The average professional gets 50 to 100 emails daily and spends 28% of their workweek just handling their inbox. Add news monitoring on top and the information workload becomes a job inside a job.
AI news digest tools compress that workload. The category barely existed two years ago. Now there are dozens of options and most of their landing pages say roughly the same thing.
We tested the main ones. Here's what actually works, who each one is for, and where they disappoint. Including our own product.
What to look for
The features that separate useful from noise:
- Does it surface what you asked for, or everything vaguely related?
- Can you understand the summary without clicking through to the original article?
- How much irrelevant content comes with the relevant stuff?
- Does it come to you (email) or do you go to it (app)?
- How long until it's actually useful after setup?
- Does everyone get the same output, or is it tailored?
Summry
Who it's for: professionals who want topic-specific digests delivered by email without managing sources.
Summry monitors topics, not publications. You describe what you care about, "AI chip startups," "EU data privacy regulation," "Shopify ecosystem news," and it finds relevant coverage across the web, summarizes it, and emails you on a schedule you pick.
What works: natural language topic setup, no boolean syntax needed. One summarized email instead of 50 individual alerts. You choose daily or weekly. Filters out press releases and SEO content.
What doesn't: no social media monitoring, web and news only. It's a digest tool, not a real-time alert system. Newer product, smaller source index than established players. If a story breaks at 2pm and your digest comes at 6pm, you're four hours behind.
Free (3 topics, weekly) / Starter €5/mo / Pro €12/mo / Business €49/mo
Feedly + Leo AI
Who it's for: people who want to build their own source library and have AI sort through it.
Feedly started as an RSS reader. Leo, its AI layer, prioritizes articles, mutes noise, and tracks keywords across your feeds.
What works: the source library is massive. If something publishes an RSS feed, Feedly can follow it. Leo is good at sorting what you've subscribed to. Board feature for organizing by project. Team sharing.
What doesn't: you build the source list yourself. Leo filters your subscriptions, it doesn't discover new sources for you. The same scaling problem newsletters have. AI features need Pro+ at $12/mo. No email digest, you have to open the app.
We compared Feedly against other options in our Google Alerts alternatives guide.
Free (100 sources) / Pro $6/mo / Pro+ $12/mo / Enterprise custom
The Rundown AI
Who it's for: people who want a daily AI industry newsletter with zero setup.
The Rundown is a curated daily newsletter covering AI news. Subscribe, read in 5 minutes, done.
What works: consistently good selection. Clean writing. Free. No account setup beyond entering your email.
What doesn't: covers AI only, no customization. Everyone gets the same content. It's a newsletter, not a tool. If you need to track "supply chain disruptions in Southeast Asia," this won't help.
Free
TLDR Newsletter
Who it's for: tech professionals who want a concise daily briefing.
TLDR sends a daily email covering tech, startups, science, and programming. Multiple editions cover specific areas.
What works: extremely concise, each story is 2-3 sentences with a link. Topic-specific editions for AI, DevOps, Marketing, Crypto. Large community. Free.
What doesn't: human-curated, not personalized. Everyone in the same edition gets the same stories. No custom topic tracking. If something matters specifically to your work but isn't broadly interesting, TLDR won't surface it.
Free
Perplexity (Spaces + Discover)
Who it's for: researchers who want to follow topics and then ask follow-up questions.
Perplexity started as a search engine and added monitoring features. Spaces lets you organize research by topic. Discover surfaces trending content with AI summaries.
What works: you can ask "why did this happen?" after reading a summary. Source citations on every answer. Good for going deep on one story. Discover surfaces things you wouldn't have searched for.
What doesn't: pull-based, you go to the app. No scheduled email delivery. Spaces are research tools, not monitoring tools. You need to remember to check it, which is the same problem you had before.
Free (limited queries) / Pro $20/mo
Side by side
| Tool | Approach | Custom topics | Email delivery | AI summary | Starting price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Summry | Topic monitoring | Yes | Daily/weekly | Yes | Free |
| Feedly + Leo | RSS + AI filter | Partial | No | Yes (Pro+) | Free |
| The Rundown | Newsletter | No | Yes | Yes | Free |
| TLDR | Newsletter | Partial | Yes | Human-curated | Free |
| Perplexity | Search + Spaces | Yes | No | Yes | Free |
How to pick
Custom topics in your inbox: Summry. Only tool here built for that specific workflow.
Build your own intelligence feed from known sources: Feedly. More setup, but powerful if you already know what to follow.
Quick daily tech briefing, no effort: TLDR or The Rundown, depending on whether you want broad tech or AI-specific.
Interactive research on specific stories: Perplexity. Not monitoring, but the best tool for going deep.
Most people need two things: one monitoring tool for work-critical topics, one newsletter for general awareness. The mistake, as we covered in why too many newsletters break down, is stacking five tools and reading none of them.
Stay on top of any topic with AI-powered news digests delivered to your inbox.
Try Summry free, 3 topics, no credit card