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ChatPDF 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. Sharly AI publishes a starting price ($12.50); ChatPDF does not. Both have a free tier. Only ChatPDF ships a public API.

ChatPDFAsk questions about PDFs, documents and videosSharly AIChat across uploaded documents with citations back to sources

Side by side

FactChatPDFSharly AI
CategoryPDF ToolsPDF Tools
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at—$12.50 month
Public APIYesNo
PlatformsWeb, macOS, APIWeb
CompanyChatPDF GmbHVOX AI Inc.
Launched20232023
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 6, 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

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 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 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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