Pinboard
Pinboard (Nine Fives Software) is a bootstrapped, one-person social bookmarking service founded in 2009, selling $22-$39/year subscriptions to privacy-conscious individuals for ad-free bookmarking, web archiving, and full-text search.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2009
- HeadquartersSan Francisco, United States
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2C
- OfferingSoftware
What Pinboard does
Pinboard (legally Nine Fives Software) is a privately held, bootstrapped social bookmarking service founded in spring 2009 by Maciej Cegłowski and operated as a one-person business. It serves privacy-conscious individual users who want a paid, ad-free, tracker-free alternative to mainstream bookmarking tools, with documented secondary use among researchers, power users, and online fandom communities. The product is sold via direct self-serve signup at two annual price points: a Basic tier at $22/year covering saving, tagging, and retrieving links across browsers, and an Archiving tier at $39/year that adds personal web-page caching with full-text search (including across PDFs) and dead-link detection. Multi-year prepay discounts and a seven-day full-refund trial are offered; there is no free tier.
The platform runs on PHP and MySQL on dedicated servers, with the archiving subsystem built on an enhanced wget crawler that stores personal copies of every bookmarked URL. Distribution is entirely self-serve through the website (pinboard.in) and a mobile variant (m.pinboard.in), supplemented by official browser extensions for Safari, Chrome, and Firefox and a third-party ecosystem of roughly 20 iOS, Android, and Mac clients that integrate via Pinboard's del.icio.us-compatible API. The product surface includes browser bookmarklets, email-to-bookmark, RSS feeds, tab-set capture, private tags, a Notes feature for text snippets, Twitter account sync (up to three accounts) with tweet archiving and full-text search, and import/export against Delicious, Google Bookmarks, Safari, Firefox, and Diigo. Marketing is word-of-mouth and earned media; the founder maintains direct support via email ([email protected]) and engagement on Twitter.
Revenue comes exclusively from annual subscriptions, with the company stating it covers operating costs, maintains physical backups, and pays the founder a salary. Active users are reported at 25,000-30,000 across the About and Tour pages, and the platform stores several hundred million bookmarks. The company has no external investors, no parent, no subsidiaries, no M&A activity, and operates worldwide with the site localized into English, French, Japanese, German, Russian, and Polish. Founded in the USA and referencing California law in its Terms of Service, Pinboard has remained continuously operating since 2009 without any disclosed leadership changes, restructuring, or funding events.
Pinboard firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Pinboard
- Legal name
- Nine Fives Software
- Website
- https://pinboard.in
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2009
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Pinboard (Nine Fives Software) is a bootstrapped, one-person social bookmarking service founded in 2009, selling $22-$39/year subscriptions to privacy-conscious individuals for ad-free bookmarking, web archiving, and full-text search.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Where Pinboard is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- San Francisco
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Markets served
Pinboard business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2C
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Infrastructure, Technology or R&D, Operations, Personnel, Supply Chain
Revenue model
- Basic Subscription: Users pay $22 per year for basic bookmarking service including bookmarking from any browser, Twitter account connection, and sync with services like Instapaper and Pocket.
- Archiving Subscription: Users pay $39 per year for archiving service which includes saving a copy of everything bookmarked, full-text search, and automatic dead link checking. Multi-year discounts available.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Annual | Basic bookmarking service |
| Subscription | Annual | Archiving and full-text search |
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels7 records
Marketing channels4 records
Pinboard product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Pinboard is a self-serve, subscription-based social bookmarking service that lets individuals save, tag, describe, and search web links from any browser, with optional full-page archiving, full-text search, and dead link detection. It sells two annual tiers—Basic ($22/year) for bookmarking and sync with services like Instapaper and Pocket, and Archiving ($39/year) which adds a personal copy of every bookmarked page, full-text search including PDFs, and automatic dead link checking. The service is operated independently with no ads, no trackers, and runs on Pinboard's own servers.
Product overview
Pinboard is a fast, independently-run social bookmarking service for privacy-minded users, operating since 2009. The core product is Pinboard Basic ($22/year), providing bookmark saving via browser bookmarklets, browser extensions (Safari, Chrome, Firefox), email bookmarking, and RSS feeds. The premium tier Pinboard Archiving ($39/year) adds full-page caching, full-text search, and dead link detection. Additional offerings include a mobile site (m.pinboard.in), a full REST API, Javascript widgets for embedding bookmark lists and tag clouds on external sites, and a Notes feature for saving text snippets. The service syncs with Twitter (up to 3 accounts), Instapaper, and Pocket, and supports imports from Delicious, Google Bookmarks, Safari, Firefox, and Diigo.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- Pinboard Basic Core bookmarking service for individuals, allowing users to save, tag, describe, and search web links from any browser via bookmarklets, browser extensions (Safari, Chrome, Firefox), email, and RSS feeds. Includes sync with Twitter (up to three accounts), Instapaper, and Pocket, and access to the full REST API. Priced at $22 per year.
