Decision Support · Side-by-side
Compare pricing, strengths, and use cases so it is easier to pick the right fit.
Change tools
ChatPDF wins for casual users and students who need a free, dead-simple way to chat with a single PDF. Genei wins for serious researchers and writers who need to organize multiple documents, auto-generate citations, and produce polished outputs. The biggest difference: ChatPDF is a quick Q&A tool; Genei is a full research workspace.
ChatPDF
Genei
Scores at a glance
Choose ChatPDF if
Choose Genei if
Key differences
Facts side by side
| ChatPDF | Genei | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | ||
| Mobile app | ||
| API access |
Common questions
Yes, for a single paper ChatPDF is faster and free. Genei is overkill if you only need one summary.
Both are web-only. You can open them in your phone's browser, but there's no dedicated app. ChatPDF's mobile site works fine for quick questions.
Genei is much better because it lets you organize papers into projects, take notes, and auto-generate citations. ChatPDF is just a Q&A tool.
Genei offers a 14-day free trial, then costs £3.99/month. ChatPDF has a permanent free tier.
Yes, you can export chat transcripts as Markdown. Genei lets you export notes and summaries as DOCX or PDF.
Neither is great. ChatPDF's OCR is basic; Genei's OCR on low-quality scans is hit-or-miss. For scanned documents, use a dedicated OCR tool first.
ChatPDF is the fastest free way to chat with a single PDF; Genei is the better value for serious research and writing projects.
If you just need to ask a PDF a few questions and move on, start with ChatPDF — it's free and takes 10 seconds. If you're writing a paper or report and need to keep track of many sources, pay the £3.99/month for Genei — it will save you hours of manual citation work.
