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AskYourPDF vs Knowbase

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors. AskYourPDF starts at $11.99, Knowbase at $19. Both have a free tier. Both ship a public API.

AskYourPDFChat with PDFs plus embeddable document-trained chatbotsKnowbaseUpload documents, audio and video into one library, then ask questions across all of it

Side by side

FactAskYourPDFKnowbase
CategoryPDF ToolsChat with Documents & PDF
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$11.99 month$19 month
Public APIYesYes
PlatformsWeb, iOS, Android, Chrome Ext, APIWeb, API
CompanyAskYourPDF—
Launched2023—
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

AskYourPDF

A sensible pick when the job is repeatable question-answering across a document library rather than one clever answer, and the embeddable agent plus API are what separate it from the many ChatPDF clones. If you already live in Google's stack, NotebookLM covers the research half at no cost.

Pros

  • Page-level source citations instead of unattributed summaries
  • Documented API and Chrome extension, so it fits into existing workflows
  • Very large per-document page ceilings (2,500 on Premium, 6,000 on Pro)
  • Premium at $11.99/month billed yearly undercuts most document-chat rivals

Cons

  • Free tier is one document, three conversations and 50 questions per day
  • Advertised prices are annual-billing rates; monthly billing costs about 25% more
  • Daily rather than monthly quotas mean a heavy research day hits a hard wall
  • The 40-plus free writing tools are search-traffic surface, not the product

Knowbase

Stronger than the usual chat-with-PDF tool because audio and video are first-class: transcription with speaker labels means meeting recordings join the same searchable pool as the documents. The limits are storage and query counts, and they bite early - 500 queries a month is a fortnight of real use.

Pros

  • Transcribes audio and video with speaker identification, then makes it searchable alongside documents
  • Queries either a single file or the whole library in one go
  • Connectors for Google Drive, Notion and Dropbox rather than upload-only
  • Shareable links and an embeddable chatbot widget, plus a documented API

Cons

  • Query caps are low - 500 a month on the $19 tier - and count against everyone in a shared workspace
  • No company name, address or jurisdiction is published on the site or in the terms PDF
  • Storage on the entry tier is 2 GB, which a handful of video files will exhaust

Which one fits

Choose AskYourPDF if you need

  • Researchers querying large PDF sets and citing back to specific pages
  • Support teams embedding a chatbot trained on manuals and policy documents
  • Repeatedly filling the same non-fillable PDF forms from source records
  • Zotero users who want chat over their reference library

Choose Knowbase if you need

  • Anyone whose reference material is a mix of documents, recordings and video
  • Small teams wanting an embeddable support chatbot fed from their own files
  • Researchers who need answers with citations back to the source file

More comparisons

All Knowbase alternatives →Browse all PDF Tools →