Productivity comparison
Aidetector Cx vs Shortwave
Screening text, images, video and voice for AI-generation signals before publication or submission · AI email triage, summaries, and scheduled send in Gmail
| Decision point | AIDetector.cx | Shortwave |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Screening text, images, video and voice for AI-generation signals before publication or submission | AI email triage, summaries, and scheduled send in Gmail |
| Category | Productivity | Productivity |
| Price | Free (5 trial checks) + Pro $12/mo ($120/yr) - Pro Plus $29/mo ($290/yr) - Business $79/mo ($790/yr) | Free + paid plans |
| AIToolsEssentials editorial score | 4.0/5 | 4.5/5 |
Scores are editorial product assessments — job fit, likely output quality, ease of adoption, and operational cost — not lab benchmarks, and no tool here has a published hands-on result. How we score.
Evidence status
Free: 5 introductory checks total (1 guest + 4 signed-in), no recurring reset. Pro US$12/month or US$120/year - 300 credits/month. Pro Plus US$29/month or US$290/year - 1,000 credits/month. Business US$79/month or US$790/year - 3,000 credits/month with up to 5 team seats. Annual billing is charged upfront and grants credits monthly on the renewal cycle. Credit costs vary by job: standard text/image/video detection 1 credit, advanced image & deepfake analysis 4 credits/image, forensic video & deepfake 6 credits per 30s, citation verification 1 credit per 5 references, hallucination checking 2 credits per 1,000 words. Verified 2026-10-08 from /pricing plus the shipped /assets/index-*.js monthlyPrice literals (12/29/79), which agree.
Official sources checked 2026-10-08Open verification questions
- Payment processor attribution differs across two live legal pages - the Privacy Policy names Paystack for billing while the Cookie Policy names Stripe (plus a Stripe cookie table). Both may be accurate for different layers, but the checkout flow was not exercised.
- No independent third-party accuracy evaluation is published; the benchmark figures are the vendor's own results on a 400-document internal corpus.
- Security posture is now unanswered rather than contradicted - the former 'SOC-2 Type II Certified' footer claim was removed in the 2026-10-08 fix, and no replacement certification or audit detail is published.
- The free tier is five one-time introductory checks (1 guest + 4 signed-in), not a recurring free plan.
Not a FormSubmit submission - an inbound affiliate/partnership offer to partnerships@aidetector.cx, held from 2026-10-06 pending two publication blockers. Editorial entry written independently; no vendor copy reused. Both blockers verified cleared on the live site 2026-10-08: (1) the training-use contradiction is gone - both /detector and /privacy now state submitted analysis text is not used to train or fine-tune detection models on any plan, and the old Enterprise/Professional-scoped opt-out sentence no longer exists; (2) the four named third-party testimonials (Forbes / Stripe / HubSpot / Nature Portfolio) have been removed from /detector. The vendor also removed the SOC-2 Type II footer claim and the 98.7% / 1.2s / 12.4M+ / 142+ marketing figures. Verified the same day from the live pages: /pricing (plans 12/29/79 monthly, 120/290/790 annual, 300/1,000/3,000 credits), /privacy (data controller AIDetector.cx Inc., Berkeley CA; 12-month analysis history retention, deletable from the dashboard; no training use), /terms (you retain ownership of submitted content; output licensed for personal or commercial use; governed by California law), /cookies (Cloudflare / Stripe / Supabase), and a sitemap listing ~40 pages. Operator: AIDetector.cx Inc., a named legal entity, not a sole-proprietor microsite. Name is shared with unrelated live detectors on aidetector.com and aidetector.ai, so the listing carries the exact .cx domain. Affiliate terms confirmed in writing 2026-10-08 - 30% recurring on eligible subscription payments for the lifetime of the customer, monthly and annual eligible, 30-day attribution window, 30-day hold, $50 minimum payout.
Business is $30/seat/month, Premier is $45/seat/month, and Max is $120/seat/month. Business includes standard intelligence (Claude Sonnet 4.6), roughly 150-300 AI requests/day, 5 years AI search history, 50 threads per AI search, 3 AI filters, and AI integrations. Premier adds advanced intelligence, 2x AI usage, unlimited AI search history, 100 threads per search, and 10 AI filters. Max adds expert intelligence (Claude Opus 4.6), 6x AI usage, 150 threads per search, and 50 AI filters. A 14-day free trial is advertised; no permanent free plan is listed on the pricing page.
Official sources checked 2026-09-18Open verification questions
- The Terms of Service are dated January 2023 and may not reflect current AI-feature-specific data-use practices.
- The pricing page does not publish exact API rate limits or team-plan entitlements beyond the listed AI usage tiers.
- No explicit AI-output ownership or commercial-use license clause was found in the retrieved Terms; users retain rights in User Content but commercial use of AI-generated output is not separately addressed.
Official pricing page checked 2026-09-01. Terms of Service last updated January 26, 2023; Privacy Policy last updated July 10, 2025. Terms state users own their User Content and grant Shortwave operational rights. Shortwave integrates with a sister product, Tasklet, for 24/7 workflow automation. The pricing page does not list a permanent free plan; only a 14-day free trial is advertised.
How to decide
Match each platform to your actual workflow constraints. Run one real workflow in each finalist before paying.
Quick recommendation
Use the trial checklist on each review page and the free scorecard to record time-to-result, corrections needed, and monthly cost at your expected volume before committing to a plan.
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