Gobu
Gobu is a Swedish AI research agent for academic work. It analyses the PDF articles you upload, answers questions with quotes traced back to their exact page, and inserts referenced citations directly inside Microsoft Word.
What is Gobu?
Gobu is an AI research agent built in Stockholm for people who work with academic literature. Its defining choice is a closed perimeter: the tool answers only from the PDF articles you upload, never from the open web, and every statement it returns links back to the page or paragraph it came from. The publisher names the underlying agent the Remi Research Agent and calls the approach method-driven, meaning analyses follow established research frameworks rather than free-form summarisation.
Two analysis types sit at the centre. Article Analysis returns a structured breakdown of a paper: summary, basic and key concepts, key results, methodology, limitations, contribution to the literature, quick answers, takeaways and quotable excerpts. Smart Summary is aimed at revision, producing concepts, definitions and a question-and-answer set, each item still tied to its source. A third feature, Set Research Focus, lets you declare your own topic or hypothesis so that every new article is assessed against it instead of in isolation.
On top of the analyses runs a conversational assistant with two modes. Ask answers a natural-language question about your library and shows where the supporting quote sits. Cite drops that quote into your document, fully referenced. Both modes work inside the web application and inside a Microsoft Word add-in distributed through Microsoft AppSource, which also assembles a bibliography from the sources you have cited. Around them, an infinite canvas lets you highlight, annotate, connect articles and share documents and boards with colleagues in real time.
Usage is metered in credits, one credit per PDF analysis, reset at the start of each month. The free plan grants ten analyses a month and asks for no payment card; paid plans raise the quota, the upload ceiling and the number of projects. The publisher describes itself as model-agnostic, applying several AI models depending on the task, and states that uploaded documents are never used to train models. Content data is stored within the European Economic Area and the company answers to Swedish law, an argument it leans on heavily against general-purpose chatbots.
What it does
- Analyse an uploaded research paper into methodology, key results, limitations and contribution to the field
- Answer questions about your own document library, showing the exact location of every supporting quote
- Insert a fully referenced citation into a Microsoft Word document without leaving the editor
- Generate a bibliography from the sources you have cited while writing
- Produce a study-oriented summary with concepts, definitions and a question-and-answer set
- Compare each new article against a research focus you have declared yourself
- Organise highlights, notes and articles on an infinite canvas shared with colleagues in real time
When to use Gobu / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Gobu is the right fit.
When to use Gobu
- Doctoral candidates and master's students writing a thesis who need every claim backed by a quotable, locatable source
- Academic researchers running literature reviews, systematic reviews or meta-analyses across large stacks of papers
- Professors, lecturers and postdoctoral researchers who read far more articles than they can annotate by hand
- Research teams bound by GDPR obligations, who need content data kept inside the European Economic Area
- Heavy Microsoft Word users who would rather cite from their own library than switch tools while drafting
When not to use Gobu
- Anyone expecting open-web research: Gobu answers only from the PDF files you have uploaded yourself
- Writers looking for free-form generation or creative drafting, which the publisher explicitly positions against
- Mobile-first users: there is no iOS or Android application, only a browser and a Word add-in
- Developers wanting to embed the analysis in their own product, since no public API or documentation exists
- Occasional users who cannot live within the free plan's ten analyses a month, one project and 15 MB upload ceiling
How to use Gobu
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account on app.gobu.ai; the free plan requires no payment card
- Collect your starting credits: three analyses on sign-up day, then one more each day up to ten a month
- Upload the academic articles or course readings you want to work on, within your plan's file size limit
- Declare a Research Focus so that comparisons are made against your own topic or hypothesis
- Run an Article Analysis for a full structured breakdown, or a Smart Summary if you are revising
- Use the assistant's Ask mode to question your library and check where each answer comes from
