Best AI email summarizer for Gmail, Outlook and Mac
AI email summarizers compared on whether the summary shows by itself or only when you ask, which AI company reads your mail, and what it costs.
By Emmett Miller
The best AI email summarizer for most people is the one already in their mail app. Apple Mail summarizes every unread email on a Mac with Apple Intelligence, for free. Gemini in Gmail summarizes conversations for free, worldwide. Copilot sums up long threads in Outlook if you pay for Microsoft 365. Shortwave puts a summary at the top of every Gmail message, and Superhuman, Spark and Canary include summaries in their paid plans. Alrighty, our app, has no summarize button: instead it answers a question about your mail with the emails the answer came from, and lets Claude or ChatGPT read your mail and sum up what you ask.
Most lists of AI email summarizers are Gmail add-ons and paste-in web tools, ranked on how short the summary is. They skip the question that matters before you turn one on: does the summary appear on its own, which means an AI reads every message that arrives, or only when you ask? And which AI company does the reading? This page answers both for each tool.
How we checked
We read each vendor's own pricing, help and privacy pages on November 4, 2026, and every fact links to its source. For Alrighty, we read our own code. Where a vendor's page does not answer a question, we say "not stated" and do not guess. We did not test the tools. Alrighty is our app, and it's listed first.
AI email summarizers at a glance
| Tool | Price from | Accounts | When the summary shows | Which AI reads your mail |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alrighty | 14-day trial, then Free or Pro | iCloud, Gmail, Outlook | No summary button; answers when you ask | OpenAI; or the AI you connect |
| Apple Intelligence in Mail | Comes with macOS | Accounts in Apple Mail | By itself under each unread email; threads on request | Apple |
| Gemini in Gmail | Free for personal Gmail | Gmail | Not stated | |
| Copilot in Outlook | Microsoft 365 Personal, $9.99/mo | Accounts in Outlook | Not stated | Microsoft |
| Shortwave | $30/seat/mo | Gmail | "At the top of every email" | Claude models, plus its own |
| Superhuman | $25/member/mo, billed yearly | Gmail, Microsoft 365 | Not stated | Not named |
| Spark | Plus $10/mo or $99/yr | iCloud, Gmail, Outlook, IMAP | Not stated; all AI is off until you turn it on | Azure OpenAI |
| Canary Mail | Growth $36/yr | iCloud, Gmail, Outlook, IMAP | Not stated | OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, others |
"Not stated" means the vendor's pages we read don't say. It does not mean the answer is bad.
Alrighty: best for asking about your mail instead of reading summaries
Alrighty is a desktop mail app for Mac, Windows and Linux that puts iCloud, Gmail and Outlook in one inbox. To be plain: Alrighty has no summarize button, and it doesn't put a summary under each message. If an automatic summary on every email is what you want, Apple Mail, Shortwave or Gemini do that, and they're below.
What Alrighty does instead is answer the question you'd read the summary for.
- Ask your mail a question. Ask "When does my lease renewal need an answer?" and get the answer with the emails it came from, across every account. You check the source, not a summary of it.
- Your own AI reads your mail. A local MCP server on your computer lets Claude (the desktop app and Claude Code), ChatGPT's desktop app, Codex, Cursor, VS Code, OpenCode, Antigravity or a local model read and search your mail. Ask Claude "What did the contractor and I agree on this month?" and it finds the thread and sums it up in the chat you already use. The setup guide has the steps for each one, and our guide to letting Claude read your email walks through Claude.
- Search that finds the thread first. Search runs on your computer and matches meaning as well as words, so "when is my flight" finds the airline's confirmation.
When it reads your mail. Answers read only the emails they need, when you ask. Your own AI reads what it searches for, and only after you turn it on with Connect AI. Signed in, Alrighty does start a reply draft by itself when you open a reply, and Clean up sorts senders in the background.
Which AI reads your mail. Answers go through Alrighty's server to OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Terra. With your own AI, it's the assistant you connect, so a local model keeps everything on your computer. Signed out, nothing goes to Alrighty's server.
Price. A 14-day trial with no card, then a Free plan or Pro. Free has a small monthly AI allowance.
