ChatPDF vs Perplexity AI vs Smallpdf AI PDF vs LightPDF

Which one fits you in 2026? Traffic, pricing, input → output, tasks and community side by side.

Your tool
ChatPDF
vs
Competitor 1
Perplexity AI
Competitor 2
Smallpdf AI PDF
Competitor 3
LightPDF
Compare
4 tools · best value per row highlighted
Your tool ChatPDF
chatpdf.com
ChatPDF is a document question-answering app: upload a PDF, ask questions in plain language, and get answers with built-in citations that point back to the source passage.
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Competitor Perplexity AI
perplexity.ai
Search that gives answers instead of links
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Competitor Smallpdf AI PDF
smallpdf.com
Smallpdf AI PDF, also called Chat with PDF, lets you upload a document and talk to it.
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Competitor LightPDF
lightpdf.com
LightPDF AI for Docs is an online tool that utilizes artificial intelligence to summarize and extract insights from uploaded PDF, Word, Excel, and PPT documents. With multi-platform availability and s
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Traffic estimated monthly website traffic
Monthly visits
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95.2Mvisits/mo
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1.8Mvisits/mo
MoM change
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▼ 8.2%
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▲ 1.0%
6-month growth
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-42.9%
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-4.4%
Global rank web
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#446
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#34,433
Avg. last 3 months
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104.9M
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1.7M
Bounce rate lower is better
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33%
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51%
Pages / visit
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3.6
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2.3
Visit duration
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4m 18s
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1m 31s
Traffic sources
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● Direct 94% · ● Referral 4%
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● Direct 88% · ● Referral 10%
ChatPDFPerplexity AISmallpdf AI PDFLightPDF
047.3M94.5M141.8M189MPerplexity AI · 189MPerplexity AI · 179.6MPerplexity AI · 170.1MPerplexity AI · 153.8MPerplexity AI · 166.8MPerplexity AI · 154.9MPerplexity AI · 138.1MPerplexity AI · 115.8MPerplexity AI · 103.8MPerplexity AI · 95.2MLightPDF · 1.6MLightPDF · 1.6MLightPDF · 1.9MLightPDF · 1.7MLightPDF · 1.9MLightPDF · 1.9MLightPDF · 1.8MLightPDF · 1.5MLightPDF · 1.8MLightPDF · 1.8M1M10M100M1BPerplexity AI · 189MPerplexity AI · 179.6MPerplexity AI · 170.1MPerplexity AI · 153.8MPerplexity AI · 166.8MPerplexity AI · 154.9MPerplexity AI · 138.1MPerplexity AI · 115.8MPerplexity AI · 103.8MPerplexity AI · 95.2MLightPDF · 1.6MLightPDF · 1.6MLightPDF · 1.9MLightPDF · 1.7MLightPDF · 1.9MLightPDF · 1.9MLightPDF · 1.8MLightPDF · 1.5MLightPDF · 1.8MLightPDF · 1.8MNov '25DecJan '26FebMarAprMayJunJulAug
Pricing
Model
Free
Freemium
Freemium
Freemium
Starting price
Free
$20per month · free tier available
€6per month · free tier available
$1.33per month · free tier available
Free tier
Free trial
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API access
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Plans
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Pro €7.50/moTeam (2-100 users) €6/mo
Free FreeMonthly $5.99/moYearly $15.99/yrLifetime $39.99
Capabilities input → output
Input
DocumentsTextWeb pages
CodeDocumentsImagesText
DocumentsText
DocumentsWeb pages
Output
Text
CodeText
Text
Text
Skill level
Beginner-friendly
Beginner-friendly
Beginner-friendly
Beginner-friendly
Categories
Education & LearningProductivity & OfficeResearch & AnalyticsWriting & Content+4 more
Chatbots & CompanionsEducation & LearningLifestyle & EntertainmentProductivity & Office+13 more
Productivity & OfficeWriting & ContentAI Document ExtractionAI PDF+1 more
Productivity & OfficeWriting & ContentAI Document ExtractionAI PDF+1 more
Tasks what each tool can do · 2 shared · core   partial
Tasks covered
12
10
8
9
Document summarization
Summarizing
PDF analysis
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PDFs
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Interactive PDF processing
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Research
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Document data extraction
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PDF summaries
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Homework assistance
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AI search
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Data extraction
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Document chat
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Search engine
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Chatbots
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OCR
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PDF translations
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Research papers
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Text extraction
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Academic research
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Document processing
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Document reading
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Literature reviews
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Summaries
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Writing
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Community on aitoolstime
Rating
no ratings yet
no ratings yet
no ratings yet
no ratings yet
Upvotes
▲ 0
▲ 3
▲ 0
▲ 0
Saves
0
0
0
0
Reviews
0
0
0
0
Prompts
0
1
0
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Verified listing
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Traffic figures are third-party estimates for the tool's own domain; tools sharing a domain with a bigger product are not counted. Pricing is captured from each tool's site and may lag.