Best AskYourPDF Alternatives in 2026

1. Recap

Free

Best for: Researchers and heavy web readers who want ChatGPT summaries of long articles, section by section, inside their browser.

Pricing: Recap is an open-source browser extension. Check the official pricing page for current prices.

• Splits a long article into passages so you can summarise any section
• Summarises the whole page or only the text you select
• Recaps earlier content before a passage to give it context

2. SummarizePaper

Freemium

Best for: Researchers and students who want a quick read of arXiv papers before deciding which ones to read in full.

Pricing: The Free plan allows 10 new summaries per day and 100 questions per day to the AI assistant. Premium costs 7.00 EUR per month, with no daily summary limit and 500 questions per day.

• AI summaries of arXiv papers with key points and a plain-language version
• Chat with one or several arXiv papers in natural language
• Search by keyword, title, arXiv ID or author

3. docAnalyzer.ai

Freemium

Best for: Lawyers, analysts and researchers who need to question large document libraries and trace each claim back to a page.

Pricing: Basic costs 8 USD per month with 100 credits, Pro 16 USD with 200 credits and Pro Plus 30 USD with 800 credits. Team is 18 USD per seat (3 seat minimum) and Enterprise 32 USD per seat (5 seat minimum).

• Three chat modes: Ask for planning, Focus for deep analysis and Co-work in a canvas editor
• Clickable citations open the document at the exact page or section
• Reads PDF, Word, PowerPoint, ODT, RTF, EPUB, Excel, Markdown and HTML, plus web pages by URL

4. Otio

Freemium

Best for: Students, academics and analysts who research across many PDFs, articles and videos and want cited summaries and notes in one place.

Pricing: Free plan costs $0; Lite is $7 per month ($84 billed yearly), Go is $18 per month ($216 billed yearly) and Pro is $45 per month ($540 billed yearly).

• Upload PDFs (the site lists AI OCR and PDF extraction), web articles, YouTube videos, podcasts and spreadsheets into one library
• Chat with sources and get answers that cite the exact page and passage
• Separate project workspaces called Spaces keep each topic's sources apart

5. BooksAI.com

Free Trial

Best for: Non-fiction readers and students who want a quick summary of a book's key ideas and a way to ask follow-up questions before or after reading.

Pricing: New users get free credits to try BooksAI. After that you can buy more credits as one-time purchases or subscribe for unlimited credits. Check the official pricing page for current prices.

• Search for a book by title or ask for recommendations on a topic
• Generates an AI summary of a book's main ideas
• Chat with a book to ask questions or clarify concepts

6. VideoMind

Contact for pricing

Best for: People who want the key points of a YouTube video without watching all of it.

Pricing: Check the official pricing page for current prices.

• Paste a YouTube link into a web form to start an analysis
• Click Analyze Video to get AI-generated insights about the video
• Ask questions about the video's content

7. ChatDOC

Freemium

Best for: Students, researchers and analysts who read long PDFs and reports and need quick answers they can trace back to the source passage.

Pricing: The free plan gives 100 questions in total with no card needed. Pro is a subscription billed every 30 or 360 days. Check the official pricing page for current prices.

• Chat with documents and get answers with highlighted source quotes via TapSource
• Reads PDF, DOC, DOCX, scanned files, websites, EPUB, MD and TXT on paid plans
• Parses formulas, images and tables that run across pages

8. Video Highlight

Freemium

Best for: Students, researchers and knowledge workers who need to pull notes and quotes out of long lectures, interviews and YouTube videos.

Pricing: Video Highlight has a free plan and paid plans called Plus, Pro and Business. Check the official pricing page for current prices.

• Timestamped summaries, with every point in the summary time-stamped
• Chat with a video and get answers tied to the timestamps they came from
• Searchable transcripts that stay in step with playback

9. Genei

Free Trial

Best for: Students, academics and researchers who need to get through large volumes of articles and papers and pull out the key points fast.

Pricing: Genei offers a 14 day free trial. Basic costs 3.99 GBP per month and Pro costs 15.99 GBP per month.

• Summarises articles and research papers into concise, readable overviews
• Extracts the key information from documents while cutting out clutter
• Breaks long documents down into coherent, digestible sections

10. Scholarcy

Freemium

Best for: Students and researchers who need to triage and summarise many papers quickly while keeping references organised.

Pricing: Scholarcy has a free Article Summarizer (limit of 10 summaries) and paid plans: a monthly plan and Scholarcy Plus yearly (25% discount). The monthly plan includes a 1-week free trial. Check the official pricing page for current prices.

• Converts articles, studies and book chapters into interactive summary flashcards
• Enhance setting adjusts summary length from one sentence to a researcher-level overview
• Spotlight jumps to key findings, concepts and contributions