What it can't do. No summary on each email, no summarize button, and no daily digest. There's no iPhone or web app, and no calendar. It takes iCloud, Gmail and Outlook accounts only, so no Yahoo, Fastmail or other IMAP. It's a new app with no long track record yet.
Pick it if you'd rather ask "what do I need to know about this?" than read a summary of every message, or you want Claude or ChatGPT to do the summing up.
Apple Intelligence in Mail: best free summarizer on a Mac
Apple Mail comes with macOS. With Apple Intelligence on, "A short summary automatically appears under each unread email in your inbox" (Apple). For a long message or thread, you "Click Summarize at the top of the email," and "If the email is part of a thread, the contents of the thread are summarized." Writing Tools can also summarize selected text, or pull out Key Points (Apple).
When the summary shows. By itself, under each unread email. To stop it, choose Mail > Settings, click Viewing, and turn off Summarize Message Previews (Apple). Mail then shows the first lines of the most recent message instead.
Which AI reads your mail. Apple. Some tasks run on the Mac. Others go to Private Cloud Compute, which "uses larger, server-based models," and "The data being processed in Private Cloud Compute is not stored or made accessible to Apple" (Apple).
What it can't do. It needs a Mac with M1 or later, and the Mac and Siri set to the same supported language. It doesn't work on devices bought in mainland China (Apple). "Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 is not available in all languages or regions. Usage limits may apply."
Pick it if you're happy in Apple Mail and want summaries with no new app and no new company. Our page on Apple Intelligence Mail alternatives covers what to do if it doesn't work for you.
Gemini in Gmail: best free summarizer for Gmail
Gemini is built into Gmail. For personal Gmail accounts with no paid plan, Google lists conversation summaries as available worldwide, while Help me write and Suggested Replies are US only (Google). Gemini is also "included with all Google Workspace subscription plans" (Google).
Which AI reads your mail. Google's Gemini. Your mail is already with Google, so no other company is added. Google says it uses "automated tools to remove personally identifiable information (PII) from data subsets used to train Gemini." It does not say your data is never used for training.
What it can't do. Gmail only. AI Inbox and AI Overview in Gmail search aren't listed for free personal accounts, and many features vary by plan, country and language.
Pick it if your mail is in Gmail and you want thread summaries at no cost.
Copilot in Outlook: best if you already pay for Microsoft 365
Copilot "drafts emails and summarizes lengthy email threads" in Outlook (Microsoft). For home users it comes with Microsoft 365 Personal at $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year, and Premium at $19.99 or $199.99 (Microsoft).
Which AI reads your mail. Microsoft.
What it can't do. It needs a paid plan. On Family, Copilot in Outlook is "available only to the subscription owner."
Pick it if you live in Outlook and already pay for Microsoft 365.
Shortwave: best summary on every Gmail message
Shortwave is a Gmail app for Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android. It promises "a smart tl;dr right at the top of every email," plus AI search across your mail (Shortwave). Business is $30 per seat a month, Premier $45 and Max $120, with a 14-day free trial (pricing).
Which AI reads your mail. Shortwave names its models, which few apps do. Its plans run on Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Claude Opus 4.6. Its security page says "besides Google Cloud, we only use OpenAI, Anthropic, and Pinecone," that "The vast majority of our AI workloads use open source models that run on hardware we control," and that "Your email content is never used to train third-party AI models." Your mail is stored in Shortwave's Google Cloud.
What it can't do. Microsoft 365 and Exchange are "not supported at this time," and iCloud and Outlook.com work only by forwarding into Gmail (Shortwave). There's no unified inbox. See our Shortwave alternatives.
Pick it if you're on Gmail and want a summary on top of every message, and you're fine with your mail in Shortwave's cloud.
Superhuman: best summaries in a fast app for teams
Superhuman is a mail app for Gmail and Microsoft 365. Starter, at $25 per member a month billed yearly, includes Superhuman AI with Auto Summarize, Write with AI and Instant Reply. Business, at $33, adds Ask AI (plans).
Which AI reads your mail. Not named. Its privacy policy says "we restrict our AI service providers from training their models on user content."
