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ChatPDF vs PDFtoChat

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. Both have a free tier. Only ChatPDF ships a public API.

ChatPDFAsk questions about PDFs, documents and videosPDFtoChatOpen-source web app for asking questions about an uploaded PDF, built on Together AI and vector search.

Side by side

FactChatPDFPDFtoChat
CategoryPDF ToolsChat with Documents & PDF
Pricing modelFreemiumFree
Public APIYesNo
PlatformsWeb, macOS, APIWeb
CompanyChatPDF GmbH—
Launched2023—
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 1, 2026

What our research says

ChatPDF

The quickest way to interrogate one long PDF without building retrieval yourself, and the page-level citations are what keep it honest. But ChatGPT and Claude now read PDFs natively, so ChatPDF only earns its subscription if you need those citations, the multi-file view, or the API.

Pros

  • answers cite specific pages, so you can check them instead of trusting them
  • handles Word, PowerPoint, Markdown and text files, not only PDF
  • REST API supports streaming and multi-turn conversations
  • free tier works with no account and no card

Cons

  • two documents a day on free runs out fast during real research
  • Plus pricing is not published anywhere on the site
  • no team plan, SSO or shared document library
  • hard per-file limit of 2,000 pages or 32 MB

PDFtoChat

PDFtoChat does the single job of PDF question-answering competently and costs nothing, which makes it a reasonable pick for occasional use. It's a side project rather than a maintained product, so don't expect customer support, uptime guarantees, or new features on any schedule.

Pros

  • Free with no account limits mentioned
  • Open-source, so the retrieval pipeline is inspectable
  • Backed by real infrastructure sponsors (Together AI, Chroma) rather than an ad-hoc demo
  • Handles textbook and contract-length PDFs, not just short files

Cons

  • No company or support channel behind it, just an individual maintainer
  • As a side project, features and uptime aren't guaranteed long-term

Which one fits

Choose ChatPDF if you need

  • students and researchers pulling verifiable quotes out of long papers
  • checking claims inside a contract or report you did not write
  • developers wanting a hosted PDF-Q&A endpoint instead of rolling their own RAG stack

Choose PDFtoChat if you need

  • Occasional PDF Q&A without paying for a subscription
  • Developers curious about the underlying RAG stack, since the code is public

More comparisons

Browse all PDF Tools →