 a month.
More file types in the reader. PDFs, text and Markdown files open in tinykoi's reader. Karakeep's reader lists PDFs.
AI features
Both put AI tagging on a paid plan. tinykoi's AI tagging gives new untagged bookmarks up to five tags and reuses the tags you already have. It is off until you turn it on. Search by meaning is also Pro on tinykoi, and Karakeep describes its own as experimental.
On tinykoi, turning AI on sends each bookmark's title, site, excerpt, note, tags and the first 6,000 characters of its text, plus your search queries, to OpenRouter and DeepInfra on zero-data-retention terms. The legal page has the exact wording.
Moving between them
tinykoi's import accepts a Karakeep JSON export. How it behaves:
- Link bookmarks come across with their title, note, tags and saved date.
- Karakeep's manual lists become collections, with nesting kept. Smart lists are not turned into collections.
- A bookmark in several manual lists goes to the first one that resolves, because a tinykoi bookmark sits in one collection.
- Text and file bookmarks have no link, so they are skipped and counted as skipped.
- Favourites are not carried over from a Karakeep export, so re-star the ones that matter.
The import form is in Settings under Import and export, and files can be up to 50 MB. The same page exports your tinykoi library as HTML or CSV.
Who should pick which
Pick Karakeep if:
- You want to self-host and keep everything on your own machine.
- You store a lot of files and want a large allowance.
- You are comfortable maintaining a service.
Pick tinykoi if:
- You want a hosted tool that needs no setup or upkeep.
- You want full-text search and no bookmark cap on the free plan.
- You care about knowing when links break, and want a trash.
One more limit on the tinykoi side: it has no mobile apps and no shared workspaces, and its extension is Chrome only.
For a look at another self-hosted option, see tinykoi vs Linkwarden. For the wider picture, see the Raindrop alternatives roundup, and compare plans on pricing.
Try it before you decide
Import a Karakeep export into a free tinykoi account and search for something half remembered. Start free, no card needed.