SkimAI is live · free · last verified 24 Oct 2026 · viability monitor
SkimAI
Prepend skim.page/ to any article URL and get a TL;DR, three takeaways, and why it matters in your AI assistant.
SkimAI is worth keeping in your bookmarks if you already pay for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Grok and read long web articles all day — typing skim.page/i/cl/ in front of a URL replaces a two-step 'copy the link, then write a good prompt' chore with one line of typing, and the on-page prompt preview lets you read exactly what you're about to send before the handoff fires. For everyone else it's a shortcut, not a product: the tool generates the prompt, your assistant does the summarizing, and it does nothing with PDFs, email newsletters, or paywalled pages. Compare it with pasting the article URL straight into Claude or ChatGPT — both cost the same as this, which the site presents
Verdict generatedVerified 6d ago · liveness 51/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/skimai
- Professionals and analysts who read many web articles a day
- People already paying for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Grok
- Students and researchers skimming publicly accessible long-reads
- Privacy-conscious readers who want to inspect the prompt before sending it
- Anyone without an account on one of the five supported assistants
- Researchers whose sources are PDFs, email newsletters, or paywalled articles
- Teams that need summaries stored, shared, cited, or audited
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Skip SkimAI if your reading lives in PDFs, email newsletters, or paywalled journals, or if you want summaries stored and shared with a team — it only builds a prompt for public web article URLs and hands off to an assistant you already pay for.
SkimAI itself generates the prompt for free, but the summarization only happens if you hold a paid or free account with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Grok — that subscription is the real cost of using this.
The site presents SkimAI as free and shows no paid tiers, so there is nothing to graduate to and no seat maths to do. The real budget line is the AI assistant you already pay for — if you're on a free ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Grok account, SkimAI works the same but you hit that assistant's usage limits, and a paid assistant tier is what removes them. Judged on price alone it undercuts dedicated summarizer subscriptions, but it does far less than they do.
In short
SkimAI — Prepend skim.page/ to any article URL and get a TL;DR, three takeaways, and why it matters in your AI assistant. Best for Professionals and analysts who read many web articles a day, People already paying for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Grok, Students and researchers skimming publicly accessible long-reads. Free to use.
What is SkimAI?
SkimAI — Prepend skim.page/ to any article URL and get a TL;DR, three takeaways, and why it matters in your AI assistant. Best for Professionals and analysts who read many web articles a day, People already paying for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Grok, Students and researchers skimming publicly accessible long-reads. Free to use.
SkimAI, published at skim.page, is a browser-based prompt generator that turns any public article URL into a ready-to-run summarization prompt for an AI assistant you already use. You open a long article, prepend skim.page/ to the address in your address bar, and the tab redirects to ChatGPT (the default), Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Grok with the prompt pre-filled. The default Summary style asks for a TL;DR in one to two sentences, three key takeaways, and a one-sentence 'why it matters'. Four styles — Summary, ELI5 (e), Research (r), and Investor (i) — change what the prompt asks for, and you can stack a style shortcut with an assistant shortcut, for example skim.page/i/cl/<article-url> runs the Investor style in Claude; full names work too, like skim.page/investor/claude/. SkimAI itself does not summarize anything: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Grok does the work, so you need access to one of those five. The site shows the generated prompt in a preview on the page and offers a copy-prompt fallback when the redirect doesn't fire. It only handles publicly accessible web articles; PDFs, email newsletters, and paywalled pages are out of scope. No account, signup, or installation. The site's privacy note says skim.page sees only the article URL, runs in your browser, and does not scrape the article or store prompts.
Key features
- Prepend skim.page/ to any public article URL to generate a summarization prompt
- Redirects your tab to ChatGPT (default), Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Grok with the prompt pre-filled
- Default Summary style: TL;DR in 1-2 sentences, three key takeaways, why it matters in one sentence
- Summary style shortcuts: e (ELI5), r (Research), i (Investor), plus the default Summary
- AI assistant shortcuts: ge (Gemini), cl (Claude), px (Perplexity), gr (Grok), ChatGPT by default
- Stackable shortcuts, e.g. skim.page/i/cl/<article-url> for Investor style in Claude
- Full style and assistant names accepted as well as short codes, e.g. skim.page/investor/claude/
- Generated prompt preview shown on the page before the handoff runs
- Copy-prompt fallback when the redirect to the assistant does not open
- No account, signup, or installation required
- Runs in your browser; skim.page sees only the article URL per the site's privacy note
- Does not scrape the article, create accounts, or store prompts per the site's privacy note
- Works with publicly accessible web articles only
Our long-form take written Jul 27, 2026 is more than 90 days old, so it is being re-reviewed against current data and is not shown.
