01
Pages, not intentions
Progress is a page number you typed, so “nearly finished” has to mean something. Finishing a book is what happens when the number reaches the last page.
Free forever · no card
Track pages, not intentions.
Marginalia is a shelf you and your team actually keep. Type the page you stopped on, leave the note you argued with, and publish only the books worth sending to someone.
No card · free plan is permanent · your notes stay yours
- Free books, forever
- 0Free books, forever
- Seats on a team shelf
- 0Seats on a team shelf
- Colour in the interface
- 0Colour in the interface
- Notes kept private
- 0%Notes kept private
Every number on this row is enforced by the backend rather than by a hidden button — the free ceiling, the seat count, and the rule that a margin note never leaves its workspace.
How it works
Four steps, and none of them is a streak.
Scroll the four and watch the number change. There is no fifth step, no onboarding checklist, and nothing to configure before the first book goes on.
01 · Open a workspace
A workspace is one shelf. Keep the work reading apart from the home reading, or start a shared one and invite the team into it.
02 · Add the book that is actually open
Title, author, page count. The page count is the only number that matters, because it is the one that turns intention into a percentage.
03 · Move the bookmark, leave a note
Type the page you stopped on. Reaching the last page finishes the book on its own — status is a consequence of reading, not a second thing to remember.
04 · Publish the ones worth arguing about
Any book can get its own public page at a link you control. Your margin notes never go with it, and retracting the link kills the page instantly.
What it does
A shelf, a bookmark, and somewhere to put the argument.
Five things, done properly. No streaks to protect, no badges to collect, and no feed of what everybody else is reading.
02
Margin notes
Quote the sentence that stopped you, with the page beside it. Notes stay inside the workspace and are never published with a shared book.
03
One shelf, many readers
On the Team plan everyone reads from the same shelf and sees each other's marginalia. Owners and admins moderate; members keep their own books.
04
Workspace isolation
Every read and every write resolves your membership first. There is no query in the backend that can return a row from a shelf you are not seated on.
05
Public book pages
A published book gets a real page with real metadata — a title tag, a description, an OG card — so a link sent to a friend looks like something.
Team shelf
One shelf, and everyone can see the page numbers.
On the Team plan a workspace seats up to twelve readers on the same shelf. Everyone sees what everyone else is reading, where they got to, and what they wrote in the margin.
- Members keep their own books; owners and admins can edit anyone's.
- Margin notes are shared inside the workspace and never outside it.
- Pending invitations count against the seat limit, so a shelf cannot oversubscribe itself.
- Leaving a workspace takes your seat back without touching the books.
Design team · this week
Idris reached page 96
Seeing Like a State
One book
From the shelf to somebody else's inbox.
Four moments in the life of a single book. Every one of them is a rule the backend enforces on every request, not a promise this page is making on its behalf.
Day one
It lands on a shelf, and the shelf has an owner
Title, author, page count. The book belongs to one workspace from the moment it exists, and every read and write against it re-checks that membership on the server — not in the browser, and not once at login.
requireBookAccess(ctx, bookId) — resolves the book's own workspace, then your seat in it
Every session
The bookmark moves, and nothing else has to
Type the page you stopped on. That is the entire interaction. Reaching the last page finishes the book on its own, because status is a consequence of reading rather than a second thing to remember.
96 / 445 · 22% · finished at 445 without a second click
When it earns it
It gets a page of its own
Any book can be published to a link you control. The page carries the title, the author, where you got to and your one-line summary. Your margin notes are not on it, because they were never part of what publishing means here.
marginalia.app/s/qk3xr9vn2mp7ta
The moment you change your mind
The link stops working
Retracting is one click and it is immediate — the public query re-checks the plan and the share flag on every request, so a link that was revoked is a link that is dead, not a link that is cached.
unshare(bookId) — the row loses its shareId, and the URL 404s on the next load
Pricing
Free is the plan, not the trial.
The Free plan has no expiry, no card and no countdown: twelve books, kept forever. Reader lifts the ceiling and turns on public links. Team puts up to twelve people on one shelf. Subscribe the day the shelf outgrows the plan — not before.
Free
$0/ forever
A private shelf, for one reader, with no expiry date on it.
- 12 books
- 1 reader
- Public book links
- Shared team shelf
- Page-level progress and finish dates
- 20 margin notes per book
- One private workspace
Reader
Most chosen$6/ per month
Unlimited books, and a public link for the ones worth arguing about.
- Unlimited books
- 1 reader
- Public book links
- Shared team shelf
- 500 margin notes per book
- Reading stats across the whole shelf
- Retract any link in one click
Team
$18/ per month
One shelf the whole team reads from, and shares from.
- Unlimited books
- Up to 12 readers
- Public book links
- Shared team shelf
- Everything in Reader
- Publish on behalf of the team
- Roles: owners, admins and members
- Everyone's margin notes, in one place
Checkout is live: choosing a paid plan opens Stripe's hosted page, and the entitlement is flipped by the webhook rather than by the success redirect. Cancelling in Stripe's portal drops the workspace back to Free with everything it already has intact.
Compare
What actually differs.
Every row below is a rule the backend enforces, not a bullet this page invented. The unit test beside src/lib/plans.ts fails the build if the two ever disagree.
| Capability | Free$0 | Reader$6 | Team$18 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Books on the shelf | 12 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Readers in the workspace | 1 | 1 | 12 |
| Margin notes per book | 20 | 500 | 500 |
| Page-level progress | Included | Included | Included |
| Finish dates and reading stats | Included | Included | Included |
| Publish a book to a public link | Not included | Included | Included |
| Publish on behalf of the team | Not included | Not included | Included |
| One shelf, many readers | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Roles: owner, admin, member | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Margin notes stay private | Included | Included | Included |
Readers
What people say once the shelf is a habit.
Three of them, dealt one at a time. A wall of testimonials gets skimmed; a single card gets read — and none of these is about the software being delightful.
I have abandoned four reading apps because they wanted to be a social network. This one wanted to be a shelf, which is the thing I actually needed.
Priya Raman
Staff engineer
We run a book club across three time zones. One shared shelf and a page number each has replaced an entire spreadsheet and most of the arguing.
Tomas Berg
Engineering manager
The page-number thing is quietly brutal. You cannot tell yourself you are almost done with a book when the app knows you are on page 40.
Lena Ortiz
Researcher
Publishing a single book to a link, without publishing my whole library, is the only sharing feature I have ever actually used twice.
Marcus Hale
Writer
Black and white, one typeface for headings, no badges to collect. It reads like a notebook and gets out of the way.
Yuki Tanaka
Designer
Our admin published the team's reading list before an offsite and the page just worked — real title, real preview when it hit Slack.
Sofia Almeida
Head of design
The book is already open. Write down the page.
Twelve books free, forever, with no card and no trial clock. Upgrade the day the shelf outgrows the plan, not before.
- No card
- Free forever
- Notes stay private