ChatPDF: our review

ChatPDF asks a document a question and answers by quoting the passage that backs the answer. No account needed to start: you upload a file, write a question the way you'd ask a colleague who had read the document in your place, and the answer arrives with a link to the exact spot in the PDF it comes from.

What it actually does

The service accepts PDF, but also Word, PowerPoint, Markdown and plain text. Once the file is uploaded, it builds a content map and finds the relevant passages for each question, rather than guessing an answer out of thin air. The vendor's FAQ states that queries are split between GPT-4o and GPT-4o-mini depending on complexity — a detail that matters: it means the document's content goes to OpenAI's servers to produce the answer, even though nothing in the privacy policy confirms this in writing.

The free tier allows two documents a day with no account. Creating an account unlocks history and exchanges with several files in the same folder. A paid tier, ChatPDF Plus, removes the daily limit — but its price isn't announced on any public page of the site.

Why it interests us little for professional use

What matters to us isn't the quality of the answers, which is fairly good, but what happens to the file once it's uploaded. On this point, ChatPDF stays silent. Its privacy policy, a generic template dated January 2023, covers account data — name, email, cookies — but says nothing about document content: no stated retention period, no mention of training, no list of subprocessors. OpenAI, which nonetheless receives the document's text going by the FAQ, is named nowhere in a legal document. For an advisory audit before adopting a tool, that's the kind of silence that should raise alarm rather than reassure.

Where it falls short

The first problem is the lack of a written guarantee on training: neither yes nor no, the question stays open. The second is the lack of a named subprocessor, even though the document's content visibly leaves ChatPDF's servers to reach OpenAI's. The third is the lack of a public DPA — no document to produce if a client asks where their file goes. The fourth, more practical, is the hidden price of the paid tier: impossible to budget for professional use without first creating an account.

Our recommendation

For a quick read of a report or personal notes, ChatPDF gets the job done without fuss. For a contract, a notarial deed or a client file covered by professional secrecy, the lack of any guarantee on retention and training is reason enough to rule it out — look instead at a tool that states this in writing, such as Humata, or at an automation setup that keeps the document on your own infrastructure.