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AskYourPDF vs Sharly AI

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, Sharly AI at $12.50. Both have a free tier. Only AskYourPDF ships a public API.

AskYourPDFChat with PDFs plus embeddable document-trained chatbotsSharly AIChat across uploaded documents with citations back to sources

Side by side

FactAskYourPDFSharly AI
CategoryPDF ToolsPDF Tools
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$11.99 month$12.50 month
Public APIYesNo
PlatformsWeb, iOS, Android, Chrome Ext, APIWeb
CompanyAskYourPDFVOX AI Inc.
Launched20232023
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

Sharly AI

Cross-document questions plus source-anchored citations are the differentiator; single-PDF chat is a commodity and NotebookLM does it free. Worth paying for only if you routinely reason over a stack of documents together and need to defend where an answer came from.

Pros

  • Docs-only mode is an explicit control most competitors do not expose
  • Citation output in APA/MLA/Chicago saves a manual formatting pass
  • Wide input coverage: PDF, XLSX, DOCX, PPTX, Google Docs, Notion, links
  • Role-based access and activity tracking on team plans

Cons

  • No developer API, which rules out batch or embedded use
  • Free tier stores documents for only 30 days
  • The headline $12.50 requires an annual commitment; monthly is higher
  • Company footprint is thin and inconsistently reported across sources

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 Sharly AI if you need

  • Analysts comparing several reports or filings in one question
  • Compliance and legal reviewers who need traceable answers
  • Academics assembling literature with formatted citations
  • Teams that need shared document workspaces with access controls

More comparisons

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