Five apps' worth of studying, in one tab. Around the file you were actually given.
Studying from a dense document usually means four or five apps at once — a PDF viewer, a notes app, a to-do list, a drawing app, and a chatbot you paste excerpts into. Every switch costs you the thread, and the AI in the last tab has no idea what is in the first. CarrelAI puts all of them around one file: the page open beside a canvas, notes that stay with it, tasks that know their deadline, and a chat that has read the whole thing.
No card · Upload one file · The workspace builds itself
$9.99
A month for the Study plan — 10 months for 12 yearly
25
Credits free to start, no card
5
Surfaces around one document, not five tabs
The switching cost is the actual problem
It is easy to think the problem with studying from a PDF is that PDFs are hard to read. It is not. The problem is that the five things you do with a reading — read it, mark it, redraw its figures, write what you understood, and plan what to do next — happen in five places, and every move between them drops the thread you were holding.
The fix is not a better PDF viewer. It is having all five in one place, around the same file, so that reading a paragraph and writing the note about it are the same motion.
What you get around each document
Every document you upload comes with its own set of surfaces, and none of them have to be set up.
- A reader that reopens at the page and scroll position you left on
- A full drawing canvas beside the page — redraw the figure while you can see it
- Rich-text sticky notes in your own colours, grouped by the day you wrote them
- Highlights on the page, anchored to the words rather than to coordinates
- Tasks with due dates, priorities and a timer, badged with the document they came from
- A chat that read the document end to end and answers only from its pages
A reading list, turned into a week
Tasks are the part that quietly does the most work. Anything in a document or in an answer can become one — highlight it and it is filed, with a due date, a priority, and the name of the document that produced it on the badge.
They then all show up on a single planner alongside everything else, so "what do I actually have to do this week" is a page rather than a reconstruction from six documents. A folder tree by term, module or week keeps the documents themselves in whatever shape you already think in.
What it costs, honestly
The free plan is 25 credits to start and 10 a month after, over three documents of up to 150 pages each — enough to find out whether it reads your material properly, which is the only question worth answering before paying for anything. No card is required.
Study is $9.99 a month and is sized for a term: 250 credits, 50 documents of up to 3,000 pages, and scanned pages transcribed. Pro at $24.99 adds citations you can click through to the page, your choice of GPT-5, Claude or Gemini, and frontier models by default. Yearly billing is ten months for twelve on both.
Side by side, against four apps and a chatbot.
| Capability | CarrelAI | Four apps and a chatbot |
|---|---|---|
| Reader, canvas, notes, planner and AI on one screen | Yes | No |
| The AI has read the document you are looking at | Yes | Only what you pasted |
| An answer becomes a note or a task in one action | Yes | No |
| Tasks carry the document they came from | Yes | No |
| One search over documents, notes and tasks | Yes | No |
| Free tier | 25 credits, no card | Varies per app |
If you already have a workflow across separate apps that you like, the honest case for switching is weaker — the gain here is removing the switching, and there is nothing to remove if it does not bother you.
Questions people ask before they sign up.
Is there a student discount?
The Study plan at $9.99 a month is the student pricing — it is not a discounted version of something else, it is sized for a term's reading. Yearly billing works out at ten months for twelve. The free plan needs no card at all.
Will it work with my lecture slides and handouts?
PDF, Word (.docx) and PowerPoint (.pptx) files all render and are read in full. On Study and Pro, scanned and photographed pages are transcribed automatically, which covers handouts you only have a photo of.
Can I use it for a whole module at once?
Yes. Documents go in a folder tree by term, module or week, and the chat can be pointed at everything you have uploaded rather than at one file — so you can ask a question across a term of readings and be told which one answered it.
Is my work private?
Everything starts private. Sharing a document produces a link that gives away that document and nothing else — not the underlying file, not your notes, not your account.
Related
Chat with PDF
Upload a PDF and ask it anything. Every answer is searched out of your own pages before it is written, so it can show you where it read it.
Chat with PowerPoint
Upload a .pptx lecture deck and ask it questions. It reads every slide, keeps the slide numbers, and answers from the deck rather than from memory.
PDF annotator
Annotate a PDF in the browser: highlight passages and write against them, keep sticky notes beside the page, and draw on a canvas next to it.
Upload one file and see whether it read it properly.
That is the only question worth answering before paying for anything, and the free plan exists to answer it. No card.