Leaving Pinboard? Move Your Bookmarks in 2 Minutes

Pinboard is one of the best products ever built for people who take bookmarks seriously. It's fast, it's private, and it has outlasted a graveyard of venture-funded competitors. If it still does everything you need, stay — really.

But a lot of us have watched it stand still for years: the UI never modernized, mobile is rough, and it can feel like the lights are on but nobody's actively building. If you're ready to move — or just want a copy of your library somewhere that's actively developed — here's how to bring everything over to Cowpin in about two minutes.

Two ways to import (pick one)

Option A — one-click, with your API token (fastest)

Grab your Pinboard API token: on pinboard.in go to Settings → Password and copy the API token (it looks like yourname:A1B2C3…).
In Cowpin, go to Settings → Bookmarks → Import from Pinboard, paste the token, and hit import.

That's it. Cowpin talks to Pinboard's API directly, pulls every bookmark, and your token is used once for the import and never stored.

Option B — from an export file (no token needed)

On pinboard.in, go to Settings → Backup and download Bookmarks (HTML).
In Cowpin, go to Settings → Bookmarks → Import bookmarks and upload that file.

The HTML export is the standard Netscape bookmark format, so this same path also works for exports from Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Delicious.

What comes across

Every bookmark — URL, title, and description.
All your tags, exactly as you had them. A 13,000-bookmark library with hundreds of tags comes over with the tag structure intact.
Privacy. Private bookmarks stay private. In fact Cowpin defaults new imports to private unless you say otherwise — your library is yours until you choose to share it.
Duplicates are skipped, so re-running an import is safe.

What's better once you're here

Full-text search is included. On Pinboard, searching the contents of your saved pages is a paid archival add-on. In Cowpin it's just there.
Page archiving. Cowpin can keep a snapshot of a page so a dead link doesn't mean a lost bookmark.
An AI layer Pinboard never had — automatic summaries, tag suggestions that reuse your existing tags instead of inventing new ones, and a "read next" pick from your read-later pile.
Your existing tools keep working. Cowpin implements Pinboard's API, so scripts and apps pointed at the Pinboard API can point at Cowpin instead.
Per-tag RSS, public profiles, and one-click export back to Pinboard-compatible JSON — you're never locked in. Leaving should always be as easy as arriving.

What we're honest about

Cowpin isn't finished. Pinboard still has browser extensions in the stores and a mature ecosystem of third-party mobile apps; ours are in progress. And Pinboard's spartan, near-instant page loads are a genuinely high bar — we're actively working on making Cowpin feel just as light. We'd rather tell you that than pretend.

If you want a modern, actively-built home for the bookmarks you've been collecting for years — without losing a single tag — the import takes two minutes. Start here.