Models under the hood
as of 2026-09-09
Limitations
- SkimAI is a prompt generator, not a summarizer — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Grok does the work, so output quality depends entirely on which assistant you open.
- It handles only publicly accessible web articles; PDFs, email newsletters, and paywalled content are out of scope, and the site's own FAQ addresses paywalls separately rather than claiming to bypass them.
- You need an internet connection and access to one of the five supported assistants for anything to happen.
- The site describes no browser extension or mobile app, so the workflow is manually editing the address bar each time.
- The redirect handoff can fail, in which case you copy the prompt from skim.page yourself.
- And while the site says skim.page only sees the article URL, its own privacy note adds that hosting infrastructure, your browser history, and the assistant you open may still receive the article URL or the generated prompt.
as of 2026-10-14
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Is SkimAI still active?
SkimAI is live · free · last verified 24 Oct 2026 · viability monitor.
Viability score
How well maintained and how widely used is SkimAI? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →What do users say about SkimAI?
What people actually say about SkimAI — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
Researched31 mentions across 2 sources (YouTube, Product Hunt) · researched Aug 2, 2026.
Average across the 2 sources that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +Significantly reduces time spent on daily email triage
- +Generates concise summaries and quick replies improving productivity
- +Intuitive and easy to use—no installation or learning curve
- +Free to use with a generous feature set
- +Privacy-focused: no scraping or prompt storage, only URL shared
- −Primary feedback is email-focused, not article summarization
- −Requires separate AI assistant subscriptions—no built-in model
- −Potential performance issues with large email histories
- −No confirmed support for Outlook or ProtonMail
- −Lack of long-term reliability and support track record
- • Requires a paid subscription to an AI assistant to use the prompts
- • Potential data exposure if the AI assistant provider uses prompts for training
How we verified this
Every listed fact about SkimAI— pricing, features, links, status — is re-read from the vendor's own pages by our verification pipeline and each change is logged with a date; the last pass ran on 24 Oct 2026. Pages mix model-assisted synthesis with human review; see how we verify.
Verification history
We have re-verified SkimAI 13 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — changed who should skip it, limitations, description, switching in, features, switching out, who it suits, setup time, use cases, pricing fit, hidden costs, our verdict
- — changed use cases, who it suits, description, our verdict, features, hidden costs, limitations, switching in, switching out, who should skip it, pricing tiers, pricing fit, setup time, summary
- — changed SSL certificate
- — changed domain expiry
- — changed SSL certificate, pricing fit, hidden costs, who should skip it, setup time, features
- — changed models, platforms
Showing the 6 most recent of 13 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
How much does SkimAI cost in 2026?
SkimAI: Free to use. Pricing last verified 24 Oct 2026.
Plans compared
Every published SkimAI tier, its price as the vendor publishes it, who it fits, and what it adds over the tier below. The 12-month cost projection follows.
| Plan | Price | Billing | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | — | Professionals, students, and researchers who already hold an account with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Grok and read many public web articles a day.Adds: Free entry point: unlimited article summaries via the skim.page/ URL prefix, four styles (Summary, ELI5, Research, Investor), and handoff to five assistants — with no account, signup, or installation. |
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where SkimAI's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
The site presents SkimAI as free and shows no paid tiers, so there is nothing to graduate to and no seat maths to do. The real budget line is the AI assistant you already pay for — if you're on a free ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Grok account, SkimAI works the same but you hit that assistant's usage limits, and a paid assistant tier is what removes them. Judged on price alone it undercuts dedicated summarizer subscriptions, but it does far less than they do.
Has SkimAI's pricing changed?
No plan price for SkimAI has moved since we began logging in Aug 2026; the pricing page is re-read on every verification pass.
Who should pick SkimAI?
Pick SkimAI if you are Professionals and analysts who read many web articles a day, People already paying for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Grok, Students and researchers skimming publicly accessible long-reads, Privacy-conscious readers who want to inspect the prompt before sending it.
Look elsewhere if you are Anyone without an account on one of the five supported assistants, Researchers whose sources are PDFs, email newsletters, or paywalled articles, Teams that need summaries stored, shared, cited, or audited, Readers who want summarization to run offline or inside a native app.
Skip it if Skip SkimAI if your reading lives in PDFs, email newsletters, or paywalled journals, or if you want summaries stored and shared with a team — it only builds a prompt for public web article URLs and hands off to an assistant you already pay for.
GeneratedReal-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas SkimAI actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You have eight long market and policy pieces open. For each, you type skim.page/ in front of the URL; the tab opens ChatGPT with the default Summary prompt and you get a TL;DR, three takeaways, and a one-sentence why-it-matters. For the two earnings write-ups on the list you type skim.page/i/cl/<article-url> instead to run the Investor style in Claude.
