Last updated: 2026-07-01
Humata AI is a document Q&A platform by Humata (Tilda Technologies Inc) powered by GPT-5. It processes 200+ page PDFs in seconds and returns cited, verifiable answers with links to the exact source passage. Free plan covers 60 pages/month; Expert is $9.99/month for up to 3 users with 500 pages; Team is $49/user/month with 5,000 pages. SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and GDPR compliant.
About Humata AI
Humata lets you upload documents — PDFs, Word files, presentations — and ask questions about them in plain English. Answers come back with highlighted citations pointing to the exact passage in your file, so you can verify them rather than just trust the output. It runs on GPT-4 and handles unlimited file uploads depending on your plan. The tool is useful when you have dense reports, contracts, or research papers and need to pull specific information fast. It's used by researchers, legal teams, and analysts who would otherwise spend hours reading. Security includes SOC 2 Type II, AES-256 encryption, and role-based access controls. Humata does not use your documents to train its models. Pricing starts free with limited storage, with paid tiers for teams and enterprise. Enterprise plans include SSO, custom security controls, and dedicated infrastructure.
Pricing
Free tier with 60 pages/month and 1 user. Expert plan at $9.99/month includes 500 free pages, up to 3 users, and GPT-5 support; $0.02 per additional page. Team plan at $49/month per user (up to 10) includes 5,000 free pages, GPT-5, OCR, response personalization, and department/folder permissions; $0.01 per additional page. Enterprise pricing available upon request with unlimited users, custom pages, and uptime SLA.
Key Features
- Unlimited Document Upload: Upload as many PDFs, Word documents, and presentations as needed. No storage restrictions on paid plans.
- Citation-Based Answers: Every answer includes highlighted citations linking directly back to source material for instant fact-checking and verification.
- Multi-Document Analysis: Ask questions across multiple files simultaneously, enabling comparison and synthesis of information from entire knowledge bases.
- Enterprise-Grade Security: SOC 2 Type II certified, AES-256 encryption at rest, role-based access controls, and privacy-by-design architecture.
- Webpage Embedding: Embed Humata's AI chat interface directly into websites with a single click, connecting customers with answers from your documentation.
- Team Collaboration: Share files with team members, control access by role, manage permissions at department and folder levels.
Pros
- Outstanding document reading comprehension—ranks first among 20+ leading models in RepLiQA benchmark with 0.7429 recall score, outperforming GPT-4 and Claude 3
- Cited, verifiable answers grounded in source documents eliminate hallucination risks endemic to generic LLMs
- Simple, intuitive interface requires no technical expertise or training
- SOC 2 Type II compliant with enterprise-grade encryption and security controls
- Flexible pricing scales from free tier to team and custom enterprise plans
Cons
- Limited to English language interactions and document processing
- Mobile app support unavailable (web-only access)
- Free plan restricts usage to 60 pages and 1 user per month — low for ongoing professional work
- Some users report occasional inaccuracies in document processing and logical reasoning across complex multi-document scenarios
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Humata AI and who built it?
Humata AI is a document Q&A platform built by Tilda Technologies Inc, a company founded in 2022 and backed by investors including Google's Gradient Ventures and ARK Invest, with a $3.5M seed round. The product lets you upload PDFs and other documents, then ask questions in plain English and get answers with citations pointing back to the exact page and passage in the source file. It runs on a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipeline with a GPT-4 backend and can process 200+ page documents in seconds. Humata is popular with graduate students, researchers, lawyers, and teams who need to extract answers from long technical or legal PDFs without reading the whole document. It holds SOC 2 Type II compliance and is GDPR compliant, and the company has its source code organized under the Humata-ai GitHub organization.
How much does Humata AI cost?
Humata AI has four tiers. The Free plan costs $0 and includes 60 pages/month for 1 user, which is enough for light testing with no credit card required. The Expert plan costs $9.99/month and supports up to 3 users, with 500 free pages and overage at $0.02 per page beyond that, plus GPT-5 support and chat support. The Team plan costs $49/month per user (up to 10 users) and includes 5,000 free pages, OCR, response personalization, and department and folder-level permissions, with overage at $0.01 per page. Enterprise pricing is custom and requires contacting sales, and adds unlimited users, a custom page allowance, uptime SLA, and early access to new features. Always check Humata's pricing page directly for the most current numbers before subscribing.
What does Humata AI do that competitors don't?
