The Claude AI chatbot from Anthropic can sum up long PDFs for you for free. Next time someone sends you a 100-page document, you can follow this guide and get a quick summary without spending hours reading it.

You can upload PDFs, as well as DOCX, CSV, and TXT files directly to Claude. Using a command such as “Summarize PDF,” you can get clear, concise summaries of PDFs across many different topics.

Claude, for instance, returned two different summaries of the novel when fed two different publicly available PDFs of Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” In each response, the plot points were included. When given the same command, Claude may return different summaries for the same PDF, but each summary is accurate.

Claude worked well for other content as well. Microsoft’s most recent earnings report returned a bulleted list of revenue, net income, and other financial information, all of which were accurate. The high-level numbers I needed were easily accessible without having to dig through earnings results.

To get the highlights of the document, try phrases such as “Tell me the important information in this” and “Recap this for me.”

There are limitations to the free version of Claude. PDFs larger than 10 megabytes cannot be processed, and it appears to have a limit of five summaries every four hours.