Outcome: You decide in a few minutes which of the eight actually deserve a full read, and the three-takeaway format makes it easy to paste the ones that matter into notes.
You hit a dense technical or scientific long-read and want a plain-language pass first. You prepend skim.page/e/ to the URL, and the ELI5 style prompt opens in ChatGPT; if the redirect doesn't fire you copy the prompt straight off the skim.page page.
Outcome: You get a plain-English orientation before committing to the full paper-style article, and you can still switch to skim.page/r/cl/<article-url> for the Research style in Claude if you need structure.
You don't want an account or an install. You type skim.page/r/ before an article URL, read the generated prompt in the on-page preview to confirm what is being sent, then let the tab hand off to your assistant of choice.
Outcome: You get the summary without signing up for anything, and you've seen the exact prompt before it left your browser.
Use cases
- Turn a long news analysis into a TL;DR with three takeaways before a morning meeting
- Run the Research style in Claude when you want structure rather than a casual summary
- Run the Investor style on an earnings write-up or a funding announcement
- Use the ELI5 style to get a plain-language pass on a technical or scientific topic
- Triage a reading list fast by summarizing each article and skipping the ones that don't matter
- Copy the generated prompt manually when the assistant handoff fails to open
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of SkimAI — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Effectively zero for a desktop reader with an existing ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Grok account: there is no signup, no install, and no extension to enable — your first summary is whatever it takes to type skim.page/ in front of a URL and press enter. Allow a couple of minutes to internalize the four style codes (e, r, i, plus default Summary) and the four assistant codes (ge, cl, px,
Switching to or from SkimAI
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From pasting the URL straight into ChatGPT: prefix it with skim.page/ instead, so the model gets the same TL;DR / three takeaways / why-it-matters structure every time rather than whatever you type in the moment.
- →From a dedicated summarizer subscription: keep SkimAI bookmarked for quick public-article triage and cancel nothing until you've confirmed it covers the sources you actually read — it does not touch PDFs, newsletters,
- →From a manual prompt you keep in a notes file: replace it with the four style shortcuts (e, r, i, and default Summary), which reproduce the same asks without the copy-paste.
- ↗To a browser summarizer extension: if editing the address bar on every article becomes the annoyance, an in-toolbar summarizer removes that step but moves where the summary is produced.
- ↗To ChatGPT or Claude alone: if you only read a couple of articles a day, pasting the URL directly into the assistant costs the same and skips the skim.page step entirely.
Resources & guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “SkimAI”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “SkimAI” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about SkimAI.
Official links
What are the best SkimAI alternatives?
The closest alternatives to SkimAI we list are Samurai, Glarity and Wuko AI. Ranked by direct product-type match, not category overlap.
| Alternative | Pricing | Starts at | Last verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samurai | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
| Glarity | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
| Wuko AI | Free | Free | — |
Alternatives to SkimAI
View all
Tools that pair well with SkimAI
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside SkimAI, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Samurai
AI read-it-later app that summarizes YouTube videos, articles, and podcasts into concise, insight-rich takeaways.
Glarity
Glarity summarizes YouTube videos, PDFs and webpages and translates them side by side — free in your browser.
Wuko AI
Wuko AI summarizes articles, PDFs, and YouTube videos by email — send a link to read@wuko.ai and get an AI summary back in seconds
SkimAI vs its closest rival
SkimAI's closest head-to-head is with Gem — If you run a recruiting team and need an ATS/CRM with AI agents to source, screen, and schedule, Gem is the clear choice. If you're an individual drowning in Gmail and just want smart summaries and quick drafts, SkimAI's freemium model is perfect. They solve completely different problems – choose based on whether your pain point is hiring or inbox overload. Verdict generated
Head-to-head comparisons
Skimai vs Gem
If you run a recruiting team and need an ATS/CRM with AI agents to source, screen, and schedule, Gem is the clear choice. If you're an individual drowning in Gmail and just want smart summaries and quick drafts, SkimAI's freemium model is perfect. They solve completely different problems – choose based on whether your pain point is hiring or inbox overload.
GeneratedSkimai vs Guesty
SkimAI and Guesty serve entirely different needs. SkimAI is for Gmail users drowning in email, offering AI summarization and action extraction. Guesty is for vacation rental operators, with AI agents for guest messaging and bank reconciliation (new in June 2026). Choose based on your workflow: email triage or property management.
GeneratedSkimai vs Poke Interaction Co
If your inbox chaos lives in Gmail and you want a no-fuss summarizer, SkimAI is laser-focused and effective. But if you're ready to offload email, calendar, health data, and travel planning from your messaging app, Poke (Interaction Co.) offers a far broader ecosystem with verified Apple Messages integration and proactive automations — making it the stronger bet for those tired of app-switching.
GeneratedFrequently asked questions
Categories
Best-of guides
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