Humata AI's core differentiator is citation-based answers: every response includes a link back to the exact page and section of the source document where the answer came from, which lets you verify the AI's output instead of trusting it blindly. It supports multi-document analysis, so you can upload several PDFs and ask questions that span across all of them at once, useful for literature reviews or comparing contracts. Humata also offers webpage embedding, letting teams add a Humata-powered Q&A widget to their own site for customer-facing documentation. It now runs on GPT-5, and enterprise-grade security includes SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and GDPR compliance with SSO/SAML 2.0 via Okta and Google now live. Its main weakness compared to newer tools is the page-based pricing model, which some 2026 reviewers call outdated next to competitors offering unlimited uploads.
How does Humata AI compare to Google NotebookLM?
Google NotebookLM is completely free with a Google account, supports up to 50 sources per notebook, and adds extras like AI-generated podcast-style audio overviews of your documents, which Humata does not offer. In an April 2026 survey of 50 African researchers and students, 72% rated NotebookLM as the most useful tool for research workflows, reflecting its strong reputation for citation-grounded synthesis across multiple sources. Humata, by contrast, starts at $9.99/month for its Expert tier and focuses more narrowly on single-document and multi-document Q&A with page-level citations, plus team collaboration and webpage embedding that NotebookLM lacks. If budget is the priority and you mainly need cross-source synthesis, NotebookLM is the stronger free option. If you need team sharing, an embeddable Q&A widget, or SOC 2 Type II compliance for client-facing work, Humata is the better fit despite the cost.
Is Humata AI free to use?
Yes, Humata AI has a free plan that allows up to 60 pages of document uploads and 10 questions per month, which is enough to try the citation-based Q&A feature on a short PDF or two. The free tier does not require a credit card to start. However, several 2026 reviews note that 60 pages and 10 answers per month are restrictive for serious or repeated use, especially for students working through full textbooks or researchers handling multiple papers. To get a meaningful upgrade, the Expert plan at $9.99/month raises the limit to 500 free pages with $0.02 per page after that. There is no separate time-limited trial of paid features beyond the free tier itself, so most users decide to upgrade once they hit the 60-page or 10-question ceiling.
Who is Humata AI best for, and who should avoid it?
Humata AI is best for graduate students, academic researchers, lawyers, and small teams (the Expert plan now supports up to 3 users) who regularly work with long PDFs such as research papers, contracts, or technical manuals, and need cited, traceable answers rather than generic summaries. Its SOC 2 Type II compliance, HIPAA policies, and AES-256 encryption also make it a reasonable fit for legal and healthcare professionals handling sensitive client documents. Humata is a weaker choice for people who need to process very large document sets cheaply, since its page-based pricing model has been criticized in 2026 reviews as expensive compared to unlimited-upload competitors. Users with very large or highly technical documents (beyond roughly 200 pages) may also notice accuracy drops. Anyone needing grammar checking or plagiarism detection should look elsewhere, since Humata does not include those features.
How accurate are Humata AI's answers, and does it cite sources?
Humata AI's defining feature is that every answer comes with a citation linking back to the specific page and passage in the uploaded document, which several 2026 reviewers describe as best-in-class for traceability compared to general-purpose AI chat tools. That said, user reviews are mixed: Humata holds a Trustpilot score in the low 3-out-of-5 range, with complaints centering on answers being inaccurate, incomplete, or irrelevant on complex or highly technical documents, and on the page-consumption billing model. The tool reportedly works most reliably on documents in the 50 to 60 page range and can struggle with extremely long or jargon-heavy files, occasionally misinterpreting niche legal or technical terms. For straightforward documents, the citation system lets you quickly check whether an answer is grounded in the actual text, which is the main reason academic and legal users continue to choose it despite the mixed accuracy reviews.
Does Humata AI train on user-uploaded documents?
Humata AI does not use uploaded documents to train its AI models, which it states explicitly on its security page. The platform holds SOC 2 Type II compliance, has HIPAA policies and procedures in place for healthcare data, is ISO 27001 aligned, and is GDPR compliant. All files are encrypted with AES-256 at rest and transmitted over TLS 1.3. Model-used data is deleted within 30 days; dashboard data is retained until you delete it. SSO/SAML 2.0 via Okta and Google is now live. If document confidentiality is a hard requirement, such as for attorney-client privilege or patient records, request Humata's current data processing agreement and SOC 2 report directly from their sales team before uploading sensitive material, since specific contractual terms should be confirmed in writing.