Humata vs ChatPDF

Humata and ChatPDF side by side: what each one is, what it costs to start, and whether you can try it free. Everything below comes from the vendors' own sites and other public sources, not from hands-on testing.

At a glance

Prices are in US dollars unless shown otherwise. Confirm the current price on the vendor's site before you buy.

Key differences

Both list a free tier, so you can try each before paying.

Humata has the lower starting price ($9.99/mo against $14.99/mo for ChatPDF). The cheapest plan rarely has the same limits or features, so compare plans before choosing on price.

Both are in our Research & Search category.

About each tool

H

Humata

Answers questions about uploaded documents with citations. Free has 60 pages a month; Expert is $9.99 a month (monthly billing, annual not listed).

Who it is for

Humata's site points to researchers, analysts, educators and teams that work with long documents such as technical papers. Groups larger than 10 users are directed to Enterprise sales.

Strengths

• Humata says answers include cited links into the source files, and that you can upload as many documents as you want and ask unlimited questions.
• The Team plan lists OCR for images and scanned text, department and folder-level permissions, and response personalization; Expert and Team list chat support.
• Humata's site says it offers an embeddable widget to put its PDF AI on a webpage, and links an API from its navigation.
• Humata's security page says it does not use user data to train its AI models, and describes TLS 1.3 in transit and application-level encryption of access tokens and keys.
• Humata's security page says it is SOC-2 Type II compliant and that third parties run penetration tests; the pricing page also lists a SOC-2 certificate for Enterprise.
• Per-page overage rates are published: $0.02 a page on Expert and $0.01 a page on Team once the monthly allowance is used.

Limitations

• Usage is metered in pages: Free includes 60 pages a month with no extra pages, Expert 500 and Team 5,000, with extra pages at $0.02 and $0.01 each. The pricing page says usage is measured by pages accessed and questions asked per month, but gives no question quota.
• The home page says Free covers up to 60 pages and up to 10 answers, but the pricing page lists no answer limit. The pricing page prints the Expert price split as 9 and 99 without a decimal point, while the home page says $9.99 a month. Confirm which applies.
• The terms of service say purchases are non-refundable except as required by law, and give a broad license to use submitted content for service provision, promotion and other purposes. The security page says document data used for the model is not retained beyond 30 days, dashboard data is kept until you request otherwise, and it describes encryption as both SHA 256-bit and AES-256 and lists storage vendors differently in two places.

Humata profileVisit site ↗

C

ChatPDF

Chat with uploaded documents (PDF, Word, PowerPoint, text). Free plan allows 2 documents a day; Plus price is not shown on official pages, so confirm on the site.

Who it is for

It suits people who want to question a document without making an account: the vendor says you can start with no registration, and signing up adds saved chat history and multi-document chats. Developers can also use a separate backend API for PDFs.

Strengths

• ChatPDF says answers include citations linked to the source passages, and the chat and document can be viewed side by side.
• ChatPDF says documents are encrypted in transit with SSL and in storage, are private by default, can be deleted at any time, and are stored with a SOC2 Type II certified vendor.
• ChatPDF says you can create secure share links for a document that recipients open without an account (they see the document, not your chat), and you can revoke access at any time.
• ChatPDF lists multi-file chats organized in folders, plus summaries, comparisons and translation, and says documents and chats can be in different languages.
• ChatPDF documents an API with endpoints to add a PDF by URL or file upload, send chat messages, and delete sources; each PDF is limited to 2,000 pages or 32 MB.
• ChatPDF lists related pages for chat with YouTube, PDF summary, flashcards, slides, AI writer, AI detector and research.

Limitations

• The free plan allows 2 documents a day per the vendor's home page and PDF AI page; the vendor pages read do not state page, file-size or question caps for either plan.
• Reported by third-party sites, which conflict: toolradar (checked Oct 5, 2026) lists Plus at $19.99 a month or $139.99 a year, aisotools (updated Oct 22, 2026) lists $19.99 a month, and top50aitools (checked Aug 2026) lists $5 a month. The same sites also differ on free caps (for example 20 questions a day vs 50, and 10MB vs up to 120MB uploads).
• The vendor's home page says it routes between two OpenAI models. The privacy policy and terms (Notion pages linked from the home page) could not be opened here, so training, retention, refund and cancellation terms are not confirmed.
• The API docs read list limits (6 messages per chat request, 2,500-token cap on history, one file per upload) but show no API pricing or data-retention terms.

ChatPDF profileVisit site ↗

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