Mozilla Readability
Hacker ApprovedRanked 4 of 8 document parsers by recommenders
Free open-source library that strips clutter from web pages to leave the article text, and is built into some browsers. Caveat: it does not always work on paywalled pages.
Free open-source library that strips clutter from web pages to leave the article text, and is built into some browsers. Caveat: it does not always work on paywalled pages.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 91%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 10 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Common step before rendering or extraction
“pipe the content through Mozilla’s readability extension that strips the DOM elements out deterministically”
Comment from 10 Jul 2026 in “Launch HN: Context.dev (YC S26) – API to get structured data from any website” “A more pragmatic approach would be to run the content through something like readability”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Text-Based Web Browsers” “Piping through readability before rendering is what made mine usable”
Comment from 28 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Hntui – A TUI for Hacker News” - Comment from 12 May 2026 in “If AI Writes Your Code, Why Use Python?”
Quick one-click cleanup in browsers
“Readability builtins on Firefox and Safari (mac) clean it up.”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “Brands Adopt 'No AI' Disclaimers to Stand Out Amid the Slop” “the Readability extension sorted it in a single click for me”
Comment from 25 Sep 2026 in “The mystery animal on an ancient god's head”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Does not always work on paywalled pages
“It does not always work, especially if the page is paywalled but it works for most sites.”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “PC Gamer Recommends RSS Readers in a 37MB Article That Just Keeps Downloading” Far from ideal
“Readability is far from ideal”
Comment from 10 Jul 2026 in “Launch HN: Context.dev (YC S26) – API to get structured data from any website”
Other document parsers people recommend
The four most recommended other document parsers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pandoc | 142 | 28 | 84% | 13 | 10 yrs6 owners | Approved |
| Tesseract OCR | 32 | 28 | 53% | 12 | — | — |
| Docling | 19 | 4 | 83% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Mozilla ReadabilityThis page | 10 | 1 | 91% | 6 | — | Approved |
| Zpdf | 8 | 6 | 57% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
9 of the 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Piping through readability before rendering is what made mine usable”
“the Readability extension sorted it in a single click for me”
“Readability is far from ideal”
“pipe the content through Mozilla’s readability extension that strips the DOM elements out deterministically”
“One can use mozilla/readability to extract the content.”
“Readability builtins on Firefox and Safari (mac) clean it up.”
“It does not always work, especially if the page is paywalled but it works for most sites.”
“it handles messy article HTML surprisingly well”
“A more pragmatic approach would be to run the content through something like readability”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.