Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) vs Tencent ima (腾讯ima) vs Humata vs ChatPDF
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM)
Source-grounded research notebooks with audio, video and slide summari...
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Tencent ima (腾讯ima)
Tencent's knowledge-base AI for search, Q&A and writing
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ChatPDF
Ask questions of any PDF and jump straight to the cited passage
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| RECATOOLS Score | 8.3 / 10 | 6.1 / 10 | 6.5 / 10 | 6.8 / 10 |
| Capability | ||||
| Value for money | ||||
| Ease of use | ||||
| ASEAN readiness | ||||
| API quality | ||||
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium | Freemium | Freemium |
| Free tier | Standard plan free with a Google account: 100 notebooks, 50 sources each, standard compute limits refreshing every five hours | Knowledge bases, AI search, document Q&A and writing are free; the copilot agent spends credits, some granted free in promotions | Free: 60 pages a month for 1 user; the homepage also caps the free plan at 10 answers | Free plan: 2 documents a day; no account needed to try, a free account saves history and enables multi-file chats |
| Paid from | S$6.98/month via Google AI Plus (Singapore price), with Google AI Pro at S$28.99/month | ¥5 for 75 copilot credits (China App Store in-app pack) | $9.99/month (Expert: up to 3 users, 500 pages, then 2 cents a page) | SGD 15.99/month (Plus, as shown to a Singapore visitor), or SGD 9.92/month billed yearly |
| Has API | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Open source | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | Reported in the millions of monthly active users in 2026 | — | — | — |
| Founded | 2023 | 2024 | 2023 | 2023 |
| Maker | Tencent | — | — | |
| Verdict | Gemini Notebook remains one of the most useful free research tools: it answers from your own sources with citations, and its Audio and Video Overviews, slide decks, quizzes and flashcards make study material easier to ab... |
ima is Tencent's knowledge-base AI: collect PDFs, web pages, audio and WeChat Official Account articles, then search, question and write against them with Tencent's HY models or DeepSeek. Few rivals can read WeChat artic... |
Humata does one job cleanly: answers across your uploaded files, each tied to a highlighted passage you can check. Expert at $9.99 a month for three users and 500 pages is cheap, and Team adds OCR for scanned files and f... |
ChatPDF does one job cleanly: upload a document, ask questions, and click a citation to land on the passage behind the answer. Multi-file folders, support for Word and slide files and a no-account start make it easy for... |
| Full review → | Full review → | Full review → | Full review → |
Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.