Free forever. No sign-up. Open source.
Website Feedback Without the Email Thread.
Send your client one link. They comment straight on the live page in their own browser, without signing up or installing anything.
MarkLayer is a free web app and Chrome extension for annotating any live webpage, PDF or image. Paste any URL onmarklayer.app to draw and comment in your browser. No install required. Or use the free Chrome extension for in-place annotation on sites behind a login or with strict embed policies. Share a single link. Viewers need no extension or account.You never create an account or pay for a plan. Annotations are cleaned up 90 days after their last activity, and any comment or view resets that clock.
Or add the free Chrome extension for sites the web app cannot embed.
Free + Anonymous, by design
Most annotation tools force you to create an account, hand over an email, and onboard before you can mark up a single page. MarkLayer skips all of that.
- 100% free. No paid plan, no trial period, no per-seat pricing, no usage cap, no premium tier. See the fullpricing page.
- 100% anonymous. No sign-up, no email verification, no profile, no login. A random local display name is generated in your browser.
- No data collection. Annotations stay on your device until you explicitly share them.Privacy policy.
- Open source. Audit the code, contribute, or self-host onGitHub.
Features
Everything below is free, with no account. Thefull feature list has the detail, including every keyboard shortcut.
- Sixteen annotation tools. Pen, highlighter, arrow, line, rectangle, circle, text label, eraser, comment pin, text selection, area note, element inspector, multi-select, measure, ruler guides and move. Each has a single-key shortcut, matching Figma where Figma has an equivalent.
- Comments with status, priority and an owner. Five statuses (open, in progress, resolved, approved, dismissed), four priorities, threaded replies, @mentions, and up to four image attachments per comment. Each one records the browser, OS and viewport it was written on.
- Suggested edits as diffs. Select text on the page and write the exact replacement. It travels as a diff into the export and into an AI agent's view, so nobody retypes it.
- Real-time collaboration. Live cursors so everyone sees changes as they happen. Unlimited collaborators per session.
- Voice and video. Peer-to-peer WebRTC in the room, with microphone, camera and output device selection. Nobody installs anything to join.
- Shareable links. Share a link so anyone can see your annotations instantly. No extension and no account needed to view. Sign in with a magic link, and you can make a link view only, set its expiry, and see everything you own in one dashboard.
- Send feedback to Slack, Teams, Discord, Linear, GitHub or Jira. Chat destinations post each new batch on their own. File a single annotation into a tracker as an issue. It is one way out: nothing syncs back.
- Export as Markdown or PNG. Copy or download every comment, reply and highlight as Markdown, with suggested edits as diff blocks. Or export the annotated page as an image.
- Built for AI coding agents. The inspector captures an element's CSS selector, computed styles and the React or Vue component behind it, as a copy-ready prompt. The
marklayer-mcpserver gives an agent twelve tools to watch a room, acknowledge, resolve, dismiss and reply, with every status change visible to the human. - Works on any website. Production, staging, internal tools, localhost, third-party sites. Anything you can open in Chrome.
- PDFs and images. Open a PDF, a screenshot, a mockup or a photo by link, or upload one up to 25MB. PDF text stays selectable, so a highlight binds to the words. Seehow to annotate a PDFand how to annotate an image.
- Up to 50 pages on one link. Review a whole flow as a project, switched through tabs, exported as one document.
- Marks that survive a reflow. Preview at desktop, tablet or mobile width. Comments bind to the element, by selector with a text fingerprint as a fallback, so they land on the right thing when the layout changes or a single-page app re-renders.
- Browser extension. One click to start annotating. No background processes, no permissions creep.
Built for
- Design review. Visual feedback on live mockups and staging sites without screenshots.
- QA & bug reporting. Circle bugs in context, paste the link into Jira or Linear.
- Client feedback. Let clients review and reply without signing up for anything.
- Remote teams. Real-time visual collaboration on any webpage, async or live.
Free by licence, not by pricing policy
Markup.io discontinued its free tier in 2025 and moved Pro to $79/month. BugHerd, Marker.io and Feedbucket have no permanent free plan at all, only trials. MarkLayer is free under the Apache-2.0 licence rather than by current pricing policy, so it cannot be withdrawn from under a client workflow, and you can self-host it on your own Cloudflare account. See the fullaudit of free annotation tools, checked against each vendor's live pricing page.
