Comparison

Sidenote vs Hebbia

Hebbia proved that citation-first, verifiable AI is what serious document work demands. Sidenote applies the same thesis in your browser: server-verified citations, self-serve, from £10 a month.

Sidenote

Verified citations on the page you're reading. Install from a store, start in minutes.

Hebbia

An enterprise AI platform for institutional document work, deployed through a sales process.

The short answer

Should you use Sidenote or Hebbia?

Choose Sidenote if…

You're an individual or a small team and you want the verifiable-citations approach on the documents you actually read: PDFs, wikis, filings, papers and web pages in your browser. Self-serve, public pricing from £10/month, and every cited quote checked verbatim against the source before you see it.

Choose Hebbia if…

You're buying for an institution: analysis across whole data rooms and filing sets, connections to financial data providers, firm-wide agent workflows, and an enterprise deployment with the security review to match. That's what Hebbia is built and priced for.

The honest framing: this isn't a features fight, it's an audience split. One is procured by firms; the other is installed by people.

Compared honestly

Sidenote vs Hebbia: feature by feature.

CapabilitySidenoteHebbia
Citations back every answerYesYes
Clicking a citation highlights the passage on the live pageYes Partial
Reads the page or PDF you already have open in your browserYesNo
Works on private wikis & intranet pages on your own sessionYesNo
Self-serve: install from a store, no sales callYesNo
Public pricing, from £10/monthYesNo
Free tier, plus a 7-day trial with no cardYesNo
Ask across many documents at onceYesYes
Enterprise-scale analysis across whole data rooms & filing setsNoYes
Always-on agent workflows for a firm's processesNoYes
Connects to financial data providers & public filingsNoYes
Sales-led enterprise deployment & rolloutNoYes

Last reviewed: 16 July 2026.

Four rows go to Hebbia, and we are not pretending otherwise; see Where Hebbia is the better tool below. The click-through row is a partial rather than a no because Hebbia does trace findings back to their source documents; that trace lives inside its own platform, while Sidenote scrolls and highlights the passage on the live page you're reading. On Sidenote's side the cross-document row is powered by Sidenote Collections, and the verification behind the citation rows is explained in what verified citations mean.

The core difference

Same thesis. Very different front door.

Hebbia made the case, on Wall Street of all places, that AI over documents is only worth trusting when every answer traces back to its source. Its Matrix platform runs cited analysis across thousands of documents for asset managers, investment banks and law firms. It's bought the way enterprise software is bought: a demo, a sales process, a quoted contract, a rollout.

Sidenote takes the same conviction and puts it one click away. It sits in your browser's side panel, reads the page or PDF you already have open, and answers with citations that are verified server-side: every quote must match the document text verbatim or the citation is dropped. Click one and the live page scrolls to the highlighted passage. No procurement, no demo call; a free tier and £10 a month.

The difference in one example

A private-equity associate at a Hebbia customer gets Matrix for the deal room. The same associate reading an analyst note, a news article or a company wiki page at 9pm gets no verification at all. Sidenote is for that second reading: the everyday documents in your browser, cited and checkable, on your own account.

Giving credit

Where Hebbia is the better tool.

Hebbia is a serious, institution-grade platform, and for institutional work it is simply the right category of tool:

Institutional scale & rigor

Matrix runs analysis across thousands of documents (data rooms, filings, transcripts) with traceability designed for institutional review, and the certifications large firms require, including SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 42001.

Agent workflows for a whole firm

Hebbia's Skills & Agents let a firm encode its recurring processes once and have agents run them continuously. Sidenote answers questions when you ask; it doesn't run your firm's workflows in the background.

Finance-native data under one roof

Private documents, public filings and financial data providers connected in one place, plus API and MCP connectors for internal tools. Sidenote reads what's in your browser; it isn't a data platform.

FAQ

Sidenote vs Hebbia: common questions

It depends on who you are. Hebbia's Matrix is an enterprise platform built for institutional document work: asset managers, investment banks and law firms running analysis across whole data rooms, with every response cited to its source. If that's your firm, Hebbia is the serious choice. If you're an individual or a small team who wants the same idea (AI answers you can trace to the exact passage) on the documents you read every day, Sidenote gives you that in your browser for £10 a month, no sales process.
Hebbia doesn't publish pricing. Its pricing page is a book-a-demo and contact-sales flow, and contracts are quoted per organization, which is normal for enterprise software. Sidenote is self-serve with public pricing: a free tier, a 7-day Pro trial that needs only an email (no card), then Pro at £10/month, Pro+ at £20, Pro Max at £100, and Team at £18 per seat.
Yes, and that shared conviction is the point of this page. Hebbia builds citation and traceability into Matrix, so findings link back to the underlying documents. Sidenote's mechanism is server-side verification: every cited quote is checked verbatim against the actual document text, unsupported claims lose their citation before you see them, and clicking a citation scrolls the live page to the highlighted passage.
Not self-serve. Hebbia sells to organizations, so the route in is a demo and a sales conversation, with deployment handled for the firm. Sidenote installs from the Chrome or Firefox store in about a minute, and the free tier plus the no-card trial mean you can test the citations on your own documents today.
No. Hebbia is purpose-built for financial and legal work: filings, data rooms, market data connections, and agentic workflows tuned to those processes. Sidenote is a general reading assistant. It will happily cite its way through a 10-K, a contract or a research paper you have open in your browser, but it doesn't connect to financial data providers or run firm-wide agent workflows.
Realistically, yes. Hebbia is bought by firms; Sidenote is installed by people. Plenty of professionals whose employer runs an enterprise platform still want cited, checkable answers on everything else they read: the news, wikis, papers, PDFs outside the deal room. That everyday layer is what Sidenote is for.
Try it on the page you are on

Read anything. With citations.

Add Sidenote to your browser and ask the document in front of you a question. No sales call, no procurement cycle. Just the answer, and the passage on the live page that proves it.

7-day Pro trial · No card required · Free plan forever