Pinboard

Social Bookmarking Softwarepinboard.in

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

Location

Headquarters

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 offering

Core 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 profile

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Pinboard technology and API

Technology

Technology 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 signal

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Pinboard competitors and assessment

Company assessment

Direct 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 financial estimates

Financial estimate

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Pinboard leadership team

Management profile

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Pinboard funding detail

Funding detail

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Pinboard M&A and investment

M&A and investment

M&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?

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.