Free AI text summarizer
Paste an article, essay, report or notes. Get the part worth reading back as a paragraph, bullets, key points or a one-line TL;DR, at the length you choose.
Text to summarize
More options: focus, output language
Summary
Your summary appears here. Paste text (or try a sample), choose a format, then press Summarize.
How to summarize text in three steps
- Paste your text into the box, or press Try a sample to see how it works.
- Pick a format and drag Length from Shortest (about 5% of the original) to Thorough (about 45%).
- Press Summarize. The summary streams in; copy it, download it, or try again with other settings.
Pick the format that fits the job
| Format | You get | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Paragraph | Flowing prose | Reading, emails, recaps |
| Bullets | One idea per line | Notes, slides, revision |
| Key points | Main idea, 3–7 points, takeaway | Reports, study guides |
| TL;DR | One sentence, ≤ 30 words | Deciding whether to read it |
Where the summarizer earns its keep
Students use it to screen sources for a literature review, check they understood a reading before a seminar, and turn chapters into revision notes.
Professionals use it to get the bottom line of a 30-page report before a meeting, turn long email threads into action points, and brief colleagues who don't have time to read the whole thing.
For a specific kind of text, the dedicated tools below know what to look for: a research paper summary pulls out methods and limitations, an executive summary leads with the decision.
How does a summarizer decide what matters?
The oldest automatic summarizers, going back to Hans Peter Luhn at IBM in 1958, were extractive: they scored every sentence by how many of the text’s most frequent meaningful words it contains, then kept the top scorers. Drag the slider to see that method at work on a short article about city trees. Highlighted sentences are the ones it keeps.
4 of 12 sentences · 124 of 216 words
Notice what goes wrong at low percentages: the kept sentences are dense with keywords, but they don't always connect, and a sentence like “Planting is the easy part, however” can be dropped even though it turns the argument. That is why SmartSummarize uses an abstractive AI model, which reads the whole text and writes new sentences that carry the argument, including its turns. The extractive method is still built in: it is what you get instantly if the AI is ever unavailable.
For hands-on lessons you can actually manipulate, ahaboo builds clickable explainers on science and money, from tax rates to photosynthesis.
Summarizers for every kind of text
- Article summarizerPaste a link or the text of any article.
- PDF summarizerUpload a PDF; the text is extracted in your browser.
- Research paper summarizerQuestion, methods, findings, limitations.
- Paragraph summarizerOne paragraph in, one or two sentences out.
- Essay summarizerThesis, main arguments and conclusion.
- Bullet point generatorTurn paragraphs into clean, parallel bullets.
- Abstract generatorDraft paper in, 150–250-word abstract out.
- Executive summary generatorReports into bottom line, findings, actions.
- Book & chapter summarizerPlot, characters and themes of a chapter or story.
- YouTube transcript summarizerPaste a transcript, get key moments with timestamps.
- Sentence summarizerShorten long, wordy sentences without losing meaning.
- Text shortenerCut text to an exact word count, same voice.
- Meeting & transcript summarizerMeetings, lectures, calls: decisions and action items.
- Word counter & reading timeWords, characters, sentences, minutes to read.
Summarizing well, even with AI
A summary is only useful if it is faithful. Three habits make AI summaries trustworthy: give it clean input (cut menus, references and boilerplate), choose the shortest length that still answers your question, and spot-check one number and one claim against the original before you rely on it.
Want to write summaries yourself? Our guide on how to write a summary walks through the four-pass method with an interactive example, and summarizing vs paraphrasing shows when to use which.
Questions people ask
Is SmartSummarize really free?
Yes. There is no account, no signup, no trial and no watermark. A fair-use limit per visitor (about 20 summaries every 10 minutes) keeps it free for everyone.
How much text can I summarize at once?
Up to 60,000 characters, roughly 9,000 to 10,000 English words or 25 to 30 dense pages. Texts over 20,000 characters are read in sections, then merged into one summary automatically.
What is the difference between the formats?
Paragraph gives flowing prose. Bullets gives one idea per line. Key points gives a one-sentence main idea, 3–7 key points and a takeaway. TL;DR gives a single sentence of 30 words or less.
Is the AI summary accurate?
It is instructed to use only facts from your text and keep names and numbers exactly as written, and it is usually reliable. Like any AI it can still miss nuance or get a detail wrong, so check anything important against the original.
Do you store my text?
No. Your text is sent to the AI model only to generate the summary and is not saved on our servers. Your last 25 summaries are kept in your own browser so you can find them again; you can delete them at any time.
Does it work in other languages?
Yes. Paste text in Spanish, German, French, Portuguese or most other widely used languages and the summary comes back in the same language. Under More options you can also choose a different output language, for example to summarize a Spanish article in English.
Can I summarize a Word document?
Yes. On the PDF summarizer you can upload a .docx, PDF or .txt file; the text is extracted in your browser and only the text is sent when you summarize.
Can I make the summary focus on one topic?
Yes. Open More options and type a focus such as “costs and risks” or “methods”. The summary will prioritise that topic and say so if the text does not cover it.
Is using an AI summarizer plagiarism?
Summarizing to understand a text is not plagiarism. Submitting AI-written text as your own work can break academic-integrity rules, and any summary of someone else’s ideas still needs a citation. Use the output as notes and write in your own words.
How does an AI summarizer work?
Older summarizers were extractive: they scored sentences and copied the highest-scoring ones. Modern AI summarizers are abstractive: a language model reads the whole text and writes new, shorter sentences that carry its argument. The interactive demo on this page shows the extractive method step by step.
What happens if the AI is unavailable?
You still get a result: the page falls back to an extractive summary, picking the most representative sentences from your text right in your browser, and you can retry the AI with one tap.