Paste any news article URL to get TL;DR bullets, the key facts, context, and a clear explanation of why the story matters. No sign-up required.
There's more news published every day than any person can reasonably follow. Major publications alone produce hundreds of articles daily — before you factor in newsletters, analysis, research, and niche outlets covering your specific industry or interests.
The result is a familiar pattern: you open a long article, intend to read it, get pulled away, and later can't remember what it was about. Or you read the headline but miss the actual substance. Or you stay vaguely aware of a story without understanding its significance.
An AI news summarizer changes the equation. Instead of time-blocking 20 minutes to read a long piece, you spend 30 seconds on a structured summary and decide from there whether the full article warrants your time.
12tldr summarizes news articles from any publication in any topic area: Technology (AI, startups, policy, gadgets), Business (markets, earnings, economy), Politics (elections, legislation, geopolitics), Science (research, health, environment), Culture (media, society, arts), and World news (international events). Paste the URL of any news story and the AI reads it directly.
Every summary follows a structured format that gives you multiple levels of detail:
12tldr works with any publicly accessible news article. It handles major international publications, regional news outlets, trade press, and independent journalism. Publications it works reliably with include: BBC News, Reuters, The New York Times, The Economist, Bloomberg, The Guardian, Financial Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, Politico, Wired, Ars Technica, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Science, and Nature.
Most news articles are padded to a word count. The actual development — the new information that wasn't known yesterday — is often one paragraph of a 1,500-word piece. 12tldr reads the full article and isolates that paragraph, presenting it alongside the necessary context. You can stay across more stories in less time, without skipping anything important or wasting time on articles that repeat what you already know.
Every 12tldr news summary includes a "why it matters" section — a brief assessment of the story's significance that goes beyond the headline. This is what separates a useful summary from a paragraph rewrite: it tells you whether the story is a one-day event or the start of something larger. Completely free to use — no account, no email, no limits on the free tier.