Matter vs Instapaper

What reviewers actually said

Built only from these 120 real reviews (foreign ones translated). Superscripts jump to the quote here. Apple has no per-review links, so [ref] opens that app's reviews on the App Store.

1. [R3] Matter 3/5 · US Great concept, mediocre execution: I love the concept of the app, but it falls far short of being your go-to reading app. It’s very difficult to get PDFs or text emails into the app. Sometimes the emails are in your queue quickly, and sometimes they don’t show up at all. The browser extension sometimes pulls in the article, and sometimes it only creates a browser link, which is no better than a
2. [R10] Matter 1/5 · US Tried matter, but the app is a waste of time.: It downloads most webpages fine, but the way it formats them is sometimes obnoxious and counterintuitive. I looked past it because they claim in multiple places the app can download PDFs and easily convert them for reading with all the features they advertise. I tried 4 PDFs and only one worked. I tried going premium (used the free trial) and same pro
3. [R16] Matter 2/5 · US sometimes it works: maybe it will save an article, but don't rely on it to do so
4. [R25] Matter 1/5 · US I’ve lost all my data after update: Will never use it again. My reading list disappeared after update.
5. [R2] Matter 5/5 · US Essential: I’m a longtime read-later app user, from Feedly to Reeder to Instapaper and beyond. I’ve been using matter since it launched a few years ago, and it’s surpassed them all. I love its ability to redirect newletters so my mailbox stays clean. It allows me to save, favorite, and highlight my favorite articles and newsletters. Its AI “readers” are the most natural and “listenable” I’ve exper
6. [R5] Matter 5/5 · US Simple, powerful, reading queue: Matter comes to fill the gap after Pocket closed down, and I love its simplicity and useful features. Finding things to read in the discover or related articles section is nice. You can also add newsletters or rss feeds. Adding things to read later is simple as using the share sheet anywhere on iOS or via browser extensions for other devices. With premium you get
7. [R11] Matter 5/5 · US Best way to convert content to audio: Great product that allows me to save news articles from multiple sources, and provide text to voice playback from a saved queue. Saving works great with paywalled articles, but the caveat is that if you are on ios, the paywalled article must be brought up in Safari to allow the full article to have text to voice playback. For desktop systems, the Chrome exte
8. [R14] Matter 5/5 · US Better than Readwise: For my use case (listening to articles), this is so much better than readwise reader. Rarely it gets messed up on the TTS.
9. [R20] Matter 5/5 · US love it: makes it realy easy and intuitive to have all my newsletters in one spot. reduces clutter and actually makes me wanna read them
10. [R51] Matter 3/5 · US RSS is a major flaw: I love so much about this app but the rss feature is almost completely useless. I have a standard rss reader app running simultaneously and it’s shows 18 articles available from my feeds for today. Matter shows two. Two! Also it says it can’t find feeds for a few urls (which work fine I every other app.) I wish I had known this before paying $60/year. (Good luck trying to f
11. [R4] Matter 2/5 · US Can use with only one device: I tried to get it in mt phone. But my email confirmation never arrives. I wrote the company - check spam/junk, which I of course had done. No other help available I gave up and deleted it. After several emails back and forth, they never did anything with the information I gave them April Update I thought I’d give them another chance. Still no email confirmation rec
12. [R42] Matter 3/5 · US Good app but some bugs to fix: So far I really like this compared to Pocket but there are some bugs that are pretty annoying. Right now I’m trying to sign in on the iOS app and the link sent to my email address just doesn’t work. I click it and get to a screen where it says “Click here to complete your login” with a big blue “Login to Matter” button that is completely unresponsive to clicks lol.
13. [R1] Matter 1/5 · US Better Than Instapaper, Not: Hi folks, I can’t recommend this app. Downloaded it got a very slick email from the CEO extolling its wonderful virtues. Then a very clever way to upgrade a pro trial. Well, their trial didn’t work so well. And Matter didn’t perform any better than Instapaper frequently coming up with a pathetic excuse that it couldn’t scrape articles from Apple News. Overpriced and
