Free Markup.io alternative: 5 tools compared
MarkLayer is the closest free, no-sign-up replacement for Markup.io if all you need is visual feedback on live pages. PageProofer and BugHerd are paid and add agency workflow features. Pastel adds a free plan capped at 1 user and 1 canvas. Hypothesis is free but text-only.
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Markup.io alternatives compared
| Option | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| MarkLayer | Free. No tiers, no seats | Anyone who wants the core Markup.io use case (live webpage feedback) without sign-up or fees. |
| PageProofer | Not tracked | Teams already comfortable with a paid SaaS workflow. |
| BugHerd | No free plan. Standard $50/month (5 members); extra seats $8 each | Teams that need full bug-tracking workflow, not just feedback. |
| Pastel | Free plan (1 user, 1 canvas); Pro $29–35/month; Team from $99/month + $24 per extra seat | Agencies running structured client review cycles. |
| Hypothesis | Free | Scholarly or text-heavy annotation, not UI feedback. |
Top free Markup.io alternatives
1. MarkLayer
Free and open source, with nothing to install: paste any URL at marklayer.app, annotate the live page with drawings, comments, arrows, and highlights, then share a link. Recipients need no install and no account, and real-time live cursors show reviewers working the page at the same time instead of leaving comments async. There is no paid tier to upgrade to, ever. Annotations are cleaned up 90 days after their last activity, and any comment or view resets that clock.
2. PageProofer
Visual feedback on staging sites with sticky-note style comments, closer to Markup.io's own project-review shape than the other options here. There is no permanent free plan. Plans run $39, $89 and $199 a month for 5, 25 and unlimited users, extra users cost $5 each, and the trial lasts 15 days.
3. BugHerd
A visual bug tracker built around a Kanban board and integrations into Jira, GitHub, Trello, and Asana, so a piece of feedback becomes a tracked task rather than a comment thread. No free plan; Standard runs $50/month for 5 members.
4. Pastel
A visual-feedback platform built for agency client review, with branded canvases and version tracking. The free plan is limited to 1 user and 1 canvas; Pro is $35/month, or $29/month billed annually.
5. Hypothesis
A free, open-source W3C-standard text annotation layer for highlighting and commenting on articles and PDFs, not for drawing on a live page's UI. Free, but the wrong shape if what you need is visual feedback on a webpage's layout.
What changed at Markup.io
Markup.io discontinued its free tier in early 2025 and moved Pro from $29 to $79 a month. Teams that built their review process on the free plan did not choose to start paying. The plan stopped existing. That is a different risk from a price increase, and it is why MarkLayer has no paid tier to discontinue a free one into.
Current tiers and the history behind them are in the Markup.io pricing guide. For a feature-by-feature read, see the Markup.io review.
Which one fits which job
MarkLayer is the direct free replacement for Markup.io's core job: annotate a live page, share a link, no account on either side. The other three annotators are paid routes. PageProofer suits staging-site review, BugHerd turns feedback into tracked tickets, and Pastel runs structured agency client rounds, though Pastel does have a free plan capped at 1 user and 1 canvas. Hypothesis sits outside both groups. It annotates text in documents, not a page's visual layout.
Sources
Prices come from each vendor's own pricing page, read on 7 October 2026:
Frequently asked questions
- What is the best free Markup.io alternative?
- MarkLayer covers the core Markup.io use case, visual feedback on live websites with link-based sharing, for free, with no sign-up and no paid tier waiting at the top. For agency project workflows with persistent workspaces and version history, paid tools like Pastel or BugHerd remain stronger.
- Why might someone leave Markup.io?
- The 2025 pricing change is the big one: the free plan was discontinued and Pro moved from $29 to $79 per month. Other recurring reasons in the wild: mandatory sign-ups for every reviewer, one workspace on the Pro plan, and wanting a tool that annotates the actual live page instead of an imported snapshot of it.
- Can my annotations be locked behind a bill later, the way Markup.io's free tier was?
- Not on MarkLayer. There's no account to suspend and no plan to lapse, so nothing can be put behind a paywall retroactively the way Markup.io's own free plan was discontinued out from under existing users. What does apply is a time limit, not a bill: annotations are cleaned up 90 days after their last activity, and any comment or view resets that clock. You can keep your own copy at any time by downloading the annotations as Markdown from the viewer, or fetching the raw JSON from the public API at marklayer.app/api/{id}.
- Are these tools open source?
- MarkLayer and Hypothesis are open source. PageProofer, BugHerd, Pastel, and Markup.io itself are all closed-source commercial SaaS.
- How much does Markup.io cost, and is there a free plan?
- There is no free plan. Markup.io discontinued its free tier in early 2025. As of October 2026, Pro is $79 to $129 a month depending on how many MarkUps you use (50 to 100 a month), Business is $499 to $799 a month, and Enterprise is custom-priced. All users are unlimited, and Pro and Business come with a 14-day trial.
- What is the cheapest paid Markup.io alternative?
- Pastel's Pro plan: $35 a month, or $29 billed annually, for 2 users and 3 active canvases. PageProofer starts at $39 a month for 5 users and BugHerd at $50 a month for 5 members. Pastel also has a free plan, limited to 1 user and 1 active canvas.
Related comparisons
Try MarkLayer
Paste any URL at marklayer.app and annotate the live page in your browser. No install, no account, no sign-up. Recipients of your share links don't need to install anything either.
Annotate a page