A popular Instapaper feature may soon start costing Kindle users

Instapaper users may soon need to pay extra to keep sending saved articles directly to their Kindle devices. Users report receiving an email from Instapaper announcing that its Send to Kindle feature will become exclusive to the service’s Premium subscription starting February 19.

News of the update also made its way to Reddit, where an Instapaper representative also joined the discussion to offer additional context around the decision. According to the company, the move is tied to the ongoing costs of maintaining Kindle delivery.

“Generating Kindle digests is fairly resource intensive for us. It involves parsing a bunch of articles, downloading the images for each article, writing everything to disk, creating an ePub file, and emailing it to your Kindle email address,” the moderator wrote.

For some readers, Send to Kindle is a core part of the Instapaper experience, particularly for those who prefer reading long-form articles on an E-Ink device. The feature has long provided a relatively seamless way to move saved reads onto a Kindle without manual downloads or browser-based workarounds. While Instapaper does offer a paid tier with additional perks, Send to Kindle has historically been available to free users, making the upcoming restriction a notable shift.

In the same thread, one Reddit user asked whether the change would also affect Kobo devices, a popular Kindle alternative. The moderator said the update applies specifically to Kindle delivery, adding that Kobo integration relies on Instapaper’s API and does not carry the same resource demands — meaning it will remain free.

As of now, Instapaper hasn’t published a formal blog post or help-center update confirming the change, but the consistency between user emails and the company’s direct Reddit response suggests the update is imminent. Instapaper Premium currently costs $5.99 per month or $59.99 per year. The subscription includes additional features like full-text search, unlimited notes, and a permanent archive, plus a handful of additional tools.