PDF Summarizer Chrome Extension

Open a PDF in Chrome, click Reduz, and a dense 50-page document becomes a structured summary, a study outline, or a research brief in seconds. Reduz reads the PDF from your tab — the file is never uploaded to a vendor server. Theo uses it to triage stacks of research papers and pre-prints without putting drafts on third-party infrastructure. Anya scans 30-page industry reports for the takeaways instead of reading every word. Cleo turns textbook chapters into exportable study notes.

Illustration of a person working through tasks on a checklist — Photo by Storyset on Pixabay

What you get

Reads PDFs from your Chrome tab — no upload step, no file sitting on a vendor server.
Works with research papers, industry reports, technical manuals, lecture handouts, and contracts.
Structured outputs: key findings, methods, claims, limitations, action items, study notes.
Hosted Free with 100 monthly credits (2 credits per PDF), or Your own AI key with unlimited usage via your own provider key.
Export summaries to Markdown, PDF, DOCX, JSON, or ZIP bundles for citation and sharing.
Long-document support: handles 50-100 page PDFs reliably on most providers when you bring your own AI key.

Sample pdf document summary

A 17-page research paper with abstract, methods section, three experiment tables, findings, and limitations.

Main claim: retrieval quality has a larger effect on answer usefulness than the model-size change tested here.
Method: authors compare baseline prompting against a source-grounded workflow across three document sets.
Key findings: structured citation grounding improved factual accuracy by ~14% on the medical-document subset.
Limitations: evaluation is narrow; the result is not proven to transfer across all domains.
Open questions Theo flagged for follow-up: how the method scales beyond 100-page documents, and whether smaller open-weights models replicate the effect.

How it compares

Unlike upload-based PDF summarizers like Smallpdf, ChatPDF, and Adobe AI, Reduz reads the PDF directly from the Chrome tab without uploading the file anywhere — meaningful when the document is a draft, a pre-print, or anything you don't want sitting on a vendor server. Unlike YouTube-only summarizers like Eightify and Glasp YouTube Summary, Reduz treats PDFs as a fully supported source. Unlike all-in-one assistants like NoteGPT and Monica that require upload and account login for PDF chat, Reduz works without an account when you bring your own AI key and stores summary history in on your device on your device.

Browser-direct PDF flow — no upload step

Reduz uses pdfjs-dist to extract text from PDFs rendered in Chrome's built-in viewer. The file itself is never uploaded to a Reduz server, and when you bring your own AI key the extracted text goes direct from your browser to your selected AI provider — no Reduz relay in the middle. For sensitive documents (drafts, pre-prints, internal reports, contracts), this is the cleanest privacy approach in the category. Upload-based PDF tools like ChatPDF, Adobe AI, and Smallpdf necessarily copy the file to their server first.

Long PDFs and what to expect

Most modern AI providers handle 50-100 page PDFs reliably within their the model can fit. For longer documents — 200-500 page books, large manuals — expect chunking or page-range selection. Reduz currently caps PDF size in Hosted Free mode (smaller credit budget); Your own AI key mode inherits the limits of the provider you chose. Claude Sonnet 4.6 and GPT-5.5 are strong choices for long technical PDFs; Haiku and Mini variants are cost-efficient for shorter documents.

Hosted Free vs your own AI key for PDFs

Hosted Free processes the extracted PDF text through the Reduz relay and a hosted AI model. PDFs cost 2 credits (article and video summaries cost 1) reflecting longer token counts. 100 monthly credits cover roughly 50 PDFs per month. Your own AI key sends extracted text direct from your browser to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, or xAI Grok using your own API key. A typical research-paper summary on Claude Haiku 4.5 or Gemini Flash costs single-digit cents.

Output formats for different PDF types

For research papers: structured brief separating claim, method, findings, limitations. For industry reports: executive summary plus numbered takeaways. For technical manuals: key procedures with section references. For lecture handouts: study notes with review prompts. The output style switcher lets you regenerate without re-extracting the PDF — Reduz keeps the source text in memory while the tab is open.

Privacy and retention for PDF text

PDF text is extracted in your browser. In Your own AI key mode, that text is sent only to the provider you chose using your own API key — no Reduz server, no analytics, no telemetry. In Hosted Free, extracted text passes through the Reduz relay to a hosted AI provider; the relay records minimal usage metadata (token counts, credit cost, timestamp) but does not log source text or generated summaries by default. The PDF file itself is never uploaded anywhere in either mode. Summary history is stored in on your device; the source PDF text is not retained by current Reduz extension PDF paths.

Frequently asked questions

Does Reduz upload the PDF file to summarize it?

No. Reduz reads the PDF from your Chrome tab in your browser. The file itself is never uploaded to a Reduz server. When you bring your own AI key, only the extracted text is sent — direct from your browser to the AI provider you chose, using your own API key.

Can Reduz summarize scanned image-only PDFs?

Most PDFs with embedded text layers work cleanly. Pure image-only scans require OCR first, which Reduz does not currently run in-extension. If a PDF was created by photographing pages or scanning without OCR, run a separate OCR pass first (Adobe Acrobat, native macOS Preview, or open-source tools like tesseract) before summarizing.

How long a PDF can Reduz handle?

Most providers handle 50-100 page PDFs reliably. For 200-500 page books, expect chunking or page-range selection. When you bring your own AI key, the limit is your provider's the model can fit — Claude Sonnet 4.6 and GPT-5.5 handle longer documents than smaller models. In Hosted Free mode, longer PDFs may prompt switching to bringing your own AI key.

Can I summarize sensitive PDFs (drafts, pre-prints, internal reports) privately?

Reduz is the cleanest mainstream choice for sensitive PDFs. The file stays in your Chrome tab — Reduz extracts text in-browser and never uploads the file. When you bring your own AI key, extracted text goes directly to your selected AI provider; the Reduz server never sees it. Avoid upload-based PDF tools (ChatPDF, Adobe AI, Smallpdf) for documents that should not leave your control.

Does Reduz work on PDFs opened from email or cloud storage?

Yes, when the PDF is rendered in Chrome's viewer. Reduz requests temporary access to the PDF origin when you ask to summarize it (a one-time permission prompt for that origin), then extracts text from the rendered document.

Is Reduz free?

Yes. Reduz includes 100 free credits a month. Using your own AI key removes the credit limit.

Do I need an account?

Not when you use your own AI key. An account is only needed for free credits, paid plans, or cloud backup.

Where is my data stored?

Summary history is stored in your browser. Cloud backup is opt-in and encrypted on your device before upload.

Which AI providers does Reduz support?

Reduz supports OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, and xAI Grok. You can also use free credits without setting up an AI account.