Before you pay

Productivity comparison

Geardex vs Shortwave

Photographers, videographers and small studios who need one record of every camera, lens and drone - serials, receipts, values, loans and maintenance - instead of a spreadsheet beside a shared drive · AI email triage, summaries, and scheduled send in Gmail

Decision pointGearDexShortwave
Best forPhotographers, videographers and small studios who need one record of every camera, lens and drone - serials, receipts, values, loans and maintenance - instead of a spreadsheet beside a shared driveAI email triage, summaries, and scheduled send in Gmail
CategoryProductivityProductivity
PriceStarter free (25 gear items, 10 categories, 25 AI actions a week, one 50 MB client gallery, a 3-page site); Pro $4/mo or $39/yr; Studio $19/mo or $179/yr; no free trial on paid plansFree + paid plans
AIToolsEssentials editorial score4.2/54.5/5

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

GearDex

Starter free: up to 25 gear items in 10 categories, 3 shoot plans, 1 client gallery with 50 MB, 1 gear document, 1 kit on the Site, 25 AI actions a week, QR label per item, CSV import and export. Pro $4/month or $39/year ($3.25/month billed yearly, saving $9): unlimited gear in 50 categories, 3 Site themes and 10 pages with own domain, 3 client galleries at 200 MB each, 150 AI actions a week, market price lookup 10/week. Studio $19/month or $179/year (~$14.92/month billed yearly, saving $49): 10-seat team workspace, all 12 themes, Stories, 10 active galleries at 10 GB each with 100 GB total, booking, quotes, contracts, invoices, Studio Agent API and webhooks, unlimited AI actions. Prices in USD with taxes calculated at checkout. No free trial on paid plans; refunds not automatic. The site's llms.txt states that older third-party listings quoting $9 and $29 are out of date.

Official sources checked 2026-10-21

Submitted via form by the vendor 2026-10-22 05:38 UTC (2026-10-21 22:38 PDT); editorial entry written independently from live pages on the site's Pacific working date 2026-10-21. Prices were read from three surfaces that agree: the application/ld+json Offer array on /pricing (0.00, 4.00, 39.00, 19.00, 179.00), the rendered plan cards and the limit-by-limit comparison table on the same page, and /legal/billing which restates US$4/month or US$39/year and US$19/month or US$179/year; the site's llms.txt carries the same figures. Category was reclassified from the submitted 'Writing & Productivity' to Productivity after reading the product pages - it is a gear-inventory and studio-operations app, not a writing tool. Legal pages read in full: /legal/privacy (last updated 2026-10-19, 16 sections), /legal/terms (2026-10-02, 13 sections, California governing law, liability cap of the greater of six months' fees or US$100), /legal/billing (refunds, renewals, California Automatic Renewal Law notice) and /legal/notice; all four return 200 and the Terms' reference to /legal/billing resolves. Privacy section 1 names the controller as Dylan Andersen, GearDex, 842 St Vincent, Irvine, CA 92618, matching /legal/notice and /contact. Trackers were checked on the served pages rather than assumed: Google Analytics G-BNVX42Q1BT loads with Consent Mode defaulting analytics_storage and ad_storage to denied and send_page_view false, and the policy scopes Analytics to accepted cookies, with an Accept All / Reject All banner present in the markup. Contact route: geardex.app publishes no MX (DNS returns only the SOA for the apex), so the address on every page and in the submission - geardex.help@gmail.com - is the working route, not a @geardex.app address. Domain registered 2025-06-28 with Namecheap on Vercel DNS, 16 months old at the check. The privacy policy describes iPhone and Android apps that are not shipped - /download offers Safari Add to Home Screen for iPhone, lists no Android app and carries no App Store or Play link - and that discrepancy is recorded in cons rather than treated as a blocker. Vendor usage claims (300+ photographers, 6,100+ items tracked, $722K+ managed) are unverified by us. No purchase or account was created and no checkout was exercised.

Shortwave

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 2026-09-18
Open 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.

Read GearDex review Read Shortwave review Open scorecard

AI Tool Evaluation Scorecard

Use the AI Tool Evaluation Scorecard

Compare AI tools by workflow fit, quality, review time, privacy, collaboration, cost, and ROI before paying for another subscription.

Official product links remain in place until an affiliate program is approved. The scorecard requires no email signup.

Get a shareable decision brief for this matchup →

Optional Premium · $12/mo, secure checkout by Stripe

Want someone to decide with you before a renewal?

The free Stack Audit finds the waste. Premium is optional: a dated keep/cut pack, alerts, and a 48-hour written reply by email — $12/month, cheaper than one overlapping seat, not another AI subscription. The directory, Keep, Test, Cut, and the instant Stack Audit stay free.

7-day free trial · then $12/month · code LAUNCH50 for 50% off first paid month · use code LAUNCH50 at checkout · delivered by email · research and strategy only · affiliate status never changes recommendations.

Free · no login · stays on your device

Free Stack Audit

See which AI subscriptions overlap and what you could cut before the next renewal.

Free Stack Audit