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About AI summaries
This summary is an AI paraphrase, not a verbatim quote. For high-stakes use (legal, medical, academic, news verification), always read the original source and verify any specific facts, numbers, dates, or quotes you plan to rely on.
The summary is produced by a large language model. Like any generative model, it can occasionally invent details that aren't in the source. Treat it as a fast first pass, not a citation.
Recent summaries
How it works
The AI Summarizer accepts four input modes: Paste text, URL, PDF, and YouTube. It pulls out the underlying text and asks a large language model for six summary formats in a single call. Producing all six at once is much cheaper than asking for them one by one. It also lets you compare formats side by side and pick the right one for where the summary will live: an email, a tweet, or a section outline.
Input modes:
- Paste text. The most reliable. You control exactly what goes in.
- URL. We fetch the page through a proxy, read the main body, and summarize from there. Paywalled or login-gated pages, single-page apps, and strictly bot-protected sites can fail. Use Paste mode when the fetch fails.
- PDF. Direct text extraction from standard PDFs made in Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice, LaTeX, or Acrobat. Up to 10 MB or 200 pages. Scanned image-only PDFs are not supported, because we do not run OCR.
- YouTube (Beta). Fetches the official caption track through a proxy. YouTube made this harder in 2026, so some videos return nothing. When that happens, use Paste mode with the transcript copied from YouTube's own "Show transcript" feature.
Output formats: TL;DR (one sentence), Executive bullets (3 to 5 bullets), Detailed bullets (longer), Tweet (under 280 characters), Email recap (a paragraph), and Section outline (keeps the source's structure). Each format renders as its own card with Copy and Regenerate.
A note on accuracy. A summary is an AI paraphrase, not a quote. The model can sometimes invent a detail that is not in the source. For high-stakes use, such as legal, medical, academic, or news work, read the original and check specific facts. The reading-time strip above the cards shows roughly how much time the summary saves against reading the full source.
Plan caps. On the Free plan each submission can be up to 5,000 words, and your daily AI token budget is 50,000 tokens. The budget is shared by every AI tool on this site.
What you will see
- Input modes (Paste / URL / PDF / YouTube)
- Four ways to give the tool source text. Pick whichever matches what you have. The form below the toggle switches to the right input for each mode.
- Focus keyword
- An optional phrase you want the summary to stress. Useful when the source covers several topics and you care about one.
- Output language
- The language the summary is written in. Auto-detect uses the source's language. You can also pick a different one, such as a Spanish source summarized in English.
- Length preset
- Roughly how compressed the summary should be. It affects all six formats together.
- Reading-time savings strip
- Above the cards. It shows the estimated reading time for the original against the summary, plus the percentage saved. It helps you decide whether to read the summary or go straight to the source.
- Source subhead
- The page title (URL mode), filename (PDF), or video title (YouTube), plus the source URL where there is one. It shows at a glance what got summarized.
- The six format cards
- TL;DR, Executive bullets, Detailed bullets, Tweet, Email recap, and Section outline. Each card has its own Copy and Regenerate buttons. Regenerate re-rolls just that one format.
- Recent summaries
- Your last 10 submissions, kept in your browser for 30 days.
Frequently asked questions
How do I summarize text with this tool?
Pick an input mode (Paste text, URL, PDF, or YouTube) and drop your content in. Add a focus keyword if you want the summary to lean on one topic. Pick an output language and a length preset, then click Summarize. You get six formats in one click: a TL;DR, executive bullets, detailed bullets, a tweet-length version, an email recap, and a per-section outline. Click Regenerate on any card to re-roll just that format.
What are the 5 steps in summarizing a text?
- Read the full text first. A summary written from a partial read misses the main point.
- Find the main claim. What single sentence would the author put on the back cover?
- Find the supporting points. Usually 3 to 5 sub-arguments that back up the main claim.
- Drop the examples. Examples support the points. In a summary, the points themselves are the content.
- Compress. Get to a length that fits where the summary will live. A TL;DR is one sentence, an email recap is a paragraph, and a section outline keeps the structure. This tool produces all six formats at once so you can pick what fits.
What are the 4 basic rules for summarizing?
The traditional rules are these. Capture the main idea, not every detail. Use your own words rather than copying phrases. Keep the original meaning, and add no claims the source did not make. Be brief enough that the summary is a real shortcut to the original. The tool tries to follow all four, but a large language model can drift, above all on faithfulness. Always check important facts against the source.
Can AI summarize a text for me?
Yes. It reads the full input and produces every output format in one pass. AI summarizers are much stronger than older extractive tools, which only pick out representative sentences, because they can paraphrase and restructure. They can also hallucinate. Now and then a model invents a detail that is not in the source. That is why the results region carries a clear caveat. Treat the summary as a fast first pass, then check any specific facts, dates, numbers, or quotes against the source.
How do you summarize an article from a URL?
Pick URL mode, paste the article URL, and submit. We fetch the page through a proxy, pull out the main body while skipping navigation, ads, and footers, and summarize from there. Three things can make the fetch fail. A paywall or login, because we cannot fetch what we cannot see. A site that serves different content to bots than to browsers, because strict CDN protection can still block us. And a single-page app that draws its content after load, because the fetched HTML has nothing to read. When the fetch fails, use Paste mode.
Why does YouTube mode sometimes fail?
YouTube has made transcript scraping harder. As of mid-2026, the caption endpoint returns empty responses for many videos when fetched from cloud servers, whichever proxy we route through. The mode is tagged Beta for that reason. When a video fails, open it on YouTube, click "...more" and then "Show transcript", copy the text, and use Paste mode. The summary quality is the same. You are just fetching the transcript yourself.
Does Google AI summarize articles?
Yes. Google's AI Overviews, Gemini, NotebookLM, and the "Summarize this page" feature in Chrome all produce AI summaries. The difference is the workflow. Google's summaries are usually inline and one-shot, with no choice of formats. Most need a Google account. And they are not built around your control of the input source, focus keyword, language, and length. Our angle is the format variety and the zero-signup workflow, not better AI as such.
How long can the input text be?
The word cap depends on your plan. On the Free plan each submission can be up to 5,000 words. For scale, a long blog post is 2,000 to 5,000 words, a book chapter 3,000 to 7,000, and a full academic paper 8,000 to 15,000. For a document over the cap, the tool stops at the limit and notes the cut. For very long inputs, split the text into chunks and summarize each one.