Short answer: Readwise has two plans and no free tier after a 30-day trial. Readwise Lite is $5.59 a month billed yearly and covers highlight review only. The full Readwise plan is $9.99 a month billed yearly ($119.88 a year) or $12.99 month to month, and it adds the Reader app plus exports to Notion and Obsidian. Students and academics get 50% off.
That is the whole price list, and it is refreshingly simple. The harder question is which plan you actually need, and whether you need Readwise at all for what you are trying to do. That depends on one thing: whether the knowledge you want back lives in what you read or in what you wrote.
Readwise pricing for every plan
These are the US prices on Readwise's own pricing page. Yearly billing saves about 24% against paying monthly on the full plan.
| Plan | Billed yearly | Billed monthly | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free trial | $0 for 30 days | $0 for 30 days | Everything, then you pick a plan or stop |
| Readwise Lite | $5.59 a month (about $67 a year) | Not listed | Daily Review by email and app, search across all highlights, sync from every source, tags and notes |
| Readwise (full) | $9.99 a month ($119.88 a year) | $12.99 a month | Everything in Lite, the Reader app, exports to Notion, Obsidian and more, early access and a price locked for life |
| Academic discount | 50% off any plan | 50% off any plan | Requested by email with proof of academic status |
Readwise also lists discounts for teachers, nonprofits, military and first responders, again by email. One catch: discounts cannot be applied to subscriptions started through the iOS app, so if you qualify, subscribe on the web. Annual subscribers get a reminder email a week before renewal, which is a nice touch if you are unsure whether you will keep it.
How much is Readwise Reader?
There is no separate Reader subscription. Reader, the read-later app that handles articles, PDFs, EPUBs, newsletters and RSS feeds, comes only with the full Readwise plan at $9.99 a month billed yearly or $12.99 monthly. Lite does not include it. If Reader is the main reason you are paying, you are on the full plan by definition.
Readwise Lite vs full, which plan to pick
The split is cleaner than it looks. Lite is for people who already read somewhere else, Kindle, Apple Books, Instapaper, and only want their highlights collected and resurfaced. The full plan is for people who want Readwise to be the place they read, and for anyone who wants highlights to land in Obsidian or Notion automatically.
- Pick Lite if you read mostly on a Kindle and the Daily Review email is the feature you love.
- Pick the full plan if you want the Reader app, or if your notes live in Obsidian or Notion and you want highlights exported there. Export is listed only on the full plan.
- Pay monthly for one month first if you are coming off the trial unsure. $12.99 once is cheaper than committing $119.88 to a habit you might not keep.
Does Readwise have AI, and does it cost extra?
Yes, and it is included. Reader's AI assistant, Ghostreader, summarizes, defines and answers questions about what you are reading. Since Readwise's August 2026 update it can also chat across your entire Reader library rather than one document at a time, with answers that link to the cited text, and outside AI agents can reach your library through Readwise's MCP server.
You can optionally plug in your own OpenAI API key to pick the model Ghostreader uses. That is a separate pay-as-you-go bill from OpenAI, and a ChatGPT Plus subscription does not cover it, because Plus does not include API access. Most people never need to do this.
Is Readwise worth the money?
For heavy readers, yes, and the recent AI update makes the full plan better value than it was a year ago. If you highlight a lot of books and articles and you want those ideas to come back to you, $120 a year is a fair price for a tool that does it well and exports cleanly to your notes app.
It is a weaker buy in three cases:
- You highlight little. The Daily Review is only as good as the pile of highlights behind it. A handful a month does not justify a yearly plan.
- You only want export. If Obsidian is your real home, check what Obsidian itself costs first. The app is free, and our breakdown of Obsidian Sync pricing shows the add-ons that matter.
- What you need back is your own work. Readwise is built around reading. Your proposals, client reports, contracts, meeting notes and old memos are not things you "read later". They are what you produced, and that is a different job.
