Claras vs Distill
Claras
meetclaras.comDistill
distill.lolSide by side
| Figure | Claras | Distill |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $4.39/mo | $3.99/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 4 |
| Spec score · AI Video Summarizers | 8.4 (#7) | 8.3 (#9) |
| Product | Claras transcribes YouTube videos and provides AI summaries, clickable chapters, timestamps and transcript-based chat. | Distill turns captioned YouTube videos into written summaries and is built for interviews, podcasts, and educational long-form video. |
| Security | The privacy policy says Claras uses commercially reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect information. | The privacy policy says data is encrypted in transit with HTTPS/TLS and access to production systems is restricted. |
| Support | The privacy policy lists [email protected] as its support email. | Distill says it typically replies to support email within one business day. |
Plans
Distill
- Free accountFree
- GuestFree
- Pro monthly$3.99 a month
- Pro annualPrice not published
In their own words
Claras
Claras is a web service and Chrome extension for transcribing YouTube videos and working with their transcripts. It creates AI summaries, clickable chapters, timestamps and transcript-based chat, and SuperSearch can summarize a playlist or YouTube search page in one go. It supports 17 languages, with automatic language detection and summaries in a preferred language when captions are available. Supported inputs include YouTube watch and youtu.be links, Shorts, live videos and embeds. Transcripts can be sent to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or NotebookLM, or exported as TXT, PDF or.srt files. The free plan includes 3 videos and 1 SuperSearch per month; Pro is $4.39 a month, and Unlimited is $6 a month. Unlimited and Lifetime users can use their own API key for models including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Claras says transcript text is not stored on its servers, though it is sent to third-party AI providers for summaries and chat.
Distill
Distill turns captioned YouTube videos into written summaries, with interviews, podcasts, and educational long-form video as its focus. Summaries are flowing prose divided into sections, and users can switch among summary, chapter, and transcript views. A player above the summary lets viewers jump to a chapter or moment, and each summary is followed by a short quiz. Distill relies on captions and reports when a video has no subtitles rather than inferring content from its title or description. It supports public captioned YouTube videos, focuses on videos roughly four minutes and longer, and does not support Shorts or very short clips. Users can paste a YouTube link or open one shared from YouTube or Safari. Guest access allows one summary a day for videos up to 30 minutes. An email-verified free account allows three daily summaries for videos up to 60 minutes, plus a saved library, sync, continued watching, and offline reading. Pro is $3.99 a month and includes unlimited summaries, videos up to two hours, 40+ languages, chapters, transcripts, and an outline. Distill is available on iOS.