PDF Summary

Summarize any PDF with ChatGPT and Claude

One click turns a forty-page document into something you can read. Highlight first and the summary is about what you flagged, not about the abstract.

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In short

What is Glasp's PDF Summary?

PDF Summary condenses a long PDF using ChatGPT or Claude without leaving the tab the document is open in. Highlight the passages that matter first and Glasp passes them to the model as context, so the result summarizes your reading rather than the document's opening pages. Every account includes a free monthly AI quota with no credit card, and summaries export with your highlights to Notion, Obsidian, Markdown or CSV.

Price
Free monthly quota, no card
Models
OpenAI GPT + Anthropic Claude
Exports
Notion, Obsidian, MD, CSV, JSON
A summary of your reading, not of the file

How to summarize a PDF

  1. 01

    Open the PDF with Glasp installed

    Add the Glasp extension to Chrome, Safari, Edge or Firefox and open any PDF, or upload one to your library.

  2. 02

    Highlight what matters (optional)

    Highlight the passages you care about first. Glasp uses them as context, so the summary is about the parts you flagged rather than the abstract.

  3. 03

    Generate the summary

    Pick a model and click summarize. The summary appears next to the document and can be exported with your highlights.

What you get

The parts that make a summary worth keeping

Choose the model that fits the document

Summarize with the GPT family or with Claude. A dense technical paper and a press release do not want the same model, and you can change your mind per document.

Choosing between ChatGPT and Claude to summarize a PDF in Glasp

Your highlights steer the summary

Highlight the four passages that matter and the summary is about those, with the rest as background. This is the difference between summarizing a document and summarizing your reading of it.

Highlighted passages in a PDF feeding a Glasp AI summary

Keep the summary with the source

The summary is stored against the document alongside your highlights and notes, so a paper you read six months ago comes back complete instead of as a filename you no longer recognize.

A Glasp AI-powered summary card generated from a highlighted document

Export it with everything else

Summaries travel with your highlights into Notion, Obsidian, Roam Research and mem.ai, or download as Markdown, HTML, CSV, plain text or JSON.

Exporting a Glasp PDF summary to Notion and Obsidian
The rest of Glasp

More ways to get through a document

2,000,000+

researchers, students, and lifelong learners highlight with Glasp.

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What readers say

  • “I love Glasp! I use it every time I read online articles. Highlighting with Glasp enforces me to actually read rather than scan through an article. I retain so much more info and can easily revisit my previously read articles to recall details and notes I've made.”
    Olive
    Product Designer
  • “I've researched every highlighting tool from Liner and Hypothesis to Instapaper and Pocket, and Glasp is the best hands-down. First, it creates a whole category of its own with social highlighting. This is important because it helps learners get recognized for finding amazing highlights, and it helps them connect with others who are learning the same thing at the same time. Also, it has the best highlighting workflow. While reading an article, you can select text in order to highlight and annotate without having to go to a different page. Furthermore, all of your highlights for a specific article appear on a right sidebar as you're reading, and they're easy to copy and paste into another note-taking app.”
    Michael Simmons
    Bestselling Author
  • “I used Instapaper but ended up hating it and stopped. There just wasn't a tool for me to continue using until Glasp. I was hooked immediately for the ease of use (highlight directly on the article web page), organized feed, and learning from others' highlights and notes. It makes sticking to learning something so easy and you can no longer find any excuses. Highly recommended to anyone who loves reading awesome articles or want to start forming such habit.”
    Puppy Tsai
    Product Manager

Related tools

Answers

Frequently asked questions

What is PDF Summary by Glasp?

PDF Summary turns a long PDF into a short one using ChatGPT or Claude, without leaving the browser tab the document is open in. If you have highlighted passages first, Glasp passes them to the model as context, so the summary reflects what you flagged rather than whichever pages happened to come first.

Which AI models can I use?

Glasp summarizes with models from OpenAI (the GPT family) and Anthropic (Claude), and the available models are updated as better ones ship rather than frozen at the version that was current when you signed up.

Is PDF Summary free?

Yes. Every Glasp account includes a free monthly AI quota and no credit card is required. The pricing page has higher limits for people who summarize all day.

How is this different from pasting the PDF into ChatGPT?

Three things. You do not have to extract the text first; the summary lands next to the document and your highlights instead of in a separate chat that you will lose; and your own highlights steer what the summary is about. Pasting a PDF into a chat window gives you a summary of the document, not a summary of your reading of it.

Can I export the summary?

Yes. Summaries export alongside your highlights to Notion, Obsidian, Roam Research and mem.ai, or download as Markdown, HTML, CSV, plain text or JSON.

Does it work on a paper behind a login?

If you can open the PDF in your browser, Glasp can summarize it. For files that are not on the web at all, upload them to your Glasp library and summarize from there.

Can I summarize in another language?

Yes. Ask for the summary in the language you want and the model will produce it there, regardless of the language of the document.

Is my PDF used to train AI models?

No. Glasp does not sell your data and does not use your PDFs to train public AI models. The privacy policy sets out how your documents and summaries are handled.

More questions? Read the docs or email hi [at] glasp.co.

Get through the reading list

Add Glasp to your browser and summarize your first PDF today. It's free.