PDF.ai

Upload a document and ask questions across it in chat, with a Chrome extension that works on any PDF you already have open in the browser.

Documents & files Apps

Checked 25 Sep 2026

Open pdf.ai

What you'd use it for

Getting one answer out of a long report or contract without reading the whole thing, including PDFs you find online rather than download.

Ask questions of a PDF and get answers with the passage they came from, rather than reading the document end to end
Activate on a PDF already open in the browser through the Chrome extension, skipping the upload entirely
Query across every document you have uploaded at once, from the Pro plan up
Run OCR over a scan so a picture of text becomes searchable, capped by page count on every tier
Call the same engine from your own software through the Parse, Extract and Chat APIs

The verdict

PDF.ai does document chat well and its Chrome extension is the genuine differentiator, working on a PDF you already have open instead of making you download and re-upload it. Two things to understand before paying. The free tier allows a grand total of one document, so it is a demonstration rather than a plan. And Pro at $10 a month still runs what PDF.ai itself labels the Basic AI model -- the Advanced one starts at Ultimate, $20 a user a month, which is where the answers you are paying for actually come from. OCR is capped by pages per file at every level, only 10 on Pro, so a scanned contract of any length needs Ultimate or Enterprise. Worth it if you read long documents for a living and want the extension; overkill if your assistant already accepts file uploads.

What it costs

Tier	Price	For	Includes
Hobby	$0, free forever	Trying it. One document.	A PDF upload limit of one, 100 questions a month, OCR on 2 pages per file, a 10MB maximum file size, the Chrome extension, and the Basic AI model. No querying across multiple documents.
Pro	$10/month billed yearly, or $17/month billed monthly	One person reading long documents regularly.	100 PDF uploads, 1,000 questions a month, OCR on 10 pages per file, 50MB maximum file size, and chat across all your documents at once. Still the Basic AI model.
Ultimate	$20/user/month billed yearly, or $27/user/month billed monthly	The first plan with the better model, and the first with team seats.	Unlimited uploads and questions, OCR on 50 pages per file, the Advanced AI model, AI Agents, Capture and Ask, OpenAI Whisper and TTS for audio, and the ability to invite team members. File size stays at 50MB.
Enterprise	$30/user/month billed yearly, or $37/user/month billed monthly	Organisations embedding the product or handling larger scans.	Everything in Ultimate, plus OCR on 100 pages per file, a 100MB maximum file size, a white-labelled PDF embed, and early access to new features.

Read from PDF.ai's own pricing page on 25 Sep 2026. Vendors change prices without notice.

What you need to start

A browser, and the Chrome extension if you want the feature that distinguishes this from its competitors
An account for anything past the single free document
Ultimate or above if your documents are scans rather than digital PDFs, because of the per-file OCR page caps

A minute. Upload a document, ask a question, read the answer. Installing the Chrome extension so it works on PDFs you open in the browser adds another minute and is the part worth doing.

Your first run Upload a document and ask it something -- an answer in seconds, with no setup. That first upload is also the whole of the free tier, which allows exactly one.

Where it breaks

The AI model is the tier gate, and the pricing table is the only place that says so. Hobby and Pro both run what PDF.ai calls the Basic model; Advanced arrives at Ultimate, twice Pro's price. So the $10 plan buys volume rather than better answers, which is the opposite of what most buyers assume they are paying for. The annual discount is also advertised as a single figure when it is not one: the badge says save 25%, and against the monthly rates that works out at 41% on Pro, 26% on Ultimate and 19% on Enterprise. The badge flatters the cheapest plan and overstates the dearest. Plans are cancellable at any time with no long-term commitment, per the page.

Web app plus a Chrome extension that activates on PDFs opened directly in the browser, without needing to upload them first. Separately from the subscription plans, PDF.ai sells Parse, Extract and Chat APIs through its own API Hub for building the same capability into your own software.

Previously unpublished: pdf.ai renders its marketing pages entirely client-side and returned no pricing text to any fetch, so the entry had a placeholder tier and was held as a draft. Read in a browser and now published with the full four-tier comparison.

When not to use it

Not for anyone who needs to genuinely understand a document rather than extract from it -- this answers questions, and a wrong answer looks exactly like a right one. Not for a business already paying for a general assistant that accepts file uploads, which covers most of this job at no extra cost. And not for scanned documents at the lower tiers: OCR runs to 2 pages per file on free and 10 on Pro, so a twenty-page scan is out of reach until you are at $20 a user a month.

The document-chat category — upload a PDF, ask it questions instead of reading the whole thing — has a lot of entrants, and PDF.ai’s practical edge is the Chrome extension: it can activate on a PDF you’re already viewing in the browser, skipping the upload step entirely for documents you find online rather than ones sitting on your machine.

That’s useful for the specific case of research and due diligence — a long report, a contract someone sent you, a technical spec — where you want an answer to one question rather than a full read-through. It won’t replace actually reading a document you need to understand deeply; it’s built for extraction, not comprehension.

The free tier is one document

Not one a day, not one at a time. The PDF upload limit on the Hobby plan is 1.

That is worth stating plainly because “free forever” sits directly above it on the page, and the two things together give an impression the number does not support. What you get is a demonstration: upload something, ask it a hundred questions over the month, decide.

It is a defensible way to run a trial. It is not a free tier anybody can work on, and if you are comparing this against a general assistant whose file upload is included in a subscription you already pay for, that comparison is not close.

Paying $10 does not buy the better model

This is the thing the plan cards would let you miss, and it is only visible in the comparison table.

PDF.ai labels its model choice per tier. Hobby and Pro both run “Basic”. The “Advanced” model starts at Ultimate, at $20 a user a month — double Pro.

So Pro’s $10 buys volume: a hundred documents instead of one, a thousand questions instead of a hundred, and the ability to query across everything at once. What it does not buy is better answers. For a tool whose entire value is the quality of the answer, that is the distinction to be clear about before choosing a tier, and “Basic” against “Advanced” is all the vendor tells you about what changes.

OCR is capped per file, and the caps are low

If your documents are scans rather than digital PDFs, this is the number that decides your plan and it is easy to skip.

OCR runs on 2 pages per file on Hobby, 10 on Pro, 50 on Ultimate and 100 on Enterprise. A twenty-page scanned contract is beyond Pro. A two-hundred-page one is beyond everything.

Maximum file size moves too — 10MB, then 50MB for both Pro and Ultimate, then 100MB on Enterprise — so the two ceilings do not rise together, and a large file can be refused on a plan whose page count would have been fine.

Where it fits

Against a general assistant’s file upload in ChatGPT or Claude, PDF.ai’s case rests on the extension and on chatting across your whole library at once. If you already pay for one of those, try the job there first — it will often be enough, and it costs nothing more.

Against Humata or AskYourPDF, you are choosing between near-identical products on price, page caps and whether the browser extension matters to how you work.

Alternatives

Assistants & chatApps

ChatGPT

OpenAI's assistant in a browser tab, a desktop app and a phone app, where you ask questions, draft text, and hand it files or spreadsheets to work through.

Checked 25 Sep 2026

Assistants & chatModel

Claude

Anthropic's AI assistant, available in a browser tab and — the part that matters here — as a desktop app that can read the files on your own machine and reach the systems you connect to it.

Checked 15 Sep 2026