When comparing Instapaper vs xbrowsersync, the Slant community recommends xbrowsersync for most people. In the question“What are the best ways to organize bookmarks?” xbrowsersync is ranked 3rd while Instapaper is ranked 12th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Annotation tools
Allows leaving notes attached to articles and highlighting certain part of the text. Free version of the app is limited to 5 highlights a month.
Pro Excellent typography choices
Instapaper allows you to choose from 14 different fonts, some of which have been designed specifically for the application. You can manually adjust spacing between lines, padding around text and font size to fit your preferences.
Pro Allows listening to articles
Instapaper comes with a build in text-to-speech feature that will read out loud articles. Premium version of the app allows creating playlists.
Pro Articles can be emailed to Instapaper
You can add articles to Instapaper by sending them to a unique email address associated with your account.
Pro Pagination
Allows for pagination, not just scrolling.
Pro Awesome offline mode
Pro Can look up words in a dictionary and Wikipedia
Pro Can be set to switch to dark mode based on time of day
Instapaper includes a dark theme and allows switching to it after a set period in time or gradually over the course of the day.
Pro Rarely seen organization options
In addition to allowing you to sort articles by when you saved them, you can also order articles by length or read progress and popularity.
Pro Free archiving of deleted webpages
In Pocket, this is a paid function - but Instapaper provides this for free! If a webpage is deleted, it remains in your Instapaper and they even archive pictures of the articles.
Pro Can playback inline video
Instapaper will play videos from YouTube, Vimeo and other sources that are embedded in articles, but you have to be online for playback to work.
Pro Has a font designed for readers with Dyslexia
Instapaper includes Dyslexie a font that helps people with reading problems understand the text better.
Pro Includes optional social features
If you set your Instapaper profile to be public, your friends will be able to see articles you've liked.
Pro Use this extension on all majorly used browsers: Chrome (and most up to date 'chromies' as well as Firefox and Android
Pro Anonymous
No sign up required and no personal data is collected.
Pro Encrypts your bookmarks securley with a method you can check for yourself
Pro Developer seems to be actively developing the app
See here.
Pro It is free and the developer announces that it will stay this way, neither are there any ads involved
Pro xBrowserSync adds descriptions and tags to new bookmarks automatically.
Speeding up workflow cataloging important meta-data automatically.
Pro Know your way around docker? xBrowserSync is easily self hostable.
Not only will it benefit the people who set up docker containers, if opened to the public, even more people will be able to quickly get to know xBrowserSync.
See here.
Cons
Con Became a paid service again
Most functions, like search, became premium.
Con Basic search not free
Basic search for link title or website too is part of the premium.
Con Embedded images and videos are sometimes ignored
Instapaper sometimes saves articles without images or videos.
Con Only supports English
It only supports English, and not Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages.
Con Tags not implemented
Con Search functions return random articles
The search function is very slow and does not provide accurate results. The user can not filter or reorder the search results, or search the archive or annotated articles.
Con No iOS support
It doesn't support anymore iOS.
Con Does not sync passwords
If youre afraid due to the lack of password syncing with xbrowser, this problem is easily fixable by using myki password manager. It supports all major operating systems with secure features that work alongside xbrowsersync perfectly. myki is available as a chrome extension, and for android, iphone, mac, windows, and more!
Con Doesn't support new Firefox for Android
Maybe not the developer's fault but since using Firefox as main browser, the cross platform niche can't be satisfied. Will be looking to jump ship once the extension is added to the very limited pool Firefox Android currently has.