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Comparison

Sidenote vs Humata

Humata is an enterprise document AI you deploy and operate as a knowledge base; Sidenote is a per-person reader that cites the page already on your screen.

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Sidenote

A per-person reader in your browser. No rollout, no admin, cited answers in place.

Humata

A document-AI base you deploy for a team, feed with files, and manage centrally.

The short answer

Should you use Sidenote or Humata?

Choose Sidenote if…

You want everyday cited reading across Confluence, Notion, PDFs and the web, in your browser, installed in an afternoon at £10/month per user. No enterprise rollout required.

Choose Humata if…

You're rolling out an enterprise document AI: a central knowledge base with a compliance story, embeddable Q&A in your own product, and team-wide controls.

They're not mutually exclusive.

Compared honestly

Sidenote vs Humata: feature by feature.

CapabilitySidenoteHumata
Reads the page you already have openYesNo
Works on private Confluence, Notion & SharePoint pagesYesNo
Works on web articles & live web pagesYesNo
Upload your own documentsYesYes
Inline citations on every answerYesYes
Citations scroll & highlight the exact passageYes Partial
One-click glossary of jargon & acronymsYesNo
Ask across many documents at onceYesYes
Per-document Store / Discard retention controlYesNo
Embed document Q&A in your own productNoYes
Enterprise compliance program (SOC-2 / HIPAA)NoYes
Free tierYesYes

Last reviewed: 3 July 2026.

Two rows go to Humata (the enterprise embed and the compliance story) and we're upfront about it. See Where Humata is the better tool below. The cross-document chat row above is powered by Sidenote Collections.

The core difference

A knowledge base you operate, or a reader that rides along.

Humata is a destination and a deployment. You bring documents into it, set it up for a team, and embed it where you need answers. It's built for running document AI as infrastructure.

Sidenote is a per-person reader. It sits in your browser, reads what you already have open, and cites every answer to the exact passage. No upload, no deployment, no admin.

The difference in one example

Reading a private Confluence page: Humata wants the content uploaded or connected into its workspace. Sidenote reads it in place, on your session, and you click a citation to land on the source line.

Giving credit

Where Humata is the better tool.

If these are what you need, Humata is built for it:

Enterprise compliance posture

A compliance and security story aimed at procurement, the kind of program a small focused tool like Sidenote doesn't yet have.

Embed Q&A in your product

Drop document question-answering into your own web app or portal, a developer surface Sidenote doesn't offer.

Central team knowledge base

Built around a managed, team-wide document library rather than per-user, browser-side reading.

FAQ

Sidenote vs Humata: common questions

For individuals and teams who want cited answers about the documents they read day to day (wikis, PDFs, articles), Sidenote is a lighter, browser-native fit. Humata is aimed more at enterprise document-AI deployments, with compliance positioning and an embeddable widget. They overlap on chat-with-your-documents citations, but sit at different ends of that market.
Humata works on documents you upload or connect server-side. Sidenote reads what's already on your screen, on your own session, so a private Confluence page, a Notion doc or a SharePoint file is readable in place, with nothing to upload into a separate workspace.
Sidenote is a small, focused product and doesn't hold formal certifications like SOC-2 or HIPAA today. What it does do: store your content in a UK (eu-west-2) region with row-level security isolating every account, and run on model and embedding providers with no-training defaults. If a formal compliance program is a hard requirement, Humata is built for that; Sidenote is honest that it isn't there yet.
If you need an embeddable, centrally managed knowledge base with a compliance story, Humata is built for that. If you want every person on the team to get cited answers about the wikis and docs they already read, installed in an afternoon at £10/month per user, Sidenote is the lighter path.
Yes. A team might run Humata as a central knowledge base and let individuals use Sidenote for everyday reading across the browser. They're not mutually exclusive.
Both have a free tier. Sidenote's free plan covers everyday summaries, explanations and glossaries, with an opt-in 7-day Pro trial that needs no card; paid plans start at £10/month per user. Humata's paid tiers scale up toward team and enterprise pricing.
Try it on your docs

Cited answers. No deployment.

Add Sidenote to your browser, open a document, and ask. No upload, no admin. Just the answer and the passage that proves it.

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