ChatJourney vs Sider

ChatJourney

ChatJourney is a small, free browser extension that fixes one real annoyance, ChatGPT's flat, hard-to-search conversation list, by laying past chats out as a visual timeline. It's a one-person open-source project rather than a company, so there is no paid tier, no support team, and no guarantee of continued maintenance.

Pros

• +Free and ad-free with no account or payment required beyond the ChatGPT login it reads from
• +Processes chat history locally rather than uploading it to a separate server
• +Open-source code is publicly viewable rather than a closed black box

Cons

• −Built and maintained by a single independent developer, with no company or support team behind it
• −Limited to ChatGPT; does not cover other chat assistants

Sider

Sider puts a chat panel on top of whatever page you're on, so you can ask about an article or PDF without copying it into a separate tab. The catch is that heavier use beyond the free daily cap needs a paid tier, and pricing quoted across review sites is inconsistent, so the entry price is worth confirming before committing.

Pros

• +Works as a sidebar on any web page rather than a separate chat tab
• +Routes one prompt to several models (GPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok)
• +Ships native apps for iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac plus browser extensions
• +Can chat with PDFs and YouTube videos, not just plain text

Cons

• −Free tier is capped at a small number of daily uses
• −Independent pricing write-ups disagree on exact plan costs depending on where you check
• −No public API for developers

Does ChatJourney or Sider have a free tier?

Both: ChatJourney is free to use, and Sider has a free tier.