What are the best free ChatGPT Chrome extensions available?

Question

I'm so tired of copying and pasting back and forth between tabs it’s driving me insane honestly. I tried using this one extension called Merlin but then it hit me with a paywall after like five searches and I’m a broke grad student so I definitely can’t afford 20 dollars a month right now. My logic was that I could find something that just sits in my browser sidebar so I can summarize these long research papers for my thesis due next Friday but everything I find seems so sketchy or just stops working after two days.

I was thinking maybe there's a way to get the GPT-4 features for free or at least a decent wrapper that doesn't track every single thing I type because I'm getting really anxious about my privacy too. I just need something reliable that wont break my flow while I'm digging through these PDFs.

These are the things I really need it to do:

work directly on any website without a million popups

summarize long academic papers quickly

not cost a subscription fee

Is there anything actually good and free out there that doesn't feel like a total scam or am I just chasing ghosts at this point... really need to get this paper finished by the weekend so I can actually sleep for once. I looked at Harpa but it looked so complicated to setup and I just dont have the brainpower left today.

EuropaLeagueNights · Accepted Answer

I've tried every wrapper out there, but unfortunately, I wasted hours on these:

Monica AI Chrome Extension (annoying limits)

Sider AI Sidebar GPT-4 (expensive) Just use Microsoft Copilot Sidebar... it's free tho.

Qksmmmmm1 · Answer

Unfortunately, the current extension market is pretty abysmal for students who need high-volume processing without a heavy subscription fee. Most tools are basically just fancy interfaces for API calls that they overcharge for once you hit a low usage ceiling. I have had issues with most sidebar tools failing to maintain context during long PDF reads, which is totally unacceptable for serious thesis work. You might want to look at SciSpace Copilot for Chrome since it is actually built for researchers and handles academic formatting way better than generic wrappers. If that feels too specialized, the Perplexity AI Chrome Extension is a decent fallback for quick summaries, tho it lacks the deep PDF interaction. Just make sure you check the privacy toggles because these free versions often default to training on your data, which isnt ideal for original research projects.

Robertnew · Answer

honestly i feel your pain with the paywalls, it's the worst. i think i heard about some open source sidebars that are totally free, but you gotta be careful because half of them seem like total scams. i would suggest looking for a simple browser wrapper that just lets you use a free account in a sidebar... not sure which is best right now but definitely watch those privacy permissions tho.