ChatPDF vs Gemini Notebook
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
ChatPDF
Ask questions about PDFs and get answers with citations
Gemini Notebook
Google's AI research assistant that answers from your own sources
Where they differ
- ChatPDF starts at $89.99 per year or $14.99 per month (US App Store in-app purchase). Gemini Notebook starts at $4.99 per month (Google AI Plus).
- Only ChatPDF lists macOS and Windows apps.
- ChatPDF also covers research and citations.
- Gemini Notebook also covers notes.
At a glance
| ChatPDF | Gemini Notebook | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free plan |
| Starts at | $89.99 per year or $14.99 per month (US App Store in-app purchase) | $4.99 per month (Google AI Plus) |
| Free plan | 2 documents a day, usable without an account. A free account adds saved history and multi-file folders. Free files are capped at 120 pages or 10 MB. | Standard tier, free with a Google account: 100 notebooks, 50 sources per notebook and standard usage limits that refresh every 5 hours up to a weekly cap. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| macOS | ||
| Windows | ||
| iOS | ||
| Android | ||
| Made by | ChatPDF GmbH | |
| Price read from | apps.apple.com | gemini.google |
| Checked | Oct 5, 2026 | Oct 4, 2026 |
Who each one suits
ChatPDF
- Students and researchers who want quick answers from a paper or textbook chapter
- Asking questions across several files kept in one folder
- Trying a document chat tool without creating an account
- Turning course material into flashcards or slides
Gemini Notebook
- Students and researchers working from a set of their own documents
- Turning long documents or lecture material into audio summaries
- Answers that cite the source passage they came from
Worth knowing
ChatPDF
- The website shows Plus prices only in an upgrade dialog and sets them per visitor; the prices here are US App Store in-app purchases, and web checkout may differ.
- The free plan covers 2 documents a day, and the site's limits cap free use at 20 messages a day and files of 120 pages or 10 MB.
- AI Research summaries are built from abstracts, and chatting with a full paper works only for open-access papers.
- The best model is reserved for Plus; ChatPDF says it routes queries between GPT-4o and GPT-4o-mini.
Gemini Notebook
- Paid tiers are not sold on their own: higher limits come with a Google AI Plus, Pro or Ultra subscription.
- The free Standard tier allows 100 notebooks and 50 sources per notebook.
- Usage limits are compute-based. The quota refreshes every 5 hours until a weekly limit is reached.
- The mobile app cannot yet generate or view notes, mind maps, reports or data tables.
Key features
ChatPDF
- Chat with documents
- Ask questions about a PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Markdown or text file with the chat and the document side by side. Clickable citations scroll to the passage an answer came from.
- Multi-file folders
- Put files in a folder to ask questions across all of them in one conversation. Folders and saved chat history need a free account.
- AI Research
- Ask a question to find academic papers and get a summary with citations, built from the papers' abstracts. Filters narrow results to recent or influential work.
- YouTube and website chat
- Paste a YouTube or website link to ask questions about it. Video answers include clickable timestamps and an interactive transcript.
- Flashcards, slides and writing
- Makes flashcards that export to Anki, Quizlet, Brainscape or CSV, and slides that export to PowerPoint. The AI Writer drafts text with citations and exports to Word or Markdown.
- Developer API
- A backend API adds PDFs by URL or file upload and answers questions about them, with optional page references. API files are limited to 2,000 pages or 32 MB.
Gemini Notebook
- Grounded chat with citations
- Chat with a notebook to get answers based on the sources you added, with in-line citations that point back to them.
- Many source types
- Add PDFs, Google Docs, Slides and Sheets, Word and PowerPoint files, web URLs, public YouTube videos, audio files and images. A source can hold up to 500,000 words or 200 MB.
- Audio and Video Overviews
- Turns a notebook's sources into an Audio Overview or a Video Overview. In the mobile app, Audio Overviews can be downloaded for offline listening.
- Study and presentation outputs
- Generates mind maps, reports, flashcards, quizzes, infographics and slide decks from your sources.
- Deep Research
- An agentic feature that browses up to hundreds of websites, writes a multi-page report and lets you import the results and sources into a notebook.
- Mobile apps
- Apps for Android phones and tablets, iPhone and iPad. Share a website, PDF or YouTube video from another app straight into a notebook.
Plans
ChatPDF
Free$0
2 documents and 20 messages a day, with files of up to 120 pages or 10 MB and folders of up to 5 files.
Plus$14.99
per month on the US App Store; $89.99 for the yearly plan
Unlimited questions and documents, files of up to 2,000 pages or 150 MB, 50 PDFs per folder and the higher-quality model.
Gemini Notebook
Standard$0
Free with a Google account: 100 notebooks, 50 sources per notebook and standard usage limits.
Plus$4.99
per month, with Google AI Plus
200 notebooks, 100 sources per notebook and usage limits two times higher than standard.
Pro$19.99
per month, with Google AI Pro
500 notebooks, 300 sources per notebook and usage limits four times higher than standard.
UltraFrom $99.99
per month, with Google AI Ultra
500 notebooks, 500 or 600 sources per notebook depending on the Ultra tier, and usage limits 5x or 20x higher than AI Pro.
Ways to pay less
ChatPDF
- Annual discount
About 50% off with the yearly plan
On the US App Store the yearly Plus plan is $89.99 against $14.99 a month. That works out to about $7.50 a month, half the monthly rate.
Gemini Notebook
- Education
Free Pro plan for college students for a year
Google's US subscriptions page says college students get a free Google AI Pro plan for one year. Google AI Pro provides the Pro tier of Gemini Notebook.
