ChatPDF vs Sharly AI
ChatPDF
chatpdf.com
Sharly AI
sharly.aiSide by side
| Figure | ChatPDF | Sharly AI |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $7.50/mo | $2/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 5 | 4 |
| Spec score · AI PDF Tools | 9.3 (#3) | 7.5 (#30) |
| Spec score · AI PDF Assistants | 9.3 (#3) | 7.5 (#21) |
| Citations | Built-in citations link answers to PDF references. | Sharly links insights to source passages and supports APA, MLA, and Chicago citation formats. |
| Intended users | The site presents ChatPDF for researchers, students, and professionals working with documents such as papers, contracts, and reports. | The maker describes the product for individual researchers, research teams and labs, and institutions with enterprise security and support needs. |
| Purpose | ChatPDF lets users summarize PDFs and ask questions about them using conversational AI. | Sharly describes itself as a secure AI workspace for summarizing, verifying, and collaborating on research documents. |
| Security | The site says documents are encrypted during transfer and storage, and can be deleted by the user. | Sharly says data and chats are encrypted with AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.3 with AES-256 in transit. |
Plans
ChatPDF
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- ChatPDF Plus monthly$14.99 a month
- ChatPDF Plus yearly$89.99 a year
- ChatPDF PlusPriced on request
In their own words
ChatPDF
ChatPDF lets users summarize documents and ask questions about their contents using conversational AI. Answers include citations that point to references in a PDF, and users can organize files in folders or discuss multiple PDFs in one conversation. It accepts PDFs in any language and supports conversations in any language; listed file types also include Word, PowerPoint, Markdown and text. Sharing links can be created, with access permissions managed or revoked. ChatPDF says documents are encrypted during transfer and storage and can be deleted by the user. Queries are routed dynamically between GPT-4o and GPT-4o-mini. The service works in a browser on any device and is listed for Android, iOS, Linux, macOS and Windows. Its backend API accepts uploaded PDFs or public URLs and lets users query them to build custom PDF chatbots. The API documentation limits each PDF to 2,000 pages or 32 MB and describes the chat API as stateless. The Free plan costs nothing and allows two documents per day.