What is SMRY, in short?
Updated November 4, 2026 · By Elias Brandt · Documentation review, not tested hands-on
Pros
- Free account is usable
- Low yearly price
- Source-linked answers
- Broad import and export
- Agent access included
Cons
- Free plan shows ads
- Daily caps on Free
- No access to hard paywalls
- AI providers process chats
- Pages disagree in places
Best forHeavy readers and researchersDevelopers and agent usersNot for readers who need subscriber-only articles
Strengths, limits and who it suits, in full
Strengths
- Free account is usable The Free plan includes 20 AI summaries and 20 article chats a day, highlights, notes, 100 feeds and API and MCP access.
- Low yearly price Patron is $36 a year, and the pricing page offers a 7-day trial with no card and a 30-day guarantee.
- Source-linked answers The site says summaries show which paragraphs they came from and answers link back to passages.
- Broad import and export The integrations page lists nine reading-service imports and exports to Notion, Obsidian, Roam, Markdown and Kindle.
- Agent access included The Developer API and MCP server are available on Free, not only on paid plans.
Limits
- Free plan shows ads Ad-free reading is not included on Free, and the Privacy Policy says non-premium users may see sponsor placements.
- Daily caps on Free 20 summaries, 20 chats and 1 audio article a day, with 2 voices and no export of highlights.
- No access to hard paywalls The Terms forbid circumventing hard paywalls and the site says publisher access controls still apply.
- AI providers process chats The Privacy Policy says chat messages are sent to third-party AI providers.
- Pages disagree in places The Free card says sync up to 50 articles while the table lists sync as included, and the Patron card lists API and MCP as an upgrade while the table shows it on Free.
- Monthly Pro price not stated Only yearly billing was read for Pro; Patron's monthly price comes from the homepage description.
Who it suits
- Heavy readers and researchers Follow feeds, save articles, files and videos, and search highlights across one library.
- Developers and agent users API and MCP access on every account, with 20 keys on Pro.
- Not for readers who need subscriber-only articles Hard paywalled text is not sent publicly, and the Terms prohibit circumventing it.
How much does SMRY cost?
Prices confirmed · checked
Regional prices: Prices are the amounts on the pricing page on 2026-11-04, in US dollars as shown with a dollar sign; no region or tax note was found.
$3 and $64 are monthly equivalents of yearly billing ($36 and $768 a year). Patron's $6 month-to-month price appears only in the homepage description; the pricing page Monthly toggle was not read, and no monthly Pro price is stated. The pricing page says no card is required for the trial, cancel anytime, and a 30-day guarantee; the Terms limit the refund to a first paid charge and exclude later renewals. Unlimited summaries on Patron are described as subject to abuse safeguards. The Free plan card lists syncing up to 50 saved articles while the comparison table lists cross-device sync as included and puts the 50-article limit on offline-ready saved articles; the Patron card lists Personal API & MCP as an add-on while the table shows it on all plans. The service is operated by AgentForce, LLC, doing business as smry.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 forever sourceFrom smry.ai/pricing, checked Nov 4, 2026 (opens in a new tab) | 20 AI summaries and 20 article chats a day, 1 audio article a day with 2 voices, 100 feeds, 3 website monitors, 100 MB storage, 2 active API keys, up to 50 offline-ready saved articles. Shows ads; no export of highlights. |
| Patron | $36 per year$3 a month equivalent sourceFrom smry.ai/pricing, checked Nov 4, 2026 (opens in a new tab) | Unlimited AI summaries and article chat, premium AI models, 50 listens a day across 10 voices, AI authorship detection, export, unlimited history, 1,000 feeds, 10 website monitors, 10 GB storage, 5 active API keys, Send to Kindle, ad-free. 7-day trial, no card. The site description gives $6 month to month. |
| Pro | $768 per year$64 a month equivalent sourceFrom smry.ai/pricing, checked Nov 4, 2026 (opens in a new tab) | Everything in Patron plus 25,000 feeds, 100 website monitors, 100 GB storage, 1,000 feed folders, 20 active API keys and priority support. The card shows Save $192; that implies $80 month to month, which the page does not state. |
How far does it go?