- Highlight, annotate and arrange the results on the infinite canvas, and invite colleagues to the board
- Install the Gobu add-in from Microsoft AppSource and open it inside Word
- Use Cite mode while drafting to insert referenced quotes, then generate the bibliography
- Track your remaining credits under your initials, in Settings then Credits & Limits
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Every claim, answer and citation points back to a precise location in the source document
- Outputs are organised along academic headings: methodology, results, limitations, contribution
- An unconditional no-training commitment on uploaded documents, stated on two first-party pages
- Content data held within the European Economic Area, with a Swedish publisher and Swedish law
- A native Word add-in with a free version, removing the constant switch between tools
- A permanent free plan that needs no payment card, plus an automatic 10% education discount
- Sub-processors are named individually in the privacy policy, which is rarer than it should be
Cons
- No mobile application at all: neither an iOS build nor an Android package could be found
- No public API and no developer documentation, so the analysis cannot be embedded elsewhere
- Refunds are limited to three days after purchase, once only, and there is no right of withdrawal
- The support documentation is roughly a year old and contradicts the live pricing page on quotas and discounts
- No price appears in the pricing page's HTML; the amounts are injected by JavaScript
- A very steep gap between the Researcher and Expert tiers, 25 EUR against 250 EUR per month
- No security certification such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2 is claimed anywhere on the site
Pricing & Plans
Gobu operates on a freemium basis in euros. A permanent free plan is available at no cost and without a payment card, capped at ten analyses per month. The cheapest paid entry point is the Researcher plan at 19.00 EUR per month when billed annually, which represents 228 EUR paid up front for the year; the same plan costs 25 EUR per month without commitment. The Expert plan is charged at 190 EUR per month billed annually, or 250 EUR monthly. A Team tier at 30 to 40 EUR per user and per month appears in the publisher's own billing service but is not offered on the public pricing page. Amounts are stated as inclusive of VAT where applicable, and no time-limited free trial is documented.
- 10 analyses per month (3 on sign-up day
- then 1 per day)
- limited assistant usage
- one Set Research Focus
- 15 MB maximum per upload
- 1 project
- real-time collaboration
- 60 analyses per month
- extended assistant usage
- Set Research Focus
- 300 MB maximum per upload
- unlimited projects
- real-time collaboration
- file exports
- 300 analyses per month
- 20x assistant usage
- Set Research Focus
- 500 MB maximum per upload
- unlimited projects
- real-time collaboration
- file exports
- priority support
- present in the publisher's billing service but absent from the public pricing page
- the (outdated) documentation describes unlimited analyses and centralised team billing
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Gobu handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR implementation is concrete and named. The privacy policy states that all personal data is processed in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2016/679, and identifies the controller as Gobu Labs AB, registered in Sweden under number 559258-1614 at Sankt Eriksgatan 63A, 112 34 Stockholm. Retention periods are given category by category, and the legal basis for each processing purpose is spelled out: performance of contract, legitimate interest, legal obligation or consent. Seven data-subject rights are described individually, all exercisable by writing to support@gobu.ai. Named sub-processors include Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, MixPanel, Brevo and Stripe. A consent banner refuses advertising and analytics storage by default. No Article 27 representative is named, which is consistent with an EU-established publisher, and no data protection officer is designated.
Who owns the data?
The terms of use state that any audio, visual or text content you submit, together with the intellectual property rights in it, belongs to you or to your licensor, and that the documents the tool produces are yours as well, subject to the fees due being paid. The privacy policy goes further on roles: for content data, you are the data controller and Gobu Labs AB acts as your data processor, the two parties entering into a data-processing agreement. Gobu states it has no obligations towards your content beyond delivering the service. One limit deserves attention: after ninety days of account dormancy, the publisher may delete your content permanently, with no duty to warn you first.
