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Glarity vs Signal Extractor: what happens past thirty minutes
Glarity is a free, ad-free extension that summarizes YouTube and translates the web. Free summaries are capped at roughly thirty minutes of video.
The short answer
Glarity is the most generous tool in this comparison and it would be silly to pretend otherwise: the core is free for life, there are no ads, it needs no account for basic use, it does timestamped highlights, and it translates pages across 90+ languages on top. If you want a summary panel beside the video while you browse, install it — it's good. Two limits decide whether it's enough. The free tier caps a summary at about 4,000 tokens, which is roughly thirty minutes of video, so podcasts, lectures and interviews are exactly where it stops. And the stronger models generally need your own OpenAI API key or an authorised account, which means either token bills you manage or accepting the default. Being an extension is the third: it works where you're already browsing, and nowhere else. Signal Extractor takes any length of video with no cap and no key to configure, gives you a one-line verdict plus five to eight timestamped takeaways in about ten seconds, and works on videos with no captions by falling back to the audio. It also keeps going after the summary — follow-up chat with the transcript in context, Notion export, a public share link, and channel following that emails you a summary of every new upload.
Feature by feature
18
Signal Extractor wins
7
Tied
8
Glarity wins
| Price & limits | Signal Extractor | Glarity |
|---|---|---|
| Price to summarize | Free | Free |
| Ads | None | None |
| No account needed | Yes | Yes |
| Video length limit | Any length | ~30 min free |
| Long podcasts and lectures | Yes | No |
| Own API key for best models | No | Usually |
| Token costs you pay yourself | None | Possible |
| No extension to install | Yes | No |
| The summary | Signal Extractor | Glarity |
| Timestamped key takeaways | Yes | Yes |
| Timestamps jump into the video | Yes | Yes |
| One-line verdict up top | Yes | No |
| Same structure every time | Yes | Limited |
| Whole video read, not the first part | Yes | Limited |
| Videos with no captions | Yes | No |
| Instant or deeper reasoning | Yes | Limited |
| Pick between multiple models | Limited | Yes |
| Generates FAQs from the video | No | Yes |
| Pick output language (40+) | Limited | Yes |
| After the summary | Signal Extractor | Glarity |
| Follow-up chat on the video | Yes | Yes |
| Chat can search the web | Yes | No |
| Channel follow + email digest | Yes | No |
| X (Twitter) posts too | Yes | Limited |
| Save to Notion | Yes | No |
| Public share link | Yes | No |
| Copy as markdown | Yes | Yes |
| Saved history | Yes | No |
| Public summary library | Yes | No |
| Everything else it does | Signal Extractor | Glarity |
| Full-page translation, 90+ languages | No | Yes |
| Summarize any web page | No | Yes |
| PDF summary and Q&A | No | Yes |
| AI answer beside Google results | No | Yes |
| Subtitle generation and translation | No | Yes |
| Focused on one job | Yes | No |
Glarity details taken from their own site and public documentation, checked August 2026. Their features and limits change — check theirs for today's details. Logos and product names are trademarks of their respective owners, shown here to identify the products compared.
Which should you use?
Use Signal Extractor if
Your videos are long — podcasts, lectures, interviews — or you want a fixed verdict, no API key to manage, and the summary saved, exported or emailed to you afterwards.
Use Glarity if
You want a free panel right beside the video as you browse, you translate foreign-language pages often, and your videos are usually under half an hour.
Glarity questions
Is Glarity really free?
Yes, genuinely — the core features are free for life, with no ads and no account needed for basic use. That's rare and worth crediting. The limits are on size rather than price: free summaries are capped at roughly 4,000 tokens, about thirty minutes of video, and PDF summaries at four pages.
Why does Glarity cut off long videos?
The free tier caps how much of a transcript it processes, so anything past roughly half an hour falls outside it. That makes podcasts, lectures and long interviews the weak spot. Signal Extractor reads the whole video at any length with no cap.
Do I need an OpenAI API key for Glarity?
Not for the default mode, but unlocking the stronger models generally needs your own API key or an authorised account — and those tokens are billed to you by the provider, not by Glarity. Nothing here needs a key and there's no usage bill.
What is the best Glarity alternative?
It depends what's missing. If the length cap is the problem, Signal Extractor reads any video free with no key to configure. If you want a summary panel inside YouTube while you browse and your videos are short, honestly stay with Glarity — it's good at that.
Can Glarity summarize a video with no captions?
No. It reads the caption track, so a video with captions disabled leaves it nothing to work with. Signal Extractor falls back to processing the audio, so it still produces a summary.
Which is better for a three-hour podcast?
Signal Extractor, clearly. Three hours is many times Glarity's free summary ceiling, whereas here the length makes no difference to the result or the price.
What does Glarity do better?
Several things. It translates full pages across 90+ languages, summarizes any web page and PDFs, adds an AI answer next to Google results, generates and translates subtitles, lets you pick between frontier models, and sits right inside the page you're already on. For breadth at zero cost it's hard to beat.
Can I use both?
That's a sensible setup. Glarity for quick reads on short videos and foreign-language pages while you browse, and Signal Extractor when the video is long, when there are no captions, or when you want the summary saved, exported or emailed to you.
Try it on the video you were about to watch
Paste a YouTube link and read the takeaways in about ten seconds. No account, no extension, no card.
Summarize a video