vs
Recall vs Signal Extractor: past ten summaries a month
Recall turns videos, podcasts and articles into a searchable personal knowledge base. The free plan covers ten AI summaries a month.
The short answer
Recall is the closest thing here to a genuine peer, and it's aimed slightly past us: summaries are a way into a personal knowledge base, where cards link to each other in a graph, quizzes come back on a spaced-repetition schedule, and you can listen to a summary instead of reading it. It also already does the things we normally win on — timestamps, and transcribing the audio when a video has no captions. If you want video summaries to accumulate into something you'll still be using in a year, Recall is the better product and we'd say so. The limit is volume. The free plan is ten AI summaries a month, and unlimited summaries mean Plus at $10 a month billed yearly, or $12 monthly. Ten a month is a video every three days. Signal Extractor is free with no monthly ceiling and no account: paste a link and read a one-line verdict plus five to eight timestamped takeaways in about ten seconds, at any video length. Follow-up chat with the transcript in context, Notion export and a public share link come free too, and you can follow a channel and have every new upload summarized into your inbox — which is the one workflow Recall doesn't cover.
Feature by feature
15
Signal Extractor wins
8
Tied
9
Recall wins
| Price & limits | Signal Extractor | Recall |
|---|---|---|
| Price to summarize | Free | Free tier, then $10/mo |
| Free summaries | No limit | 10 per month |
| No account needed | Yes | No |
| No subscription | Yes | No |
| Video length limit | Any length | 10h captioned |
| Length limit without captions | Any length | 5h |
| Card needed to start | No | No |
| The summary | Signal Extractor | Recall |
| 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 |
| Concise or detailed versions | Limited | Yes |
| Videos with no captions | Yes | Yes |
| Ready in about ten seconds | Yes | Limited |
| Listen to it as audio | No | Yes |
| Pick between multiple models | Limited | Limited |
| After the summary | Signal Extractor | Recall |
| Follow-up chat on the video | Yes | Yes |
| Chat can search the web | Yes | Yes |
| Channel follow + email digest | Yes | No |
| X (Twitter) posts too | Yes | No |
| Save to Notion | Yes | No |
| Public share link | Yes | No |
| Copy as markdown | Yes | Yes |
| Public summary library | Yes | No |
| Chat across everything you've saved | No | Yes |
| Building a knowledge base | Signal Extractor | Recall |
| Linked knowledge graph | No | Yes |
| Spaced-repetition quizzes | No | Yes |
| Podcasts, articles and PDFs | No | Yes |
| Unlimited saved content | Limited | Yes |
| Personal notes and tables | No | Yes |
| API and MCP access | No | Yes |
| Nothing to organise | Yes | No |
Recall 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
You summarize more than a couple of videos a week, or you want it free with no account and new uploads from a channel emailed to you automatically.
Use Recall if
You want summaries to become a knowledge base you keep — linked cards, spaced-repetition quizzes, audio playback, and podcasts, PDFs and articles alongside video.
Recall questions
Is Recall free?
There's a real free tier and it doesn't ask for a card, but AI summaries are capped at ten a month. Unlimited summaries are on Plus at $10 a month billed yearly, or $12 monthly. Signal Extractor has no monthly cap and no paid plan.
What happens when I hit Recall's ten summaries?
You keep everything already saved and can carry on saving content and writing notes, but new AI summaries wait for next month or a paid plan. Ten a month works out to a video every three days, so anyone summarizing daily runs out in the first week.
What is the best free Recall alternative for YouTube?
Signal Extractor if the volume is the problem — free, no account, no monthly ceiling, with a one-line verdict, timestamped takeaways and follow-up chat. If what you want is the knowledge base itself, Recall is doing something we don't attempt.
Does Recall handle videos with no captions?
Yes, it transcribes the audio, with a shorter length ceiling than for captioned videos. Signal Extractor also falls back to the audio, with no length limit either way. This is one of the few tools that doesn't simply give up here.
Which is better for long podcasts?
Both handle serious length. Recall caps captioned content around ten hours and about five hours without captions, which covers nearly everything, but each one spends from your ten monthly summaries. Here length and volume are both unlimited and free.
Which is better for studying?
Recall. Spaced-repetition quizzes, a linked knowledge graph and audio playback are built for retention, and we have no equivalent. Signal Extractor is for deciding what to watch and extracting the useful parts fast.
What does Recall do better?
It's a knowledge base rather than a summarizer. Cards link into a graph automatically, quizzes come back on a schedule, you can chat across everything you've saved, it takes podcasts, articles and PDFs as well as video, it reads summaries aloud, and it exposes an API and MCP server.
Can I get new videos from a channel summarized automatically?
That's the one thing here Recall doesn't do. Follow a channel and every new upload is summarized and sent to your inbox, so you stop checking whether anything new is worth watching.
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