Reuse rights
You keep full reuse rights over your own material and over the outputs Gobu produces from it: nothing in the terms requires you to ask permission before quoting, exporting or publishing them, and file export is included in the paid plans. On the publisher's side, the stated use is narrow. Uploaded documents are said never to serve model training, and they reach OpenAI and Google only for the specific documents you choose to send to the assistant. Everything else the publisher does with data concerns account, billing, analytics and marketing, on the legal bases set out in the privacy policy. Aggregated, non-identifying statistics may be used for any purpose. Note the counterpart: what you may not do is resell or sublicense the tool itself, or reverse-engineer it.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The privacy policy draws a clear line between two categories. Content data, meaning anything you upload or provide while using the tool or the Word add-in, is stored within the European Economic Area, with you as data controller and Gobu Labs AB as processor under a data-processing agreement. All other personal data may be transferred and stored outside the EEA, in a country the European Commission recognises as offering an adequate level of protection; the policy names Google LLC, MixPanel Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Stripe Inc. as parties that may store and process it in the United States. One of the publisher's own blog posts goes further and claims servers located exclusively in Sweden, a stronger statement than the policy itself makes, so the EEA commitment is the safer one to rely on. The public marketing site is a Framer-hosted front end and says nothing about where the platform itself runs. No hosting certification such as ISO 27001, SOC 2 or an equivalent is claimed.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Gobu.
- Outsourced reading is still reading: leaning on structured summaries makes it easy to cite a paper you have never actually read, and the habit erodes the critical judgement a literature review is supposed to build
- Traceability is not correctness: a quote can be located precisely and still be selected, framed or interpreted badly, so the visible source link can lend false confidence to a weak claim
- The publisher named in the terms, Gobu Labs AB, corresponds to a company number registered under another corporate name, with Gobu Labs held as a secondary business name; institutions should ask for clarification before contracting
- You are the data controller for what you upload, which means the legal responsibility for any personal or confidential data inside your PDFs stays with you, not with the publisher
- Content in a dormant account may be deleted after ninety days without prior warning, so exports should be part of your routine rather than an afterthought
- The published documentation is about a year out of date and disagrees with the live pricing page on quotas and discounts; take the pricing page as the reference and check quotas before subscribing
- Refunds close three days after purchase and no right of withdrawal applies, so the free plan is the only realistic way to test the tool before committing
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low. The web application needs nothing more than an account created with an email address, and the free plan asks for no payment card. The Word add-in installs in one click from Microsoft AppSource, with a manual installation procedure documented as a fallback. There is no configuration to perform, no API key to obtain and nothing to deploy. A walkthrough page and a demonstration video cover first use. The only real learning curve is conceptual: getting used to uploading your own sources and to declaring a research focus before expecting relevant comparisons.
Deployment
Integrations
Behind Gobu
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Gobu.
Frequently asked questions
What does Gobu base its answers on?
Are my documents used to train AI models?
Where is my data hosted?
Is there a free plan, and what does it include?
How much does the first paid tier cost?
Is there a student discount?
Does Gobu work inside Microsoft Word?
Is there a mobile app or a public API?
What is the refund policy?
Who publishes Gobu?
Should you pick Gobu?
Gobu is a deliberately narrow tool, and that is its strength. Rather than competing with general-purpose assistants on breadth, it closes the perimeter to the articles you upload and makes traceability the product: methodology, results and limitations come back as structured headings, and every quote carries the location it was taken from. For a thesis writer or a researcher grinding through a literature review, that is a meaningful difference from a chatbot that summarises convincingly and cites vaguely. The Word add-in, free in its basic form, is the piece that turns the promise into a daily habit, because it removes the switch between reading tool and writing tool.
The reservations are practical rather than conceptual. There is no mobile application and no public API, so Gobu lives in a browser tab and in Word, nowhere else. The public documentation has fallen roughly a year behind the product and now contradicts the pricing page on quotas and on the size of the annual discount, which is an awkward signal for a tool whose whole pitch is accuracy. Prices do not appear in the pricing page's markup at all, and the jump from 25 EUR to 250 EUR per month between the two visible paid tiers leaves a wide gap with nothing in between for a small research group. The publisher is small, five years old and seven people at the register, so buyers should size their expectations accordingly.
One administrative detail is worth knowing before you sign anything: the company number quoted in the terms is registered under a different corporate name, with Gobu Labs held as a secondary business name. That is legal and common in Sweden, but it is the kind of thing an institutional procurement officer will want explained.
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