- Pinboard Archiving Premium subscription add-on that automatically downloads and stores a personal copy of every bookmarked webpage via an enhanced-wget crawling system. Includes full-text search across all archived pages including PDFs, automatic dead link checking, and manual re-crawl capability. Priced at $39 per year versus $22 for basic.
- Pinboard Mobile Site Mobile-optimized version of the Pinboard service designed for use on smartphones and tablets, accessible at m.pinboard.in.
- Pinboard API Full programmatic API (v1 stable, v2 draft) allowing developers to add, delete, edit, and query bookmarks, manage tags, access notes, and retrieve user API tokens. v2 is REST-ful with JSON responses and authentication tokens. Developer libraries available in Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, and Node.js.
- Pinboard JavaScript Widgets Embeddable JavaScript widgets including Linkroll (display recent bookmarks on external sites) and Tag Cloud (display tag cloud on web pages), stylable by users.
- Pinboard Notes Feature that lets users create standalone text snippets that are automatically converted to web pages and added to their bookmarks for convenient text capture and retrieval.
- Pinboard Read Later Special bookmark status that saves pages to an unread list without requiring tags or descriptions, with configurable auto-mark-as-read behavior.
Companies that use Pinboard
Customer profileSegments3 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
Pinboard technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration22 records
Feature9 records
Pinboard partnerships and signals
Strategic signalScale indicators3 records
Recent moves5 records
Expansion highlights4 records
Pinboard competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Raindrop.io: A modern bookmarking service with similar tag-based organization, full-text search, and freemium pricing model. Direct competitor offering visual bookmark management with similar use cases.
- Wallabag: Open-source read-later and bookmarking service with self-hosting option. Competes directly with Pinboard's archiving tier by offering full-text search and offline article storage at comparable price points.
- Linkwarden: Open-source bookmarking and archiving platform that automatically preserves and snapshots bookmarked web pages. Highly comparable to Pinboard's archival and dead link detection functionality.
- Linkding: Self-hosted bookmark manager with tagging, search, and sharing features. Targets the same privacy-conscious, technically sophisticated user base as Pinboard.
- Delicious: Pioneer of social bookmarking that Pinboard was explicitly created to replace after a 2009 redesign. Same fundamental product category and target user persona.
- Diigo: Social bookmarking service with highlights, annotations, and archiving. Pinboard explicitly supports imports from Diigo, indicating strong functional overlap.
Broad incumbents
- Pocket (Mozilla): Incumbent read-later service with massive user base and Mozilla backing. Overlaps with Pinboard's Read Later and bookmarking functionality, though lacks Pinboard's archiving and full-text search.
- Instapaper: Established read-later and bookmarking service that integrates with Pinboard. Comparable to Pinboard's reading list use case but with a more refined mobile reading experience.
Emerging players
- Obsidian: Personal knowledge management tool with bidirectional linking and local markdown files. Increasingly competes with Pinboard for users building personal research and knowledge bases.
- Are.na: Visual bookmarking and content collection platform popular with creative and research communities. Competes with Pinboard for the same creative/researcher power-user segment with a more visual, collaborative approach.
Market position
Strengths4 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
Pinboard social profiles
Digital presencePinboard financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Pinboard leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles1 record
Pinboard funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Pinboard M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Pinboard
What does Pinboard do?
Pinboard is a self-serve, subscription-based social bookmarking service that lets individuals save, tag, describe, and search web links from any browser, with optional full-page archiving, full-text search, and dead link detection. It sells two annual tiers—Basic ($22/year) for bookmarking and sync with services like Instapaper and Pocket, and Archiving ($39/year) which adds a personal copy of every bookmarked page, full-text search including PDFs, and automatic dead link checking. The service is operated independently with no ads, no trackers, and runs on Pinboard's own servers.
Is Pinboard a public or private company?
Pinboard is a private company. It is classified as founder individual operated bootstrapped and is currently operating.
When was Pinboard founded?
Pinboard was founded in 2009. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Pinboard based?
Pinboard is headquartered in San Francisco, United States, in the North America region.
How does Pinboard make money?
Two revenue lines are on record. Basic Subscription is the primary driver. The others are archiving Subscription.
Who are Pinboard's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Raindrop.io, Wallabag, Linkwarden, Linkding, Delicious and Diigo. Broad incumbents are Pocket (Mozilla) and Instapaper. Emerging players are Obsidian and Are.na.
Does Pinboard have an API?
Yes. Full API modeled on v1 of the del.icio.us API. The API is available at https://api.pinboard.in/v1/ (v1, stable) and https://api.pinboard.in/v2/ (v2, draft). v1 API uses GET requests and returns XML (default) or JSON format. Authentication via HTTPS with username:token format or HTTP Basic Auth. Rate limits: 1 call per user every 3 seconds for general use; posts/all limited to once every 5 minutes; posts/recent limited to once per minute. v2 API is REST-ful using GET, PUT, POST, DELETE verbs with JSON responses. Supports conditional requests with If-Modified-Since and If-None-Match headers. Developer libraries available in Perl (Net::Delicious), Python (pinboard.py), PHP (pinboard-api), Ruby (Pinboard gem), and Node.js (node-pinboard). Developer documentation is at api.pinboard.in/v1.