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PDF.ai vs Microsoft Edge Copilot | What Is the Best Chat-With-A-PDF Tool?
Publish date
Jan 2, 2025
AI summary
PDF.ai is a superior chat-with-PDF tool compared to Microsoft Edge Copilot, offering extensive features for document interaction, organization, and summarization, while Edge Copilot is limited to basic summarization and is browser-dependent. PDF.ai is more suited for users needing advanced PDF functionalities.
Language
Almost every person deals with PDF documents in one way or another.
Professionals, entrepreneurs, teachers, students, the parents of those students… Everyone!
If that is your case, you don’t want to spend your precious time searching and capturing information from your PDF in the old way (which is 100% manual and very time-consuming).
You want to ensure efficiency, which will only happen if you use a high-quality PDF tool.
Recently, the ability to chat with PDFs is getting a lot of attention because it boosts productivity.
As you can imagine, the market is flooded with different tools competing for the billions of potential users available.
So, if we consider all of the options available, what is the best chat-with-a-PDF tool?
In this article, I compare PDF.ai and Microsoft Edge Copilot, two of the top competitors in this market.
I listed and explained their features, pricing, pros, and cons and made a final analysis.
After reading this comparison, you can decide which chat-with-your-PDF tool is the best alternative for you.
PDF.ai
PDF.ai is a powerful tool that lets you chat with any PDF document.
From legal agreements to financial reports, PDF.ai brings your documents to life.
You can ask questions, get summaries, find information, and more.
Over 1.5 million users back it up as the most powerful and reliable Chat-with-PDF tool.
PDF.ai Top Features
Chat with all of your PDF documents
Ask a question, and PDF.ai will use AI to pick up the answer from your documents.
I received your answer, along with the document from which it came. No matter how many PDFs you have, hundreds or even more, transform your files into your knowledge base.
Use tags to categorize different PDF documents
Your work deserves order.
PDF.ai allows you to tag your documents to organize them by topics, categories, or under other labels that match your personal work or study systems.
You can tag your PDFs during the upload process if needed.
Then, you can filter the documents on your dashboard by clicking on the name of your desired tag.
Select texts to summarize or explain quickly
Once you have uploaded and opened a document, you may select specific text from the document, right-click, and choose “Summary” or “Explain text.”
The explanation or summary of the text you have chosen will also provide you with the related pages (where the answers came from) of your selected text.
Chat with PDF in all GPT-4 models and Claude 3.5 Sonnet
PDF.ai supports the most capable models. That is great for chats that need advanced reasoning.
Special Keywords
PDF.ai incorporates the detection of special keywords in multiple-choice questions.
In other models without MCQ, the answers to the questions would be just a fragment of the text.
This bot will select the answer directly from the question without any additional explanation or description.
Without the MCQ keyword, sample Q&A will be like:
With the MCQ keyword, the same sample Q&A will be like:
Embed a PDF With an AI Chatbot
This is a great option if you want to use interactive documents. You can go to your PDF.ai account and create an embed code to use as an AI chatbot on your website.
That way, users can get responses and chat about your PDF documents on your landing page or website.
Keep Your Documents Private
If you prefer not to upload your document to our servers, you can choose to make it private during the upload process.
This is very convenient when dealing with privacy-sensitive PDFs. However, you must be aware that while you will be able to chat with your PDF, you won’t be able to preview it.
Let the PDF.ai Bot Speak Your Language
You can post a PDF in one language while posing queries in another.
All the answers from PDF.ai will be sent in your chosen language.
With this, say goodbye to spending your time and using another tool to translate the answers you get from us. Ask, explain, or summarize your PDF in English and get the answers you need in your preferred language, or vice versa.
Prompt Library
If you frequently have specific questions or requests during your work or study tasks, you can easily retrieve them in seconds using the Prompt Library.
To save a prompt from your current chat, hover your mouse over the prompt you want to save until the “+” icon shows up.
Click the “+” icon, and a success message will appear once added.
To see your saved prompts, click on the Prompt Library icon.
You will be able to easily access these instructions as needed.
To modify a previously saved prompt
Go into your prompt library.
Click the pencil icon for the prompt you want to edit.
Hit “Save” once done.
That’s all. You can also remove the prompt you are no longer using by clicking the trash icon.
Capture & ask
You will find the Capture & Ask icon next to the chat box in each document view.
If you click on this icon, you will automatically be able to take a screenshot of the document.
After taking the screenshot, navigate to the chat box area and ask any questions or make your requests related to the screenshot.