When a Readwise subscription is the wrong fix
A lot of people land on Readwise because they feel they are losing what they know. Then they discover that the knowledge they keep hunting for is not in a book highlight. It is in a PDF they wrote in 2023, a spreadsheet from a client, a scanned page of handwritten notes, a transcript of a talk they gave.
Reader can hold PDFs, but it treats them as documents to read and annotate. If what you actually want is to ask "what did I recommend to the last three clients about pricing?" and get an answer drawn only from your own files, you need a tool that starts from your documents rather than your reading queue.
That is what MentalClone does. You upload PDFs, Word files, spreadsheets, text files and photographed pages, and it answers questions only from them, in the first person and in your register, naming the documents it used. When your files do not cover a question, it says so instead of guessing. It is the same idea as an AI second brain, applied to what you wrote rather than what you saved from other people. You can try it with three questions at the top of this page, without an account.
Readwise compared with other paid options
These are the tools people most often weigh against Readwise when the real goal is getting knowledge back out, with list prices from each vendor.
| Tool | Price | Built around | Answers questions across your files |
|---|---|---|---|
| Readwise (full) | $9.99 a month yearly, $12.99 monthly | Highlights and a read-later app | Yes, across your Reader library, with citations |
| Readwise Lite | $5.59 a month yearly | Highlight review | No Reader library to chat with |
| NotebookLM (Gemini Notebook) | Free tier. Paid tiers bundled with Google AI Pro from $19.99 a month | Notebooks of sources you add | Yes, inside one notebook at a time |
| Notion AI | Full AI on Business, $20 a seat a month yearly | A team workspace and wiki | Yes, over your workspace |
| MentalClone | 79 PLN a month (about $21) or 474 PLN a year (about $11 a month) | Your own documents, notes and transcripts | Yes, only from your files, in your voice |
If you are weighing the Google option, our guide to NotebookLM pricing and limits covers the per-notebook source caps. For a wider view of apps that organize and answer from what you know, see the personal knowledge management app comparison.
A common split that works
Plenty of people keep both kinds of tool, because they do different jobs. Readwise handles the reading side: books, articles, newsletters, the ideas of other people you want to remember. A document-first tool handles the output side: everything you have written and delivered, which you want to reuse without starting from a blank page.
Writers who publish from their reading often add a third step. Once a newsletter issue is written, a tool that can turn one post into versions for every channel saves re-editing the same idea for LinkedIn, X and email. None of these replaces the others, and none needs to.
Readwise pricing questions
How much does Readwise cost per month?
The full Readwise plan costs $9.99 a month billed yearly, which is $119.88 a year, or $12.99 if you pay month to month. Readwise Lite costs $5.59 a month billed yearly and covers highlight review without the Reader app. Every account starts with a 30-day free trial.
Is Readwise free?
Only for the first 30 days. There is no free plan after the trial ends, so you either subscribe to Lite or the full plan or stop using it. Referring a friend during the trial extends it by another 30 days per referral.
Is Readwise Reader included in Readwise?
Yes, but only on the full plan. Reader comes bundled with the $9.99 a month (billed yearly) or $12.99 monthly subscription. Readwise Lite does not include Reader, only highlight syncing, search, tags and the Daily Review.
Does Readwise offer a student discount?
Yes. Students and other members of academia get 50% off any plan. You email Readwise with proof, such as a student ID or an academic email address. The discount cannot be applied to subscriptions started through the iOS app, so subscribe on the web.
Is Readwise worth it compared with NotebookLM?
They solve different problems. Readwise collects and resurfaces highlights from everything you read and lets you chat across your Reader library. NotebookLM answers questions over a set of sources you drop into one notebook. If your goal is questions over your own work files, a document-first tool fits better than either.
Can I export my Readwise highlights to Obsidian or Notion?
Yes, on the full plan. Export to Notion, Obsidian and other apps is listed as a full plan feature and is not included in Readwise Lite. If export is the only reason you subscribe, compare that cost with what your notes app already offers.