Launching 1 December
Everything you underline, finally in one place
Lumen gathers your highlights from paper books, e-readers and articles, and every Sunday writes you one page about what you read.
What it does
Made for people who read with a pencil in hand
We built Lumen because our own highlights were scattered across margins, Kindle exports, screenshots and the back pages of notebooks. Now they live together.
01
Photograph a page, keep the line
Point your phone at a paper page and tap the passage you marked. Lumen reads it, keeps the words, the book and the page number, and throws the photo away.
02
Your e-reader comes along
Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books highlights arrive on their own once you connect them, with your notes beside them.
03
Articles too
Mark a sentence in any article on your phone or laptop and share it to Lumen. The link stays with it.
04
A weekly page, written for you
Every Sunday morning Lumen writes one page about your week of reading: the passages that kept coming back, the books that talked to each other, and one line from a year ago worth meeting again.
05
Yours to take away
Export everything as Markdown or plain text whenever you like. Your reading stays on servers in Frankfurt and is never used to train anything.
How it works
Three steps, then just read
Capture
Underline as you always have. Then photograph the page, share the article or let your e-reader send its highlights.
Gather
Lumen files every passage under its book or article, with the author, the page and the day you marked it. No folders to keep.
Read
On Sunday your weekly page arrives in the app and, if you like, in your inbox. Search everything you have ever marked in a second.
The beta so far
Eight months of reading with more than a thousand people
- 184,600
- highlights savedFrom paper, screens and articles since March.
- 1,240
- beta readersIn 31 countries, most of them with a book on the go.
- 9,870
- booksWith at least one line kept, from Austen to tax law.
Until launch
The doors open for everyone on the first of December. Everyone on the waiting list gets in a week earlier.
Lumen is out.
From the beta
What our first readers say
I read on the train, on the sofa and on the bird hide bench. For years my notes were in four places. Now the Sunday page reminds me what I actually thought.
Hanne VossBeta reader since March, HamburgI mark paperbacks in pencil and never thought an app would care about that. I take a picture at the end of my shift and the line is there, page number and all.
Tomasz WierzbickiWarehouse supervisor, LeipzigThe weekly page put a novel and a knitting book side by side and found they were saying the same thing about patience. I keep every one of those pages.
Ines AlbuquerqueStudent and beta reader, Lisbon
Pricing
Start free, stay if it helps
Two of our three plans. The whole list, with the Library plan for households, is on the pricing page.
Free
€0
For trying Lumen with the book on your nightstand.
- Up to 200 highlights
- Paper and article capture
- Search everything you keep
Reader
€4 a month
For people who always have a book on the go.
- Unlimited highlights
- Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books
- The weekly page, every Sunday
- Export whenever you like
Questions we hear often
Which devices does Lumen run on?
iPhone and Android phones, and any computer through the browser. A tablet layout comes with the launch.
Does it really read my pencil underlining?
Yes. Take a photo of the page, tap the passage, and Lumen keeps the printed words. Faint pencil works best in daylight; you can always adjust the selection by hand.
Who writes the weekly page?
Lumen writes it from your own highlights and notes only. It quotes you and your books, never adds opinions of its own, and you can switch it off.
What happens to my beta highlights at launch?
They stay exactly where they are. Beta readers keep the Reader plan free until the end of February 2027.
Be among the first readers on 1 December
Leave your email and we will send your invitation a week before the doors open.