AskYourPDF vs Sharly AI (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 12, 2026, AskYourPDF grades higher than Sharly AI: 2.4 against 2.2 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 5, 2026 and Nov 12, 2026 · graded Oct 10, 2026 and Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA
AskYourPDF grades higher on ease of use. They get the same grade on value for money, the free plan, features and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
AskYourPDF
Chat with PDFs and other documents and get cited answers
Sharly AI
AI workspace for summarizing, comparing and citing documents
Which one is for you
Pick AskYourPDF if
- Fits if you have one long paper or book and want answers with the page cited
- Works for Zotero users who want summaries and chat inside their library
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you need something to find the papers, as this only reads what you give it
- Tight if you're staying free, at 1 document a day of up to 100 pages and 15 MB, on GPT-5 Mini only
- Not for you if you like a way out, since the terms say all sales are final with no refunds
- Watch out: Claude and Gemini 2.5 Pro spend credits on every paid plan, and Premium includes only 10
- Watch out: the 3-day trial is called free on one page and $1 on another, and the API is billed apart at $49.99 a month
Pick Sharly AI if
- Fits if you compare several documents and need citations
- Works for someone who keeps documents in Notion, Google Docs or Dropbox
Look elsewhere if
- Tight if you stay free: 5 documents a day and 50 messages a month, if the plan card is right
- Skip it if you share work, as Pro is for one user and sharing needs Team
- Pricey if you need SSO, audit logs or private deployments, which are sales-only on Business
- Watch out: monthly-billing prices aren't visible on the pricing page
How we grade them
| 2.4GPAAskYourPDFFair | 2.2GPASharly AIFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CPremium is $11.99 a month billed yearly, $14.99 monthly, which is this category's middle. You get 50 documents and 1,200 questions a day with Knowledge Bases and OCR, but the Claude models and Gemini 2.5 Pro run on credits and Premium hands you 10. | CPro is $12.50 a month billed yearly, the upper end of a category whose middle is $10. Team is $24 per seat. |
| Free plan and trial | CFree for good, with 50 questions a day. The document cap is the limit: 1 a day, up to 100 pages and 15 MB, on GPT-5 Mini only. Caps you'll hit on your first real afternoon. The paid trial runs 3 days, and one page calls it free while another calls it a $1 trial. | CA free plan with 5 documents a day and 50 messages a month. The plan card says 5 a day, but the comparison table says 10 documents a month, so the cap is unclear. |
| Features | CIt does chat-with-your-document completely — PDF, DOCX, EPUB, text or a URL, answers citing the page, Knowledge Bases on paid plans for asking across many files at once. But that's the smaller half of research: it reads what you hand it and won't go and find the papers. | CSummaries, sourced answers, cross-document comparison and citation formats. Shared workspaces and annotations need Team, and SSO and audit logs are on a sales-only Business plan. |
| Ease of use | BNo store rating on record, so the B comes from what the listing shows, and it shows about the simplest thing in this category: upload a file, ask a question. What takes working out is the models, since some come with your plan and others spend credits. | CNo store rating on record. You upload and connect documents and set up workspaces. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb, iPhone, Android, a Chrome extension, a Zotero hook-up and a developer API. No Mac or Windows app, though, and that's what an A wants. The API is billed apart from the chat plans: free for 100 messages, then $49.99 a month. | BWeb only, with Notion, Google Docs and Dropbox. |
| Best for | asking questions of long documents | summarizing and comparing documents with citations |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: AskYourPDF and Sharly AI. How we grade
Price against what you get
AskYourPDF starts at $11.99 a month and scores 2.7 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. Sharly AI starts at $12.50 a month and scores 2.3.
AskYourPDF scores higher and starts $0.51 a month lower. Of the other AI research tools on the chart, 3 score higher than AskYourPDF for less, and 16 score higher than Sharly AI for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
- Sharly AI also covers documents.
At a glance
| AskYourPDF | Sharly AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free plan |
| Starts at | $11.99 per month, billed yearly ($14.99 billed monthly) | $12.5 per month, billed yearly |
| Free plan | 1 document a day of up to 100 pages and 15 MB, with 50 questions and 3 conversations a day on the GPT-5 Mini model. | One user, 5 documents a day, fast answers and a 10k context length. |
| Free trial | 3-day trial of Premium or Pro; the pricing page calls it a free trial, the chat-with-PDF page a $1 trial. | None listed |
| Web | ||
| iOS | ||
| Android | ||
| Browser extension | ||
| Made by | Proton Labs | VOX AI Inc. |
| Price read from | askyourpdf.com | sharly.ai |
| Checked | Oct 5, 2026 | Nov 12, 2026 |
Worth knowing
AskYourPDF
- The free plan covers 1 document a day, capped at 100 pages and 15 MB, and uses GPT-5 Mini only.
- Knowledge Bases, OCR and Chrome extension access appear only in the benefits of the paid plans.
