Free · Chat & research · 7 of 7 tools · updated Oct 17, 2026
Free AI tools to chat with PDFs & documents
Claude is the strongest tool to chat with PDFs & documents you can use without paying, at 85/100. What you get for nothing: Pro $20/mo, Max from $100/mo. 7 of the 7 tools tracked for this job have a free tier, an open-source licence, or are free outright. It is also the top-ranked tool for this job overall, free or not.
Same evidence score as the ranking — GitHub stars, Hacker News mentions, release activity, free access — recomputed nightly, never sold. See all 7 tools to chat with PDFs & documents.
Top 3
evidence / 100
+ Produces natural, editable prose and follows nuanced instructions over very long documents better than most rivals.
− Pro usage limits can run out mid-session on long conversations, and it has no built-in image generation.
+ Answers are grounded strictly in your uploaded PDFs, Docs, URLs and YouTube videos with citations, and Audio Overviews turn them into a two-host podcast.
− Sources are capped per notebook and the free tier limits daily queries and audio generations.
+ Very fast responses and EU-hosted data handling, with a cheaper Pro tier than the US incumbents.
− Smaller model ecosystem and fewer integrations, and answers lag the top US models on hard reasoning tasks.
All 7, side by side
| Tool | Score | Pricing | What you get free | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude | 85 | Free tier | Pro $20/mo, Max from $100/mo | web, mac, windows, ios, android, api, cli |
| NotebookLM | 16 | Free tier | Free; NotebookLM Plus via Google AI Pro $19.99/mo | web, ios, android |
| Le Chat | 11 | Free tier | Pro $14.99/mo | web, ios, android, api |
 AskYourPDF | 10 | Free tier | no limits published | web, chrome-extension, api |
 SciSpace | 9 | Free tier | no limits published | web, chrome-extension |
 ChatPDF | 8 | Free tier | no limits published | web |
 Humata | 8 | Free tier | no limits published | web |
A free tier counts, and so does an open-source licence you can self-host — both are in the table, so a tool that is only free for a trial is not here.
Head to head: Claude vs NotebookLM Claude vs Le Chat NotebookLM vs Le Chat