Dealing with long PDF documents can be a real drag. Whether you’re working through research papers or legal contracts, you’ve probably faced the challenge of sifting through multi-page PDFs. But with tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, you don’t have to read every single page on your phone or laptop anymore. AI technology now helps you navigate and understand PDF content through conversation. Here are six tools you should check out:
1. ChatPDFGPT: The Ultimate PDF Conversationalist
ChatPDFGPT is a cutting-edge tool for interacting with PDFs. It allows you to chat with your document in natural language, providing real-time answers, summaries, and explanations. The tool supports multiple languages and is accessible across web, desktop, and mobile platforms, making it easy to navigate and understand your PDFs.
It offers natural language queries for easy interaction and efficient content extraction and summarization. However, it may have limitations on PDF file size, and its accuracy can vary depending on the document’s complexity. The basic features are available for free, and it is compatible with web, Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android platforms.
2. ChatPDF: The Best PDF Chatbot
ChatPDF is super popular for a reason. It lets you “chat” with your PDFs and get responses that point you to the exact part of the document where the info was found. Just upload your PDF to chatpdf.com, and once it’s uploaded, you can start asking questions. You can even download the answers as a text file!
ChatPDF doesn’t just answer questions directly from the document—it can also handle questions related to the content that might not have a specific page. It supports multiple languages, which is handy if you’re working with documents in different languages. The free version has a 10MB and 120-page limit per PDF, and you can upload three documents per day and ask 50 questions. For $5 a month, you can upload up to 2,000 pages or 32MB per PDF, upload 50 PDFs a day, and ask up to 1,000 questions daily.
3. PDFGear CoPilot: A Free PDF Reader Companion
PDFGear is a free tool that not only reads and edits PDFs but also includes PDFGear CoPilot, a chatbot powered by GPT-3.5 Turbo. You can use it to ask questions, summarize documents, and analyze information. There are no limits on the number of pages or the size of your PDFs, though it doesn’t highlight specific parts of the page for you.
PDFGear lets you work with PDFs without any page or file size limits, and its chatbot provides answers with links to relevant pages. However, it doesn’t highlight the exact portions of the page that were queried.
4. SciSummary: For Researchers and Students
SciSummary is perfect for researchers, students, and journalists who need to get through scientific papers. It uses GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 to summarize research papers, whether you upload the PDF, provide a URL, or add raw text. You’ll need to create an account, and the tool offers various tabs like Summaries and Chat. You can summarize multiple papers in bulk and get recommendations for related studies.
The free plan lets you summarize around 10,000 words per month, with a limit of 200,000 words for the first document. Paid plans start at $5 a month for 1 million words, with a pay-as-you-go option available.
5. ChatDOC: Support for a Folder of PDFs
ChatDOC supports PDFs, DOC, DOCX, EPUB, and TXT formats, and you can upload a single PDF or an entire folder of documents (with a 30-file limit per folder on the free tier). It recommends questions based on your document and shows you the highlighted portions of the PDF related to the answers. Note that it only works on Chromium-based browsers, so no Firefox.
With the free plan, you can upload up to 20 pages, two documents per day, and ask 20 questions daily. Paid plans start at $9 per month, offering unlimited pages and up to 300 daily questions.
6. BrainyPDF: Simple PDF Chat Assistant with Some Personas
BrainyPDF lets you chat with your PDFs just like ChatPDF, offering responses with citations and page highlights. It has a few personas, including general, student, lawyer, HR, and accountant, although switching personas didn’t change the responses significantly.
The free plan lets you upload 120 pages per PDF, with a 10MB limit, and allows two PDFs daily with 50 questions. The $10 monthly Starter plan offers more flexibility.
6 AI PDF Chat Tools: ChatPDFGPT Wins
| Feature/Tool | ChatPDFGPT | ChatPDF | PDFGear CoPilot | SciSummary | ChatDOC | BrainyPDF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Key Use Case | Conversational PDF interaction | Popular chatbot for PDFs | Free PDF reader & chatbot | Summarizing research papers | Support for multiple document formats | PDF assistant with personas |
| Platform | Web, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android | Web | Web | Web | Web | Web |
| Languages | Multiple languages | Multiple languages | Multiple languages | Focus on academic papers | Multiple languages | Multiple languages |
| Page/File Limits | Limited by file size | 10MB or 120 pages (Free) | No limits on file size | 200,000 words (Free) | 20 pages/day (Free) | 120 pages/PDF (Free) |
| Highlighting Answers | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Free Plan | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Paid Plan | N/A | $5/month | N/A | $5/month | $9/month | $10/month |
| Unique Feature | Real-time answers, summaries, and explanations | Download answers, 50 PDFs/day | No page limits | Bulk summarization | Upload folder of documents | Personas for various professions |
| Limitations | Accuracy varies by document complexity | Limited questions/day, document size | No highlighting of specific answers | Account required, limited words/month | Browser-specific compatibility | Limited page/file size |
| Winner | ChatPDFGPT |
Why ChatPDFGPT Wins:
- Versatility: Supports multiple languages and platforms (web, desktop, mobile).
- Efficiency: Provides real-time responses and summaries, making it perfect for professionals handling various types of PDFs.
- Ease of Use: Unlike some tools, it doesn’t impose strict page or question limits in its free plan, making it more user-friendly for continuous interaction.
Get Your Info Faster
AI-powered PDF assistants can save you tons of time by quickly retrieving and summarizing information from PDFs. This is especially useful for students and professionals who need to sift through multiple documents. With these tools, you can get to the important stuff faster and more efficiently.