vs
Sider vs Signal Extractor: no credits, no daily reset
Sider is a browser sidebar assistant that does timestamped YouTube summaries, metered against a daily credit balance that doesn't roll over.
The short answer
Sider is a well-built sidebar and its YouTube summaries are genuinely good — timestamped, quick, right there beside the video. The friction is the meter. The free plan runs on roughly thirty basic credits a day, and everything you do in the sidebar draws from it, so a real work session empties it fast. Above that sit three separate currencies — basic, advanced and elite — with unused credits expiring at the end of the month rather than carrying over, and paid tiers running from around $4.20 a month on annual billing up to roughly $16.70 for unlimited. It's a lot of arithmetic to do before watching a video. Signal Extractor has no credits, no tiers and no daily reset. Paste a YouTube link and read a one-line verdict plus five to eight timestamped takeaways in about ten seconds, free, with no account and nothing to install. Videos with no captions still work because it falls back to the audio. And the summary isn't the end: ask follow-up questions with the transcript in context, push it to Notion, share it publicly, or follow a channel and have every new upload summarized into your inbox.
Feature by feature
18
Signal Extractor wins
5
Tied
8
Sider wins
| Price & limits | Signal Extractor | Sider |
|---|---|---|
| Price to summarize | Free | Free tier, then paid |
| Free daily allowance | No limit | ~30 credits |
| Credit currencies to track | 0 | 3 |
| Unused allowance rolls over | n/a | No |
| No account needed | Yes | No |
| No extension to install | Yes | Limited |
| No subscription | Yes | No |
| Video length limit | Any length | Tiered |
| The summary | Signal Extractor | Sider |
| 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 |
| Summary doesn't spend a quota | Yes | No |
| Videos with no captions | Yes | Limited |
| Pick between multiple models | Limited | Yes |
| Full transcript shown | No | Yes |
| After the summary | Signal Extractor | Sider |
| 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 |
| Saved notes workspace | Limited | Yes |
| Public summary library | Yes | No |
| Everything else it does | Signal Extractor | Sider |
| Summarize any web page | No | Yes |
| Chat with PDFs | No | Yes |
| Translation | No | Yes |
| Deep research agent | No | Yes |
| Image tools | No | Yes |
| Focused on one job | Yes | No |
Sider 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 want YouTube videos summarized properly for free, with no credits to count, no account and no daily wall to hit mid-session.
Use Sider if
You want one sidebar across your whole browser — page summaries, PDF chat, translation, saved notes, image tools — and you're happy managing a credit balance for it.
Sider questions
Is Sider free for YouTube summaries?
There's a free plan with roughly thirty basic credits a day, and every action in the sidebar draws from the same pool — so occasional summaries are fine but a real work session runs out. Signal Extractor has no credit system and no daily limit.
How much does Sider cost?
Paid tiers start around $4.20 a month on annual billing and run up through Basic and Pro to roughly $16.70 for Unlimited, depending on billing cycle and current promotions. Signal Extractor has no paid plan.
Do Sider credits roll over?
No. Unused credits expire at the end of the month rather than carrying forward, which is a detail that comes up repeatedly in user complaints. There's nothing to expire here because there's nothing to spend.
What is the best free Sider alternative for videos?
Signal Extractor if video is your main use. It's free with no account, no install and no cap, and gives you a one-line verdict, timestamped takeaways and a chat for follow-up questions. If you want the whole browser-wide sidebar, Sider does far more than we do.
Can either summarize a video with no captions?
Signal Extractor falls back to processing the audio, so a video with captions disabled still produces a summary. Sidebar tools working from the caption track are much less reliable in that situation.
Which is better for long podcasts?
Signal Extractor handles any length at no cost, so a three-hour episode is free like everything else. On Sider, long videos sit behind the higher tiers and each summary spends from your balance.
What does Sider do better?
It's a browser-wide assistant, and that's a genuinely different product. It summarizes any page, chats with PDFs, translates, runs a research agent, keeps a notes workspace and gives you a choice of frontier models. We only do YouTube.
Is Sider worth paying for?
If you live in the sidebar all day across pages, documents and translation, the Unlimited tier is decent value against paying for models separately. If you mainly want to know what's in a video, you're paying for capacity you won't use.
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