- Patron yearly versus month to monthPatron is $36 a year billed annually, or $6 a month per the homepage description, which would be $72 over twelve months. Paying yearly is therefore half the month-to-month rate for the same year, and the $3 a month equivalent is a yearly price, not a monthly one. Pro is $768 a year, about 21 times Patron's yearly price, so it pays only if you need more than 1,000 feeds or 10 website monitors. Arithmetic on published amounts, not a statement by smry.
Arithmetic from the published allowances above, not a usage test.
Taxes, currency and promotions can change the price you see at checkout.
Try SMRY free (opens in a new tab)
Key features
| Feature | What it does | Watch out |
|---|---|---|
| Clean reader mode for web articles, PDFs, EPUBs and documents, with your own font, theme and text size (homepage) | — | |
| AI summaries that point back to the source paragraphs, plus article chat that answers from the saved text (homepage) | Summaries and answers start from the extracted source shown next to them, and the homepage says citation-enabled answers return to the supporting passages and separate source claims from inference. | We did not run it, so how accurate the summaries are on long or technical articles was not observed. |
| Feed reader for RSS and Atom, newsletters, YouTube channels, Reddit, X accounts and monitored web pages (homepage) | — | |
| Text-to-speech with word-level highlighting; 2 voices on Free, 10 on Patron and Pro (homepage and pricing page) | — | |
| Highlights in five colors, notes, auto-tagging and a searchable library (homepage) | — | |
| Developer API and MCP server on every signed-in account, with higher limits on paid plans (integrations and pricing pages) | Signed-in accounts can search the library, feeds and monitors from agents over MCP or the HTTP API, with 2, 5 or 20 active API keys by plan. | Request limits per plan were not found on the pages read. |
| Feeds and monitors | You can follow feeds and turn selected web pages into monitored sources, then read a finite queue; Free allows 100 feeds and 3 monitors, Patron 1,000 and 10, Pro 25,000 and 100. | Monitors draw on scheduled credits (150, 720 or 7,200 a month), and the pages read do not define what one credit buys. |
| Library and integrations | Articles, videos, files, notes and feeds sit in one library, and the integrations page lists imports from Readwise Reader, Matter, Raindrop.io, Instapaper and Pocket plus exports to Obsidian, Roam and Notion. | The Pocket import is described as one-time, and the desktop app is only listed as coming soon. |
| Paywalls | The Hard Paywalls page explains that soft paywalls load the text in the page while hard paywalls never send it, so a reader mode cannot show it. | The Terms forbid using smry to circumvent hard paywalls, so it is not a way into subscriber-only articles. |
Is SMRY free?
Yes, with daily limits. The pricing page lists a Free plan with 20 AI summaries and 20 article chats a day, one audio article a day with 2 voices, 100 feeds and 3 website monitors. Free shows ads and has no highlight export. Reading a public page works without an account, according to the homepage.
What does paying for SMRY cost?
Patron is $36 a year, which the page shows as $3 a month equivalent; the homepage description gives $6 month to month, and the Monthly toggle was not read. Pro is $768 a year. Both come with a 30-day guarantee on the first paid charge, per the Terms, and Patron has a 7-day no-card trial. Yearly billing halves the month-to-month Patron rate for the same year.
Will it open a paywalled article?
Only soft ones. SMRY’s Hard Paywalls page says subscriber-only text is never sent publicly, so no reader mode can show it, and the Terms prohibit circumventing hard paywalls. If an article does not render, the pricing FAQ asks you to report it.
Where does the data go?
The Privacy Policy says chat messages are processed by third-party AI providers and that non-premium users may see sponsor placements chosen from limited usage and reading-context information. Do not paste confidential documents into the chat without reading it.
How could you check SMRY before paying?
Proposed evaluation · not performed yet
Use the free account on five articles you already know well.
- Save one long article, one PDF and one article from a site you read daily.
- Read each summary against the text and note any claim the source paragraphs do not support.
- Ask one question whose answer sits deep in the article and check the passage it links.
