Comparison
Sidenote vs Perplexity
Both give you answers with sources. The difference is which sources. Perplexity searches the public web and cites web links. Sidenote answers from yourdocuments — the page you're reading, your private wikis, your PDFs — and cites the exact passage inside them. Here's an honest, feature-by-feature comparison.
The short answer
Should you use Sidenote or Perplexity?
Plenty of people use both. One looks outward at the web; the other looks inward at the documents in front of you.
Compared honestly
Sidenote vs Perplexity: feature by feature
CapabilitySidenotePerplexity
Answers from the page or PDF you already have openSidenoteYesPerplexityNo
Works on private Confluence, Notion & SharePoint pagesSidenoteYesPerplexityNo
Reads your own uploaded & local PDFsSidenoteYesPerplexityPartial
Citations scroll & highlight the exact passage in the documentSidenoteYesPerplexityNo
Cites and links public web sourcesSidenotePartialPerplexityYes
Server-side check drops unsupported claimsSidenoteYesPerplexityPartial
One-click glossary of jargon & acronymsSidenoteYesPerplexityNo
Ask across many of your documents at onceSidenoteYesPerplexityPartial
Searches & discovers across the open webSidenoteNoPerplexityYes
Follow-up research with live, up-to-date sourcesSidenotePartialPerplexityYes
Mobile appsSidenoteNoPerplexityYes
Image generation & open-ended creative tasksSidenoteNoPerplexityYes
Several rows go to Perplexity, and we're not pretending otherwise — see Where Perplexity wins below. The cross-document row is powered by Sidenote Collections.
The core difference
Search the whole web, or read the document in front of you.
Perplexity is an answer engine. You ask a question and it searches the public web, reads what it finds, and writes a summary with links to the sources. It's excellent at discovery — finding material you didn't know existed and pulling it together fast.
Sidenote isn't a search engine. It sits in the side panel of every tab and answers from the documents you already have — the page you're reading, a private Confluence runbook, a PDF. Click a citation and it scrolls the real document and highlights the exact passage, so the source isn't a link to somewhere else — it's the sentence right in front of you.
The difference in one exampleAsk “what's our incident escalation policy?” Perplexity searches the public web — but your policy lives in a private Confluence page it can't sign in to read. Sidenote runs in your browser, on your session, reads that exact page, answers, and highlights the sentence that proves it.
Both anchor their answers in sources, which is the whole point of each tool. Sidenote's scroll-to-source citations just point inward — to the passage in your own document — rather than out to a list of web pages.
Giving credit
Where Perplexity is the better tool.
If these are what you need, Perplexity is a strong choice:
- Open-web search & discoveryAsk anything and it searches the public internet, surfacing sources you didn't know existed — Sidenote only reads documents you already have.
- Live, up-to-date researchPulls current information from across the web and lets you follow a question wherever it leads. Sidenote is anchored to the documents in front of you.
- A broad answer engineMobile apps, image generation and open-ended creative tasks make it a general-purpose assistant — Sidenote deliberately stays a focused in-browser reader.
If your work is mostly reading documents you already have — wikis, PDFs, the page in front of you — see how Sidenote fits reading research papers, or compare pricing.
FAQ
Sidenote vs Perplexity — common questions
Is Sidenote a Perplexity alternative?
They overlap but point in different directions. Perplexity is an answer engine for the open web — ask it anything and it searches public sources and summarises them. Sidenote answers from documents you already have: the page you're reading, your private Confluence and Notion wikis, your PDFs. If your question is 'what does this document say, and where exactly', Sidenote is the better fit; if it's 'what does the internet say about X', Perplexity is.
Can Perplexity read my private Confluence, Notion or SharePoint pages?
Not by default. Perplexity searches the public web and sources it can fetch on its own servers, so a page behind your company login is invisible to it. Sidenote runs inside your browser on your own session, so it reads exactly what's on your screen — including private wikis, intranet pages and documents only you can see.
How are the citations different?
Perplexity cites public web pages and links out to them — useful for tracing a claim to a source online. Sidenote cites the exact passage inside the document you're reading: click a citation and it scrolls the page to that sentence and highlights it, so you can verify in a second without leaving the document.
Does Sidenote search the web like Perplexity?
No, and that's deliberate. Sidenote works on the documents in front of you rather than crawling the open web. It will read and answer questions about any web page you have open, but it isn't a search-and-discovery engine. For open-ended internet research, Perplexity is the right tool.
Which is more trustworthy?
Both cite their sources, which already puts them ahead of a bare chatbot. Sidenote adds that every answer is checked server-side against the passages actually retrieved from your document, so unsupported claims have their citation dropped before you see them — and the citation points to an exact sentence you can click and check, not a list of web links.
Can I use both?
Plenty of people do. Perplexity for exploring the open web and discovering sources; Sidenote for reading and questioning the specific documents you already have, with answers in place and citations that scroll to the exact passage.
Try it on the page you're on
Read anything. With citations.
Add Sidenote to Chrome and ask the document in front of you a question. No upload, no new tab — just the answer, and the passage that proves it.
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