14. [R6] Matter 3/5 · US Good App, Bad Support: I like what this app has to offer, but I don’t have anything nice to say about the support. I’ve opened multiple tickets with the support team via the Slack channel available via the app and I’ve heard nothing in weeks.
15. [R9] Matter 3/5 · US Let down by unresponsive Customer Support (update): They finally responded. It seems you need to write a bad review for the to pay attention which is a shame. New version is nice, and Matter is probably still the best app to organize your reading, but some key features have gone for no good reason (they confirmed it). A good example is the ability for bulk delete both in your inbox and archive.
16. [R13] Matter 1/5 · US Used to Love…: I used this app to aggregate articles into a single file to send to my Kindle. Other apps allow single article send and it is very messy. I was enjoying the app; then the update happened. I lost the ability to do the only thing I used the app for. I contacted the company several times but never received a reply. I have Readwise, which is incredibly responsive. Rating a 1 because I c
17. [R7] Matter 1/5 · US Beware Predatory Subscription Tactics: App is okay, however, upon opening it, I was confronted with a subscription offer that promised a trial. Unfortunately, I did not receive a trial, and $14.99 was deducted from my account. Within 5 minutes, I attempted to request a refund from Apple, I was informed that it was not eligible. I cannot endorse any application that conducts business in this manner
18. [R26] Matter 5/5 · US Beautiful and useful app: I enjoy it so much.
19. [R27] Matter 3/5 · US There is no free plan: After the 7-day free trial the options are: $79.99/year $14.99/month It’s a pretty ok app, but I don’t like the lack of transparency or documentation.
20. [R28] Matter 1/5 · US Description is a lie: “Matter offers a free service and a paid service.” No, only a paid service.
21. [R40] Matter 1/5 · US No free option, $80 read it later app: Really annoyed by these psychological and statistically optimal onboarding procedures that ask you a million questions and make you create an account before they reveal that there is only a limited 7 day trial before you’re paying. I’m so over wasting my time with these apps that are so confident in themselves that they think there’s no way you’re not going t
22. [R49] Matter 1/5 · US Description does not match - Not free: Disappointed that they say you can either have a free subscription or a premium subscription. It is supposed free for 7 days before you are charged a monthly service. Sorry. Not for me. Either have a free subscription or be open and honest upfront that it is free for 7 days but then you will be charged. I could have not wasted my time.
23. [R63] Instapaper 3/5 · US TTS needs to improve significantly: Tried it, didn’t keep it. I liked the UI and had no initial pains with saving from my usual spots (Apple News, web articles, emails). I REALLY didn’t like the TTS voices compared to those of Reader by Readwise (which admittedly is far more expensive). For me the TTS experience is crucial, so until this app’s voices no longer sound like 2014 TTS robots, I won’t b
24. [R69] Instapaper 3/5 · US More expensive with minimal improvement: It has gotten better and the minimalist UI is still great. But with its price increase, it could have done much more than simply offer tags and AI summaries. Why have they never invested in better TTS licensing or voice controls? It’s remained minimal, with no effort for more than a decade to improve the audio reading experience. The app could improve the
25. [R78] Instapaper 3/5 · US Good, but Text-to-speech Underwhelming: I’ve been using app for many years, and I really enjoy it. I was excited to try out the text to speech feature so I upgraded to pro. But I was quite underwhelmed as it is not the current Siri voice, but a very dated digitized sound that is not enjoyable to listen to. Hope the developers update this soon!
26. [R102] Instapaper 3/5 · US Used to be great: The update in November 2023 ruined Instapaper for those of us who use text to speech features in the app OR through iPhone or iPad OS. Used to be a five star app but is one star at the moment.
27. [R89] Instapaper 5/5 · US Avoids Pay Walls: Excellent tool for storing links to curated articles from your browse home page. This app allows you past the pay wall of the source.