- Follow three feeds and see whether a day’s queue is shorter than your usual reading list.
Accept if the summaries match the text and 20 a day covers your reading. Reject if answers drift from the source or the daily cap blocks you before noon. No result is recorded here.
SMRY alternatives
Other research & sources tools checked with the same method. Pick by the job, not by a score.
Comparing AI model answers by voting, without a paid plan
Students and researchers who want to ask questions of a long YouTube lecture or tutorial and jump to the relevant timestamp instead of watching all of it
Finding and synthesizing published research
Extracting study data from research papers
Cited answers from your own documents
Quick cited answers and page summaries for study questions
Web research with linked sources
Checking whether a startup idea has demand and room before building it
Used SMRY? Write the first review. Visitor opinions are moderated and kept separate from our source checks.
Frequently asked questions
Is SMRY free?
Yes, with limits. A free account gets 20 AI summaries and 20 article chats a day, 1 audio article a day with 2 voices, 100 feeds, 3 website monitors, highlights, notes and API and MCP access. Free also shows ads and has no export of highlights. Patron costs $36 a year.
How much does SMRY cost?
Patron is $36 a year, shown as a $3 a month equivalent, and the homepage description gives $6 month to month. Pro is $768 a year, shown as $64 a month equivalent. The Monthly toggle on the pricing page and any monthly Pro price were not read. The trial is 7 days with no card, and the first paid charge has a 30-day refund guarantee.
Does SMRY get around paywalls?
Not hard ones. The Terms forbid circumventing hard paywalls, and the Hard Paywalls page says subscriber-only text is never sent publicly, so a reader mode cannot show it. The site says it reads material a public source returns and that publisher access controls still apply. We did not test which articles open.
What is the difference between Patron and Pro?
Patron adds unlimited summaries and chat, premium AI models, 10 voices, export, ad-free reading and 1,000 feeds. Pro adds capacity on top: 25,000 feeds, 100 website monitors, 100 GB storage, 1,000 feed folders, 20 API keys and priority support. At $36 versus $768 a year, Pro only makes sense for high-volume feed work.
What should I do if SMRY does not work on an article?
The pricing page FAQ says smry works with most articles and asks you to report one that does not render so they can look into it; it gives no list of failures. Hard paywalled pages and private social posts are listed as restricted. We did not test failure cases.
Can I connect SMRY to my own tools or an AI agent?
Yes. Every signed-in account can use the Developer API and the MCP server, and the integrations page lists an Agent Skill, imports from Readwise Reader, Matter and Raindrop.io, and exports to Notion, Obsidian and Kindle. Paid plans raise the limits and the active API key count from 2 to 5 or 20.
Sources and method6 official sources · 16 details checked · Nov 4, 2026
How we checked this profile
16 details on this page were checked against SMRY's own pages and help documentation (Nov 4, 2026).
See the checks by section16 documented
| Section | Checks | Last checked | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Article text | 1 documented | smry.ai | |
| Plans and prices | 6 documented | smry.ai/pricingsmry.aismry.ai/terms | |
| Platforms and integrations | 3 documented | smry.ai/integrationssmry.ai | |
| Features | 1 documented | smry.ai | |
| Strengths and limits | 2 documented | smry.ai/termssmry.ai/privacy | |
| Questions | 1 documented | smry.ai/hard-paywalls | |
| Who it suits | 1 documented | smry.ai/pricing | |
| Official channels and media | 1 documented | github.com/smry |
Sources for this profile
All 6 sources
Official pages read on 2026-11-04: homepage, pricing page (via a residential proxy because the page renders in the browser), integrations page, Hard Paywalls page, Terms of Service (effective July 25, 2026) and Privacy Policy (effective August 25, 2026). We did not sign up, run a summary, chat with an article, listen to audio, import a library or call the API, so summary accuracy, speed, voice quality and which articles open were not observed. The Monthly pricing toggle, request limits for the API, and what one scheduled monitor credit buys were not found. The 350K+ readers figure and the feature list are the provider's statements. Review sites and search-volume figures were not used.
Sources checked Nov 4, 2026. Found something out of date? See how we correct profiles.