What it can't do. Superhuman is "Built for teams that use Gmail or Outlook" (Superhuman), so no iCloud, Yahoo or other IMAP. See our Superhuman alternatives.
Pick it if your team is on Gmail or Microsoft 365 and summaries are one part of what you'll pay for.
Spark: best summaries you turn on yourself, on every device
Spark runs on Mac, iPhone, Windows and Android, and takes iCloud, Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Exchange and IMAP (Spark). Summary is one of its AI features, next to Compose, Translate and an AI Assistant that can "Find, summarize, and take action on anything in your inbox" (Spark).
When the summary shows. Only after you turn AI on. "By default, Spark +AI is turned off," and on a Mac you turn it on in Spark Settings under Spark +AI (Spark).
Which AI reads your mail. Microsoft's Azure OpenAI. Spark says Azure OpenAI "will not retain the data for more than 30 days" and "does not use this data to train models" (Spark).
Price. AI is part of the paid plans, with a limited preview on Free. Plus is $10 a month or $99 a year (pricing).
What to know. Some features "require our server-side email processing to work" (Spark). See our Spark alternatives.
Pick it if you want summaries on your phone and Mac, and want to choose when the AI starts.
Canary Mail: lowest-cost summaries with iCloud
Canary runs on Mac, iPhone, iPad, Windows and Android, and takes iCloud, Gmail, Outlook, Exchange and IMAP. Its AI Copilot, which writes and summarizes, starts on the Growth plan at $36 a year, and there's no monthly billing (pricing).
Which AI reads your mail. Canary's privacy policy says Copilot uses "top-tier providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Google and others." It doesn't say which one handles a given summary.
What it can't do. The free plan lists no AI.
Pick it if you want summaries for iCloud, Gmail and Outlook for the least money.
What about pasting an email into ChatGPT or Claude?
It works, and it's how many people summarize mail today: copy the thread, paste it into a chat, ask for the short version. The cost is the copying, and the chat sees only what you paste. Connecting the assistant to your mail removes both steps. Our page on email apps for Claude and ChatGPT compares the ways to connect one.
How to choose
- Ask a question and get the answer with its emails, or have Claude or ChatGPT sum up your iCloud, Gmail and Outlook mail: Alrighty.
- A summary under every unread email, free, on a Mac: Apple Intelligence in Apple Mail.
- Free thread summaries in Gmail: Gemini in Gmail.
- Already paying for Microsoft 365: Copilot in Outlook.
- A summary on top of every Gmail message, with named models: Shortwave.
- A Gmail or Microsoft 365 team: Superhuman.
- Summaries you turn on yourself, on every device: Spark.
- The cheapest AI plan with iCloud: Canary.
For AI that does more than summarize, see the best AI email assistants and the best AI email clients. More lists are on the blog, and what Alrighty does is on features.
Questions
What is the best free AI email summarizer?
Apple Intelligence in Apple Mail costs nothing on a Mac with M1 or later, and it summarizes every unread email. Gemini in Gmail summarizes conversations for free personal accounts worldwide. Alrighty has a Free plan with a small monthly AI allowance, but it answers questions rather than summarizing each email.
Can AI summarize my whole inbox?
Most tools summarize one email or one thread at a time. To ask about many messages at once, you need an assistant that can search, such as Alrighty's answers, Spark's AI Assistant, Superhuman's Ask AI or Shortwave's AI search. Alrighty also lets Claude or ChatGPT search your mail and give you the short version.
How do I turn off email summaries in Apple Mail?
In Mail, choose Mail > Settings, click Viewing, and turn off Summarize Message Previews. Mail then shows the first lines of each message instead. This keeps the rest of Apple Intelligence on.
Is it safe to let an AI summarize my email?
An automatic summary means an AI reads every message that arrives, including mail from strangers. Check which company that is. Apple, Google and Microsoft use their own AI. Spark, Shortwave and Canary name outside AI vendors, and Superhuman doesn't name one. A summary you ask for reads only what you ask about.
Does Alrighty summarize emails?
No. Alrighty has no summarize button and puts no summary under messages. You can ask it a question and get the answer with the emails it came from, or connect Claude, ChatGPT or a local model to read and sum up the mail you point it at.