If the screenshot attachment remains active in the chat box input area, you can ask follow-up questions.
After finishing that image, you can move on to other questions. To remove the attached image from the chat box area, simply click on the "x" icon.
This feature will be especially useful if you are more of the visual type and want to work fast through a document without having to read a lot or if your PDF has more visually separated sections.
Chrome Extension
You can add the PDF.ai extension to your Chrome browser to start chatting effortlessly with any PDF. It saves you hours and boosts your productivity!
Download Chat History
Maintain and access a record of your conversations by downloading your chat history.
With this, ease your mind knowing you have a local copy of your chat that may include important information you may need in the future.
Free E-Sign Tool Included
PDF.ai also has a set of free tools that you can use unlimitedly and without registering.
One of my favorite ones is the e-sign PDF tool.
You can sign PDFs online for free or request signatures from others. 100% free!
PDF.ai Pricing Plans
PDF.ai offers four different pricing plans right now.
Hobby
Price: Free forever.
It includes:
Pro
Price: $17 per user per month
$10 per user per month (yearly payment)
It includes:
Ultimate
Price: $27 per user per month
$20 per user per month (yearly payment)
It includes:
Enterprise
Price: $37 per user per month
$30 per user per month (yearly payment)
It includes:
For the full list of features please visit this page.
The Pros of Using PDF.ai
PDF.ai is a tool designed to make you super-human when working with PDF documents.
It allows you to:
- Learn more
- Understand things better
- Get new perspectives and ideas
- Summarize information quickly
- Create new content from existing documents
- Work with different languages at the same time
- Get more repetitive tasks done faster
- Integrate every PDF.ai with your workflow
- Use extra tools like a Resume or Invoice scanner
- More
All of this at a very affordable price!
And you know what’s the best? PDF.ai is being developed as we speak.
New features are added consistently to make your experience better and more valuable.
The Cons of Using PDF.ai
While PDF.ai is an extremely reliable tool when it comes to working with PDF documents, it still has some areas of opportunity.
Some of the cons of using PDF.ai would be the following:
- You can't redeem ChatGPT's subscription to use PDF.ai for free
- It only supports PDF file format
Microsoft Edge Copilot
Microsoft Edge is an AI-powered browser.
With Copilot in Microsoft Edge, you can get answers to your questions without leaving the tab or window that you're already in.
You can ask Copilot to help you make decisions, research topics, or summarize web pages or PDFs to find exactly what you're seeking.
Microsoft Edge Copilot Features
Now it’s time to analyze Edge Copilot's capabilities, features, included, etc.
The following are the top Edge Copilot features listed on Microsoft’s website:
- Summarize the content of the webpage or PDF you are viewing. You can click the Discover Card that says “Create a summary” to quickly get a summary of this page.
- Copilot can talk to you. You can click on the microphone on the right side of the Composer and get ready to have a conversation with Copilot. You can talk to Copilot about anything!
- Get personalized daily briefings. Copilot Daily provides you with a personalized summary of news, weather, and the updates you need to hit the ground running. In Copilot, click the Discover Card that says "Copilot Daily" to get started. You can choose to give Copilot permission to use your chats, Bing, and MSN activity, and any inferred interests for more personalized experiences.
The only AI tool relevant to this comparison is the first one, “Summarize the content of the webpage or PDF you are viewing.”
So, let’s analyze it.
Summarize the Content of a PDF
This function is quite simple and intuitive.
When viewing a web page or a PDF document in your browser, you can have Microsoft Edge Copilot give you a summary of what the document is about.
✅ One good thing about using Copilot for these summaries is that you can make the request by voice using your device’s microphone. This is great if you are a voice-assistant person.
⚠️ It is important to note that you will only be able to analyze PDFs that you open in your web browser. This can sometimes be complicated for some users if they have the document stored on their computer and their default application for opening PDF is not the browser.
You would need to change your computer settings to be able to open the document on Edge.
Chat with PDF
Microsoft Edge Copilot’s information page does not provide enough details to say if the AI assistant allows you to actually chat with your PDFs like you can with PDF.ai.
You can request a summary of the document, and maybe create tasks and reminders, but the website doesn’t say anything about enabling you to chat, ask follow-up questions, or other advance requests.
Microsoft Edge Copilot Pricing
Pricing is always a relevant item in any decision-making process, so let’s check where Edge Copilot stands in this aspect.
Microsoft Edge Copilot offers two different pricing options:
Microsoft Copilot Free Version
This plan is 100% free.
