JobToTool

Productivity & research

Which AI tool should I use to chat with my PDFs and documents?

Upload documents and ask questions; the best tools ground every answer in your sources with citations.

  1. Rank 1

    Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM)

    Verdict Answers only from your uploaded sources with inline citations, and its audio overviews are great for studying, all free. It was recently rebranded to Gemini Notebook, and free limits cap sources per notebook at 50.

    Best for
    Students and researchers working from a fixed set of documents
    Price
    Free tier: yes. $19.99/mo (Google AI Pro). Free Standard tier: 50 sources/notebook, 50 chats/day. Rebranded from NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook.
    Last checked

  2. Rank 2

    Claude

    Verdict Handles very long documents well and is great at analysis and rewriting from them. Citations are less tightly grounded than NotebookLM's, and the free plan has tight usage limits.

    Best for
    Analysing long contracts, reports and papers
    Price
    Free tier: yes. $20/mo. Pro $17/mo billed annually. Research feature is paid-only.
    Last checked

  3. Rank 3

    ChatGPT

    Verdict Flexible file analysis, including spreadsheets and data, plus everything else ChatGPT does. More prone to blending in outside knowledge than source-grounded tools.

    Best for
    Mixed file types and data analysis
    Price
    Free tier: yes. $8/mo. $8/mo is ChatGPT Go; Plus is $20/mo with expanded deep research.
    Last checked

Get the weekly note

We email what shipped and what is worth switching to. The job below tells us what to write next.

Weekly noteJob ticket

Free weekly email: what shipped, and what is worth switching to. The job you type is demand research so we know what to cover first. No account. Unsubscribe any time by emailing privacy@jobtotool.com.