MarkLayer vs other free webpage annotation tools
Compared to the most-cited free tools for drawing on a live website and sharing a link:
| Feature | MarkLayer | AnnotateWeb | DrawOnWebsite |
|---|---|---|---|
| No sign-up, no email, no account | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Annotate on the live page (not a screenshot) | Yes | Yes | No (screenshot only) |
| Free web app — paste a URL in your browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free Chrome extension for sites the web app cannot embed | Yes | No | No |
| Real-time multi-user collaboration | Yes | Yes | No |
| Live cursors | Yes | No | No |
| Voice and video chat with peers (WebRTC) | Yes | No | No |
| Element inspector with CSS selectors and AI-ready prompts | Yes | No | No |
| MCP server for AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor) | Yes | No | No |
| Open source and self-hostable | Yes | No | No |
| Price | Free forever | Free | Free |
Verdict: If you want to draw on a live website and share a link with no sign-up, MarkLayer matches AnnotateWeb on the basics and adds live cursors, voice/video chat, an element inspector for AI handoff, an optional Chrome extension for embed-hostile sites, and an open-source codebase. If you only need to mark up a screenshot, DrawOnWebsite is simpler.
Detailed comparisons
- MarkLayer vs AnnotateWeb. Web app parity, plus extension, live cursors, voice, and MCP.
- MarkLayer vs Markup.io. Free + anonymous vs project-based.
- MarkLayer vs Pastel. Free + open source vs paid agency tool.
- MarkLayer vs BugHerd. Lightweight feedback vs full bug tracking.
- MarkLayer vs Marker.io. Free + anonymous vs paid bug-tracking integrations.
- MarkLayer vs Jam.dev. Free + anonymous vs freemium with account required.
- MarkLayer vs Ruttl. Free + open source vs paid agency feedback.
- MarkLayer vs Hypothesis. Visual annotation vs scholarly text annotation.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is MarkLayer really free?
- Yes. 100% free. No paid plan, no trial, no per-seat pricing, no usage cap.
- Is MarkLayer a browser extension?
- No. MarkLayer is a browser-based web app first: paste a URL atmarklayer.app and annotate the live page in your browser with nothing installed. A free Chrome extension exists as an optional companion for pages the web app cannot embed, such as sites behind a login. Neither you nor the people you share a link with ever need it.
- Do I need to install anything to use MarkLayer?
- No. The web app atmarklayer.app lets you paste any URL and start annotating in your browser. No install, no account. The Chrome extension is optional, for sites the web app cannot embed (sites behind a login or with strict embed policies).
- Is MarkLayer anonymous?
- Yes. No sign-up, no email, no profile, no login. MarkLayer generates a random local display name stored only in your browser.
- Do I need to create an account?
- No. Open the web app or install the extension and start annotating. There is no registration step.
- Does the other person need the extension installed?
- No. Anyone can view your annotations via the share link. No install and no account required.
- Does it work on any website?
- Yes. Production, staging, internal tools, third-party sites. The web app works on any URL it can embed; the extension covers sites behind a login or with strict embed policies.
- Can I annotate a PDF with MarkLayer?
- Yes. Paste a link to a PDF or upload one from your computer, up to 25MB, and the drawing, comment, area and highlight tools all work on it. Text inside the PDF stays selectable, so a highlight binds to the words rather than to a coordinate, and every mark records the page it was made on. The annotations live in the share link rather than inside the file, so nothing is written back into the PDF. See how to annotate a PDF.
- Can I annotate an image or a screenshot?
- Yes. Paste the URL of an image, or upload a PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP or AVIF up to 25MB. Drawing, arrows, shapes, area captures and pinned comments all work on it, and whoever opens the share link can reply without an account. Text highlighting is the one tool that does not, because an image has no text layer to attach a highlight to. See how to annotate an image.
- Does it work on localhost?
- Yes, with the Chrome extension. It draws in your browser, so your dev server never has to be reachable from the internet and there is no proxy or tunnel involved. Share links do need a public URL, so point collaborators at staging or a tunnel when someone else has to open the page. See annotating localhost for AI agents.
- Can multiple people annotate at the same time?
- Yes. Real-time live cursors and voice chat let unlimited collaborators work together on any page.
- Is MarkLayer open source?
- Yes. The full source is onGitHub. You can audit, contribute, or self-host on Cloudflare.
Start annotating any page on the web.
Paste a URL on marklayer.app ·Add to Chrome· 100% free · 100% anonymous · No sign-up
Last updated: · MarkLayer is open source onGitHub.