- Claude 4.5 Sonnet, Claude 4.5 Opus and Gemini 2.5 Pro need credits on every paid plan; Premium includes 10 and Pro 30.
- The terms say all sales are final, with no refunds or pro-rata credits.
Sharly AI
- The pricing page shows only yearly-billed prices; the monthly-billing prices are not visible, so the monthly cost of month-to-month billing is not confirmed.
- The free plan's limits are shown as 5 documents a day in the plan card but 10 documents a month in the comparison table, so the exact cap is unclear.
- Pro is for one user; shared workspaces and annotations need Team, which lists up to 100 seats.
- SSO / SAML, audit logs and private deployments are on the sales-only Business plan.
Key features
AskYourPDF
- Chat with documents
- Upload a PDF, DOCX, EPUB or TXT file, or paste a URL, and ask questions in plain language. Each answer cites the page it came from, and the site says it works in more than 100 languages.
- Knowledge Bases
- Premium and Pro group documents into a Knowledge Base, so that one question draws a single cited answer from every file in it.
- Choice of AI models
- The free plan runs on GPT-5 Mini. Paid plans add GPT-5, GPT-5.2 and Gemini 2.5 Flash, while Claude 4.5 Sonnet, Claude 4.5 Opus and Gemini 2.5 Pro draw on credits.
- AI Agent for websites
- Trains a chatbot on your website and uploaded files and embeds it with one line of code. Visitors can open a support ticket when the agent cannot answer.
- AI form filler
- Fills fillable and non-fillable PDF forms using data taken from another PDF, a text file or pasted content.
- Developer API
- Adds documents by upload or URL and answers questions about them. API plans are separate: free with 100 messages, or $49.99 a month for 6,000 messages and 60,000 pages.
Sharly AI
- Summaries and key insights
- Uploaded documents get an automatic summary, topics and highlights. PDF, DOCX, PPTX and Notion exports are listed as supported formats.
- Sourced answers
- Answers point back to the pages of the uploaded files they came from, and a docs-only mode restricts the assistant to your documents.
- Cross-document comparison
- Key metrics from several documents can be lined up in a table, with matches, conflicts and missing data flagged.
- Citation formats
- Citations can be switched between APA, MLA and Chicago styles. The comparison table lists a citation format switcher as a paid-plan feature.
- Team annotations
- The Team plan adds shared workspaces, annotations, and citation history for groups working across the same documents.
Plans
AskYourPDF
Free$0
1 document a day of up to 100 pages and 15 MB, with 50 questions and 3 conversations a day on GPT-5 Mini.
Premium$11.99
per month, billed yearly; $14.99 billed monthly
50 documents a day of up to 2,500 pages and 31 MB, 1,200 questions a day, Knowledge Bases, OCR, the Chrome extension and 10 credits.
Pro$14.99
per month, billed yearly; $19.99 billed monthly
150 documents a day of up to 6,000 pages and 877 MB, longer replies, priority support and 30 credits.
EnterpriseCustom
Unlimited pages per document and unlimited questions, up to 1,000 documents a day and custom credits. Sold through sales.
Sharly AI
Free$0
One user with instant summaries and AI answers, 5 documents a day, PDF, DOCX and Notion uploads, 50 messages a month.
Pro$12.5
per month, billed yearly
For solo researchers: unlimited uploads, 1,000 messages a month, reasoning capabilities, a 50k context length, and a stated no-training-on-your-data policy.
Team$24
per seat / month, billed yearly
Up to 100 seats, unlimited documents and chats, team annotations, knowledge retention, semantic extraction, and analytics with citation history.
BusinessCustom
Unlimited seats, admin dashboard with role-based access, version history and audit logs, SSO / SAML, and private deployments. Sold through sales.
Ways to pay less
AskYourPDF
- Annual discount
Up to 25% off with annual billing
The pricing page labels annual billing as 25% off. Premium is $11.99 a month billed yearly against $14.99 billed monthly, and Pro is $14.99 against $19.99.
Sharly AI
- Annual discount
20% off with yearly billing
The pricing page marks the Yearly option as 20% off; the prices shown are the yearly-billed ones.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, AskYourPDF or Sharly AI?
As of Nov 12, 2026, AskYourPDF is cheaper to start with: $11.99 a month, against $12.50 a month for Sharly AI. AskYourPDF starts at $11.99 per month, billed yearly ($14.99 billed monthly), and Sharly AI starts at $12.5 per month, billed yearly.
Which has a free plan, AskYourPDF or Sharly AI?
As of Nov 12, 2026, both AskYourPDF and Sharly AI have a free plan.
Which platforms do AskYourPDF and Sharly AI run on?
As of Nov 12, 2026, only AskYourPDF lists iOS and Android apps and a browser extension. Both list a web app. A platform missing from a listing is one its maker's pages did not mention.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.