Collate
Verified Oct 16, 2026 ActiveFree Mac app that chats with your PDFs on-device and links every answer back to the page
Listed on EffectHub ·
Pricing
- Pricing model
- 100% Free
Free download for macOS 13.5+ with no Collate account and no paid tier on the site. Local AI runs on the Mac at no cost; if you connect your own OpenAI or Anthropic key for a cloud model, that provider bills you directly.
Use tool ↗About Collate
Collate is a Mac app for reading PDFs with an assistant beside them. You can ask questions of a single document or a whole folder, get summaries, and follow every citation back to the exact page it came from, with the PDF staying visible next to the answer. Processing runs locally by default — the app does not copy imported PDFs into its own store, it keeps file permission plus extracted text, embeddings and chat history on the Mac — and cloud models are an explicit separate mode you opt into with your own API key. Highlights, folders and saved conversations can be exported. It is free with no account required. Windows is a waitlist, not a product.
- Platforms
- macOS
- API
- Not confirmed
- Last verified
- Oct 16, 2026
Verified sources
- Home page: free Mac app (macOS 13.5+, Apple Silicon and Intel), no Collate account required, local AI or bring-your-own-key cloud mode, page-level citations, Windows waitlist only (15 October 2026)collate.one ↗
- Terms: users connecting their own OpenAI or Anthropic key are responsible for that provider's fees; no operating entity or governing law named (15 October 2026)collate.one ↗
Is Collate legit?
We don’t label tools safe or unsafe. Below are the records we checked ourselves, each with the date we read it.
- Domain registered
- Jan 31, 2024 (2 years ago)Registry record (RDAP), registrar GoDaddy.com, LLC, looked up Sep 6, 2026
- TLS certificate
- Issued by Let's Encrypt, valid until Dec 5, 2026Seen in our own connection to the site on Oct 16, 2026
- Last checked
- Oct 16, 2026The site answered
- Operated by
- CollateOur research, card verified Oct 15, 2026
Pros & cons of Collate
Collate is the local-first answer to the PDF-chat category: no upload, no account, no subscription, and a design that keeps the source page next to the answer so you can check it. That combination is rare and the price is zero. The trade is platform lock — macOS 13.5 or later, Apple Silicon or Intel, and nothing else — plus whatever quality gap a local model has against a frontier one.
Pros
- Local processing by default — imported PDFs are never copied off the Mac
- Every answer carries citations you can follow to the exact page, with the PDF beside it
- Chat across a whole folder, not just one document at a time
- Free with no account, and cloud models are opt-in with your own key
Cons
- macOS only; the Windows build is a waitlist with no date
- Local model quality trails frontier cloud models on hard reasoning over long documents
- No API, no mobile app, no team features
- The publisher is only ever named as Collate — no company, country or contact beyond an email
Best for
- Reading research papers or contracts you would rather not upload anywhere
- Working across a folder of related PDFs in one conversation
- Mac users who want citations traceable to a page, not a paraphrase
Not for
- Windows or Linux users, and anyone needing mobile access
- Teams needing shared workspaces or collaborative annotation
Watch out: Local-first is the default, not the whole story — share links, web browsing, model downloads and analytics all reach the network, as the privacy policy spells out.
Alternatives to Collate
Collate head-to-head
Side-by-side fact sheets against the competitors our research or their makers name — pricing, platforms, API and both verdicts on one page.
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