Auto keyword highlighters for Chrome, compared

Facts checked July 2026. Written by the maker of Highlight Keywords, which is one of the five tools below, so read with that in mind. Every number here comes from the public store listings and reviews, and corrections are welcome at highlightkeywords.app@gmail.com.

These are the Chrome extensions that do one specific job: you save a list of words, and they get highlighted on every page you open, automatically. This is different from annotation tools like Weava or Liner, where you select text by hand and save it. If you want the select-and-save kind, none of these five is what you need.

The short version

• Want free and simple, and updates do not matter to you: Auto Highlight. Best rating of the group, supports regex, last updated in 2024.
• Want the most users behind it: Highlight This. It is the category leader, but its reviews turned on the membership model, and the free tier caps at 200 words.
• Want PDF highlighting on a subscription: Highlighty.
• Want readable highlights on dark sites, PDFs, sync, and a one-time price instead of a membership: ours, Highlight Keywords. We are the newest and smallest of the five, and the only one with auto-contrast.
• Multi Highlight: hard to recommend today. It has not been updated since February 2023 and its recent reviews report it forgetting saved lists.

Side by side

What reviewers actually complain about

The same four things, across every extension on this list.

• Lists that vanish. Multi Highlight reviewers report it forgetting saved terms. Highlight This reviewers report backups that restore nothing. Check how a tool gets your words back before you need it to.
• Memberships for a highlighter. The angriest reviews in the category are about Highlight This moving to a login and a membership. One of its own five-star reviewers said they would rather pay once. That is why our Pro is a single payment.
• Abandonment. Two of the five have not shipped in over a year. Extensions break as Chrome changes, so the update date matters.
• Words that load late. Chat apps and dashboards add text after the page loads, and some highlighters miss it. Test on Gmail or Slack, not on a static article.

Where Highlight Keywords honestly stands

We are the smallest tool here, 13 users as of this writing. If install count is your trust signal, Highlight This has more history. What we have instead: no account at any tier, one payment, auto-contrast nobody else here does, PDFs, 52 languages, and a public changelog so you can judge whether we are the abandoning kind. The homepage has a live demo.

Questions people search for

How do I automatically highlight specific words on every webpage?

Install any extension from the table, type your words into its list, and they get marked on every page from then on. No copying text into another app, no repeating Ctrl+F on every page. Our guide walks through the setup in about a minute.

Is there an alternative to Highlight This without the membership?

Auto Highlight, if free and unmaintained is an acceptable trade. Ours, if you want something actively developed: the free plan needs no account at all, and Pro is $7 once rather than a recurring charge.

Do I need a license key?

With us, only if you buy Pro: Gumroad shows the key right after checkout and it activates in Settings. The free plan has no key, no login, and no account. Nothing to lose, nothing to wait for in your inbox.