It includes a few AI-supported administrative and productivity features.
It also allows you to summarize PDFs or webpages, create images with AI, and support multiple devices and platforms.
Microsoft’s website is clear about the limitations of the free version, though:
- During peak times free users may have limited access to the latest AI models
- Most features have limited usage
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Microsoft Copilot Pro Subscription
This plan costs $20 per month per user and comes with a 1-month free trial for all users.
It includes:
✅ Priority access to the latest models from Microsoft and OpenAI even during peak times.
✅ Microsoft Apps support: Experience Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook in a whole new way with built-in Copilot features.Footnote
✅ Copilot Voice: Using advanced AI voice technology, speak to Copilot and hear it respond naturally.
✅ Additional Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and OneNote-related features.
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Pros of using Microsoft Edge Copilot
Microsoft Edge Copilot is a good option if you are a professional or student who mainly deals with PDF summaries.
It should be a good option if you are on a budget (because you can use the free plan), and the limitations of low capacity during peak times or other usage limits wouldn’t interfere with your work.
Copilot is free and if PDF summaries are your only use case it should be good to go.
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Cons of using Microsoft Edge Copilot
On the other hand, if you are a working professional or high-level student looking to leverage AI tools to get the best results, Edge Copilot may not be the best option for you.
Why? The following are some reasons worth considering.
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Limited Chat-with-PDF Features
Edge Copilot is an AI-powered productivity assistant.
It does have some useful features but since the main focus of the product is not PDF work, the main features that you need to chat, summarize, understand, and translate PDFs, as well as many other PDF-focused features are not included.
This represents a huge disadvantage when you try to approach the use of Copilot as a chat-with-PDF tool.
Created for Microsoft Users
Edge Copilot was created for Microsoft Edge users, so it will only be helpful for you if Edge is your day-to-day browser.
It would be quite inconvenient to switch browsers every time you need to summarize a PDF.
Additionally, switching your preferred browser to Edge just because you want to use Copilot doesn’t sound like a justifiable reason.
Microsoft Edge Copilot’s Paid Version Is Not a Big Upgrade
If you are mainly looking to work with PDF documents, then there is not much difference between getting the paid plan or using the free version of Copilot.
The reason is simple: the upgrades that come with the paid plan are mostly unrelated to high-performance PDF work.
The only difference you will see is in the usage limits and in the priority you will enjoy during peak hours. With that in mind, I recommend that you invest your money in another product if PDF work is what you are aiming for.
Comparison Time
Overall Product
PDF.ai
- Chat-with-a-PDF tool
- +15 features to help you work with PDFs at the best pace and level
- Free and paid options available
- Created for students and working professionals
- Works in any web browser
- Extension for Chromium-based browsers available
Pricing
Features
PDF.ai
- Chat with all of your PDF documents
- Use tags to categorize different PDF documents
- Select texts to summarize or explain quickly
- Chat with PDF in all GPT-4 models and Claude 3.5
- Special Keywords
- Embed a PDF With an Al Chatbot
- Keep Your Documents Private
- Let the PDF.ai Bot Speak Your Language
- Prompt Library
- Capture & ask
- Chrome Extension
- Download Chat History
- Free E-Sign Tool Included
Conclusion
We have come to the end of this comparison.
It’s time to pick up a winner…
For us, PDF.ai is the alternative that won by far.
It is the best option if you are looking for a chat-with-PDFs tool.
Why? Because a product built and developed with a specific use case is more powerful.
The team behind PDF.ai is laser-focused on building a solution to help you chat with your PDFs to get more things done.
Microsoft Edge Copilot just has one feature to work with PDFs.
A feature is always improved way slower than a living product.
If you require a tool that allows you do heavy analytical work with PDFs (summarizing entire papers, getting information from PDFs in other languages, etc) or if chatting with PDFs on a daily basis is a core task of your workflow, Edge Copilot wouldn’t help a lot.
It lacks almost all of the important features that a Chat-with-a-PDF tool must have.
Additionally, while you can get it for free, the number of questions that you have available makes it almost unusable for the purposes described above.
Copilot has some strong limitations for its free users and the upgrades that come with the paid plan aren’t very related to PDF work.
You need a powerful tool to work with if you expect the chat-with-a-PDF features to enhance and expand your efforts.
PDF.ai can be used anywhere via our Chrome extension or by uploading any PDF.
It also has all the features needed to help you succeed in study, work, or entrepreneurial endeavors.
We invite you to try out and join the +1,500,000 PDF.ai happy users.