# Explain Selected vs Glasp

Explain Selected records 0 monthly visits with — month-over-month growth and Free pricing. Glasp records 889,564 monthly visits with -14.1% growth and Freemium pricing.

| Metric | [Explain Selected](https://openaitools.app/tool/explain-selected) | [Glasp](https://openaitools.app/tool/glasp) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/explain-selected/mgdagfcgfpcglofdkfgaajafcmniddcc | https://glasp.co |
| Categories | AI Answer, AI Reader, AI Assistant, AI Language Learning | AI Research Tool, AI Agent, AI Summarizer, AI Youtube Summary |
| Pricing Model | Free | Freemium |
| Monthly Visits | 0 | 889,564 |
| MoM Growth Rate | — | -14.1% |
| Primary Market | Global | United States |
| Direct Visits | 0 | 400,603 |
| Review Score | 3.8 | 4.2 |
| Saved Count | 1 | 12 |
| Supported Platforms | Browser Extension | Website |

## Explain Selected

Explain Selected is a lightweight Chrome extension that removes the friction from looking up unfamiliar words while you read. Instead of opening a dictionary tab and scanning through a dozen senses to find the one that fits, you highlight the word or phrase in place and a purple circle appears. One click gives you the definition, the pronunciation and a plain-language explanation written for that specific context.

The distinguishing feature is contextual disambiguation. English is full of words whose meanings have almost nothing to do with each other — the extension's own example is "pounds", which can mean a unit of weight, a verb describing hitting something, or the British currency. Rather than presenting all three blindly, Explain Selected passes the surrounding sentence to ChatGPT and asks it to infer which sense is actually in play, then retrieves the corresponding Merriam-Webster entry and audio pronunciation. It also handles text that no dictionary covers well, such as current slang and narrow technical terminology.

It is aimed at people who read a lot of English online and want to keep their flow: language learners building vocabulary, professionals working through technical documents, and anyone who keeps encountering words with multiple meanings. Useful selections can be saved to a personal list for later memorization, or shared. Two practical caveats from the listing: extensions do not run in tabs that were already open when you installed it, so refresh those tabs first, and no extension works on Chrome internal pages such as the Chrome Web Store itself.

**Pricing & Plans:** Free. The extension is offered at no cost in the Chrome Web Store, with no in-app purchases listed.

- **Context-aware definitions:** ChatGPT infers which sense of a word fits the sentence you highlighted, instead of dumping every dictionary entry at once.
- **Merriam-Webster definitions and audio:** Matching dictionary entries and audio pronunciation are pulled in so you can hear as well as read the word.
- **One-click purple circle:** Select text and click the purple circle that appears — no popup windows, no copy-pasting into a separate tab.
- **Personal saved list:** Add words you want to remember to a personal list so you can review them later.
- **Share with others:** Send individual explanations to friends when a word or phrase is worth passing on.

**Strengths:** Resolves ambiguous words by using the surrounding sentence rather than guessing; Combines AI explanations with established Merriam-Webster definitions and audio; Works inline on any web page with a single click and no context switching; Saving and sharing selections make it useful for building vocabulary over time

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/explain-selected.md)

## Glasp

Glasp started from a simple observation: most people highlight things they never look at again. Instead of trapping highlights inside one app, Glasp makes them social. Install the extension, highlight a paragraph on any site or a line in a YouTube transcript, and it lands in your Glasp profile where you can add notes and tags. Because highlights are public by default unless you make them private, a feed of what like-minded people are reading and marking emerges — you can follow other users, see what resonates, and discover sources you would not have found on your own.

Your library becomes the raw material for AI features. Glasp can summarize a long article, a PDF or a YouTube video so you can decide whether it deserves reading, and it can organize what you have already saved into themes. The standout feature is the AI clone: by training on your own accumulated highlights and notes, it produces something that answers in the shape of your interests and reading history. There is also a digital-legacy angle, letting you hand your accumulated knowledge to someone else.

Glasp is free to start, with paid tiers for heavier use and greater AI capacity. Its real niche is learners, researchers, students and content curators who treat annotation as a public, collaborative practice rather than a private bookmark folder — and who want their saved material to do work for them later instead of gathering dust.

**Pricing & Plans:** Freemium. A free tier covers the core highlighting, saving and sharing features with limited AI usage; paid plans add higher AI limits and additional capacity. Check glasp.co for current tier pricing, as it is not published in our listing data.

