Best Free AI Summarizers 2026: 7 Options Compared

Summarizing is the easiest job to hand to a free AI tool, and the main question is how much text you can paste before the free limit stops you. Quetext's free plan includes an AI summarizer with a 2,000-word limit, which fits an article or a short report. NotebookLM's free Standard plan allows 100 notebooks with 50 sources each, so it is the one to choose when you must summarize a stack of papers or documents together, and it answers questions across them. Wordtune's Basic plan gives 3 AI summaries a month, which is thin, while QuillBot bundles a summarizer with its paraphraser, so check its pricing page for free limits. The general assistants, ChatGPT, Claude and Le Chat, all offer free plans where you can paste or upload text and ask for a summary in any style you describe, with the usual daily message caps. Check the summary against the source for anything you will quote or act on, since all of these tools can drop a caveat or invent a detail. The trade-off is privacy: pasting a confidential contract into a free web tool sends it to a third party, so read the data policy first.

NotebookLM

The Standard free plan allows 100 notebooks and 50 sources per notebook, limits subject to change. Best for summarizing many documents together and asking questions across them.

Price: Free (Standard (free) plan: 100 notebooks per user and 50 sources per notebook, limits subject to change) (NotebookLM pricing, checked 2026-10-22).

Platforms and license: Web. Proprietary.

Best for: Research stacks and long source collections.

Compare: NotebookLM alternatives

Quetext

Free plan includes an AI summarizer limited to 2,000 words, next to a plagiarism checker and AI detector. Paid from $14.99 a month for 100,000 words.

Price: Free (Free plan at $0 per month: 1,000 words for the plagiarism checker and AI detector, 2,000 for the AI summarizer, 500 for the AI humanizer); paid from $14.99 per month (Essential, 100,000 words a month; monthly and yearly options shown, no annual price listed) (Quetext pricing, checked 2026-10-22).

Platforms and license: Web. Proprietary.

Best for: Summarizing a single article or draft.

ChatGPT

Free plan at $0 a month accepts pasted text and files within its usage limits. Plus is $20 a month; chatgpt.com/pricing returned an error, so figures come from OpenAI help pages.

Price: Free (Free plan at $0/month); paid from $8 per month (Go; Plus $20/month; availability varies by region) (ChatGPT pricing, checked 2026-10-25).

Platforms and license: Web, iOS, Android, macOS, Windows. Proprietary.

Best for: Custom-style summaries and follow-up questions.

Worth knowing: Go is listed at $8/month and Plus at $20/month. Pro tiers are $100, $200 and $500/month. Plan availability and usage vary.

Compare: ChatGPT alternatives

Claude

Free plan at $0 with usage limits. Pro is $17 a month billed annually. Good at long documents, but the free daily allowance can run out on a heavy day.

Price: Free (Free plan at $0); paid from $17 per month, billed annually (Pro; $20 billed monthly) (Claude pricing, checked 2026-10-22).

Platforms and license: Web, iOS, Android, macOS, Windows. Proprietary.

Best for: Long reports and documents.

Worth knowing: Max starts at $100/month; Team standard seat is $20 per seat billed annually ($25 monthly).

Compare: Claude alternatives

Gemini app

Free with a Google account; Google AI Plus is $4.99 a month. Handy when the source lives in your Google account.

Price: Free (Free with a Google account); paid from $4.99 per month (Google AI Plus) (Gemini app pricing, checked 2026-10-22).

Platforms and license: Web, iOS, Android. Proprietary.

Best for: Summaries tied to Google Workspace content.

Worth knowing: Google AI Pro is $19.99/month; Ultra starts at $99.99/month.

Le Chat

Mistral's assistant has a free plan; Pro is $14.99 a month. A non-US alternative for pasted text and uploads.

Price: Free (Free plan); paid from $14.99 per month (Pro) (Le Chat pricing, checked 2026-10-22).

Platforms and license: Web, iOS, Android. Proprietary.

Best for: General summaries from a European provider.

Wordtune

Basic plan includes only 3 AI summaries a month, plus 10 rewrites a day, so use it as a rewriting tool that can also summarize. Advanced is $4.89 a month billed annually.

Price: Free (Basic plan with 10 rewrites and AI suggestions a day, 3 AI summaries a month and unlimited spelling and grammar checks); paid from $4.89 per month, billed annually (Advanced) (Wordtune pricing, checked 2026-10-22).

Platforms and license: Web, Browser extension. Proprietary.

Best for: Rewriting first, summarizing occasionally.

Which one to pick

• You must summarize ten papers together: NotebookLM
• You have one article and want a quick gist: Quetext
• The document is long and dense: Claude
• You want the summary in a specific style: ChatGPT