Web clipper or page capture? Evernote Web Clipper vs. Notion Web Clipper vs. Zotero vs. Page Scanner
A clipper puts a web page into your notes. A capture gives you a file that looks like the page. Which one you want depends on what you will do with it later, and here is how to tell.
People ask for "a way to save this page" and mean two different things. One is a clipper: the page goes into a system you already keep, a notebook, a workspace, a library, and comes back as a note you can search alongside everything else. The other is a capture: you get a file that looks the way the page looked, to print, send, cite or keep. The tools overlap just enough to be confusing. Here are three clippers and one capture, side by side.
Four tools at a glance
| Evernote Web Clipper | Notion Web Clipper | Zotero Connector | Page Scanner | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | a note in Evernote | a page in Notion | a library item with metadata and a snapshot | a PDF, PNG or JPEG file |
| Clip modes | Article, Simplified Article, Full Page, Bookmark, Screenshot | the page, into a page or a database | the item, plus a snapshot and any PDF it finds | the whole page, then a crop |
| Keeps the page as it looked | Full Page and Screenshot modes | ✗ "formatting in Notion will vary" | the snapshot is a copy of the page | ✓ |
| Text you can search | ✓ in Evernote | ✓ in Notion | ✓ in Zotero | ✓ in the PDF |
| Where it is stored | your Evernote account | your Notion workspace | your computer; sync is optional | your Downloads folder |
| Account needed | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ for the library; ✓ to sync | ✗ |
| Free tier | 50 notes, 1 notebook, 1 device, 1 GB a month | Notion's free plan | free, open source | free |
| Mark it up | ✓ on Screenshot clips: crop, text, shapes, stamps | edit the page in Notion | in Zotero's reader | ✓ shapes, highlighter, text, blur, redaction |
| Bibliographic metadata | ✗ | the URL, as a property | ✓ author, title, date, and the rest | ✗ (a URL and time stamp is optional) |
| Browsers | "all major browsers" | Chrome, Safari; iOS and Android apps | Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge | Chrome and Chromium |
✓ yes, ✗ no.
What a clipper is for
A clipper's job is to get the page into the place you will look for it later, in a shape that place understands. That is why the three clippers here parse the page rather than photograph it.
Evernote Web Clipper gives you the most say in what "the page" means. Its five clip formats are Article, Simplified Article, Full Page, Bookmark and Screenshot, and the Screenshot format has its own editor: crop the image, add text, shapes and stamps. Everything lands in your Evernote account, which is where its search, tags and notebooks work on it. The free plan is small, at 50 notes, one notebook and one device, and the Web Clipper is included in it.
Notion Web Clipper does one thing: "Save any page on the web to Notion", into a page or a database of your choosing, with the original URL kept as a property. Notion's own help is candid that "websites are built in all kinds of ways, so they can't all be parsed the same way. Formatting in Notion will vary", and that some content may be missing from some sites. If the page is going to become your notes anyway, that is fine. If you need it to look like the page, it is the wrong tool.
Zotero Connector is a clipper for research. Click it on an article page and Zotero creates an item with the bibliographic data, saves any PDF it can reach, and, if you have that turned on, saves "a copy (or snapshot) of the webpage" to your computer as a child of the item. Free, open source, and the library is yours, on your disk, with sync as an option rather than the default.
What a capture is for
A capture does not care what system you keep. It gives you a file that looks the way the page looked, and leaves the filing to you.
Page Scanner captures the whole page as you see it, in your own Chrome, and writes a PDF whose text is selectable and whose artwork is vector, or a PNG or JPEG if a picture is what you want. You crop first, mark it up, blur or redact, and choose A4, Letter or one long page. The file goes to your Downloads folder, no account, nothing uploaded. It carries no bibliographic data beyond an optional stamp with the URL and the time, which is the part a reference manager does better.
Which should you use?
Use Evernote Web Clipper if you live in Evernote and want to choose, per page, between the article, the whole page and a screenshot you can draw on.
Use Notion Web Clipper if the page is raw material for a Notion page or database and its original look does not matter.
Use Zotero if you will cite it. Nothing else here knows what an author or a journal is.
Use Page Scanner if you need the page as a document: to print, to send to someone who has none of these apps, to redact before sharing, or to keep as a faithful PDF of what a page said on a given day.
Use two of them more often than you would think. Zotero's snapshot and a Page Scanner PDF of the same page are different objects: one is the page for the machine, the other is the page for a person. Clip the article into Notion for your notes and keep the PDF for the record.
Frequently asked questions
Does a clipper save what I see, or what the site sends? Evernote's Full Page and Screenshot formats and Zotero's snapshot are taken from the tab in front of you. Notion converts the page into Notion blocks, which is why its formatting varies.
Can I attach a Page Scanner PDF to a Zotero item? Yes. It is an ordinary PDF file, and Zotero attaches files to items; Zotero's reader will then index its text like any other PDF.
Which of these needs me to be online? Evernote and Notion save to your account. Zotero saves locally and syncs when it can. Page Scanner saves locally and never syncs.
Where this comes from
- Evernote: the Web Clipper page, the help centre's Quick Start Guide and Clip formats, and the plan comparison.
- Notion: the Web Clipper page and its help article.
- Zotero: Adding items to Zotero.
- Page Scanner: the documentation.
Page Scanner is a Chrome extension. Add it to Chrome.