- **Web and YouTube highlighting:** Mark up passages on any website or lines in a YouTube transcript from a browser extension, then keep them in one searchable library.
- **Social learning feed:** Highlights are shared publicly by default, so you can follow other users, react to their picks and discover sources through people with similar interests.
- **AI summarization:** Generate summaries of long articles, PDFs and YouTube videos to judge relevance fast and to digest what you have already saved.
- **Your own AI clone:** Trained on your accumulated highlights and notes, the AI clone answers in the shape of your reading history and areas of interest.
- **Notes, tags and Kindle import:** Add your own commentary and tags to every highlight, and bring in Kindle highlights so your reading lives in one place.

**Strengths:** Turns throwaway highlighting into a genuinely reusable, searchable library; The social feed surfaces sources through people rather than an opaque algorithm; AI summarization and the AI clone are built on your own saved material, not generic content; Works across web pages, YouTube, PDFs and Kindle imports in one place

**Limitations:** Public-by-default sharing is not for everyone; private lives behind a toggle you have to remember; The AI clone only becomes useful after you have accumulated a real body of highlights; Free-tier AI usage is limited, so heavy summarization pushes you to a paid plan

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/glasp.md)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How do Explain Selected and Glasp compare in monthly traffic?

Explain Selected has 0 monthly visits, while Glasp has 889,564. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality.

### How do their growth rates compare?

Explain Selected has a month-over-month growth rate of —; Glasp has -14.1%.

### How does pricing compare?

Explain Selected: Free. Free. The extension is offered at no cost in the Chrome Web Store, with no in-app purchases listed. Glasp: Freemium. Freemium. A free tier covers the core highlighting, saving and sharing features with limited AI usage; paid plans add higher AI limits and additional capacity. Check glasp.co for current tier pricing, as it is not published in our listing data.

## Alternatives

| # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | [Notion](https://openaitools.app/tool/t) | 173,441,670 | +0.1% | Freemium | The AI workspace where teams and agents get work done together | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/t.md) |
| 2 | [Perplexity](https://openaitools.app/tool/perplexity-ai) | 88,310,223 | -3.7% | Freemium | Real-time AI answer engine and research workspace combining live web citations with frontier reasoning models. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/perplexity-ai.md) |
| 3 | [SciSpace](https://openaitools.app/tool/scispace) | 4,464,111 | +8.6% | Freemium | Excels at deep scientific literature reading and analysis, whereas Glasp targets general web and video content curation. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/scispace.md) |
| 4 | [Sider](https://openaitools.app/tool/sider) | 2,644,740 | -10.6% | Freemium | Offers a broader multi-model sidebar for quick page summarization, but lacks Glasp's community-driven public highlighting and curation. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/sider.md) |
| 5 | [Language Reactor](https://openaitools.app/tool/language-reactor) | 1,878,769 | +0.6% | Freemium | Learn languages from Netflix, YouTube, and real-world texts with dual subtitles and AI | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/language-reactor.md) |
| 6 | [Merlin AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/merlin-ai-plugins) | 1,382,634 | +13.1% | Freemium | Provides faster multi-tab AI assistance and article summaries, but lacks dedicated social knowledge curation and note archiving features. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/merlin-ai-plugins.md) |
| 7 | [HARPA AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/harpa-ai) | 537,461 | +99.3% | Freemium | Delivers powerful web automation and page summarization, but features a steeper learning curve than Glasp's streamlined extension. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/harpa-ai.md) |
| 8 | [Scholarcy](https://openaitools.app/tool/scholarcy) | 195,058 | +4.6% | Freemium | Converts academic papers into structured summary flashcards, but lacks Glasp's broad web article and YouTube highlighting capabilities. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/scholarcy.md) |
| 9 | [Glarity](https://openaitools.app/tool/glarity-summarize-google-and-youtube) | 188,823 | -49.6% | Freemium | Provides open-source YouTube and webpage summarization directly in search results, but lacks Glasp's long-term knowledge management. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/glarity-summarize-google-and-youtube.md) |
| 10 | [Kome AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/kome-ai) | 174,910 | -6.5% | Freemium | Combines webpage summarization with bookmark management, but provides less robust community social curation than Glasp. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/kome-ai.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/explain-selected-vs-glasp

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