Shortwave added AI to an infinite feed.
You still open it dozens of times a day.
Shortwave made your inbox smarter. Swizero asks a different question: what if your inbox could be finished? A ranked stack you swipe through in minutes, then close.
Shortwave is not the problem. It is brilliant software. The problem is that brilliant software keeps you inside your inbox. What if the answer is not a smarter inbox, but a shorter one?
The AI-powered feed
AI search. Chat with your email. Auto-labels. Smart summaries. Every feature makes your inbox more powerful, more engaging, more worth checking. The smarter it gets, the harder it is to close. You came for AI help. You stayed for over an hour.
A stack you finish
AI ranks your email by importance and presents only the ones that matter as swipeable cards. You swipe through the stack and watch each card disappear. When it is empty, email is done. Not surfaced, not optimized. Done as in close the app and walk away.
Feature-by-feature comparison
Not just checkmarks. Context on what each feature actually means for your daily workflow.
How it works
Shortwave makes email smarter. Swizero makes email shorter. One pulls you deeper in. The other lets you walk away.
What done looks like
Shortwave helps you process more. Swizero helps you stop.
How you use it
Shortwave gives you more to explore. Swizero gives you less to worry about.
AI email ranking
How each app decides what you see first.
AI search
Shortwave's AI search is genuinely best-in-class.
Chat with email
A powerful feature. But it keeps you inside the inbox longer.
AI summaries
AI drafts
Both draft. Swizero never sends without your explicit approval.
AI auto-actions
Shortwave's AI acts. Swizero's AI prepares, then waits for your swipe. No surprises.
Data handling
Where your email data lives and for how long.
Ranking intelligence
Third-party training
Both respect this boundary. Shortwave uses Anthropic models.
Mobile app
Shortwave covers both mobile platforms today.
Desktop / web
Shortwave has full web coverage today.
Team features
If you need team email workflows, Shortwave wins here.
Monthly price
Shortwave's comparable individual tier (Pro at $18/mo) costs nearly 2x more.
Annual price
Free tier
Shortwave offers a permanent free tier. Swizero does not.
How it works
Shortwave makes email smarter. Swizero makes email shorter. One pulls you deeper in. The other lets you walk away.
What done looks like
Shortwave helps you process more. Swizero helps you stop.
How you use it
Shortwave gives you more to explore. Swizero gives you less to worry about.
AI email ranking
How each app decides what you see first.
AI search
Shortwave's AI search is genuinely best-in-class.
Chat with email
A powerful feature. But it keeps you inside the inbox longer.
AI summaries
AI drafts
Both draft. Swizero never sends without your explicit approval.
AI auto-actions
Shortwave's AI acts. Swizero's AI prepares, then waits for your swipe. No surprises.
Data handling
Where your email data lives and for how long.
Ranking intelligence
Third-party training
Both respect this boundary. Shortwave uses Anthropic models.
Mobile app
Shortwave covers both mobile platforms today.
Desktop / web
Shortwave has full web coverage today.
Team features
If you need team email workflows, Shortwave wins here.
Monthly price
Shortwave's comparable individual tier (Pro at $18/mo) costs nearly 2x more.
Annual price
Free tier
Shortwave offers a permanent free tier. Swizero does not.
A morning with each app
Same person. Same 83 unread emails. Two different experiences.
Open Shortwave. AI has organized overnight emails into smart categories. 83 unread across labels.
Organized. But how long will this take?
Check the AI briefing. It summarizes a stack of threads. Tap into three that look important.
Use AI search to find that contract from last week. Ask a follow-up question in chat. Get a useful answer.
Impressive. But you have been in the app for 9 minutes now.
Start composing replies. AI suggests drafts. Tweak tone. Send four responses.
Notice the AI surfaced a thread you missed. Read it. That leads to two more threads. Open those too.
Wait, I thought I was almost done.
Slack notification pulls you to a team channel in Shortwave. Respond to three messages.
Finally close the app. But the AI briefing badge says '5 new insights.' Open it again.
The AI keeps finding things to show you.
Check again on the web. New categorized emails. The feed refreshed.
When does this actually end?
Over an hour across three sessions. Inbox is organized. But the AI keeps surfacing more.
Open Swizero. The same 83 emails ran through AI overnight. But instead of surfacing all of them with insights, it filtered down to the ones that actually need you.
Quiet. Intentionally quiet.
First card has a one-line summary. No chat sidebar. No follow-up threads to explore. Just one question: act on this, or move on? Swipe left to delete.
Client follow-up. AI draft is already written. You review it, swap one phrase, swipe up to send. No tone sliders, no length controls. Just a good draft.
The AI helped without pulling you deeper in.
Two more cards. A team update you swipe down to archive. A billing notice you swipe left to delete.
Stack is empty. No AI briefing badge. No '5 new insights' notification. The app has nothing more to show you.
The calm of actually being done. No AI badge pulling you back. Just quiet.
Close the app. Phone goes in your pocket. You walk away from email and forget about it. There is nothing new to discover, nothing the AI is about to surface.
7 minutes. The AI showed you less, not more. No briefing badge. No pull-back. Inbox closed.
Which one is right for you?
Five quick questions. We will point you to Swizero or Shortwave, and say plainly when Shortwave is the better call.
Answer all 5 to see your personalized match.
The honest case for each app
Be honest about what you want: more to explore, or permission to stop.
Choose Swizero if...
You have tried smarter inboxes and realized they just give you more to look at. What you actually want is permission to close the app.
- You want a clear finish line for every email session
- You process email on your phone and want gesture-first flow
- You care about email privacy and want zero data retention
- You are tired of AI surfacing more things to engage with
- You want AI that ranks and drafts but never acts without your approval
Choose Shortwave if...
You want the most AI-rich email experience available, with deep search, chat, and team collaboration.
- You need powerful AI search across your entire email history
- You work on a team and need shared channels and Slack integration
- You want to ask questions about your email in natural language
- You need Android or web access today
- You want the deepest AI toolset available in an email client
Migrating from Shortwave, step by step
The exact steps, the real time each one takes, and the honest reasons you might stay put.
- 1
Leave Shortwave exactly where it is
0 secDo not cancel, do not export, do not turn off your AI filters. Nothing here touches your Shortwave account, and running both for a week is the only fair test.
- 2
Install Swizero on iOS
1 minJoin the beta and add the app from your invite. It is mobile-first, so there is no web tab to open and nothing to configure on a desktop.
- 3
Connect your Gmail
30 secSign in with Google through secure OAuth. Any labels Shortwave applied live in Gmail, so they come along untouched. Swizero ranks your mail on-device and stores no email on our servers.
- 4
Swipe your first stack
2 minSwizero hands you a fixed card limit instead of a feed. Swipe left to clear, down to archive, right to flag, up to reply. There is no chat sidebar and no briefing badge waiting for you afterwards.
- 5
Run both for a week, then decide
Notice how many times you reopen each app after you thought you were done. That number, not the feature list, is the honest answer. Nothing was migrated, so switching back costs you nothing.
Where Shortwave is the better choice
Shortwave is excellent software and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Here is where it genuinely wins today.
You work on desktop or the web
Shortwave ships a full web app plus macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android builds. Swizero is iOS-first, with everything else still to come.
You want AI that acts on its own
AI filters, auto-applied labels, instant replies, and workflow automation run without you. Swizero's AI prepares the work and then waits for your swipe, on purpose.
Your inbox is a shared inbox
Channels, assignees, shared labels, team comments, and team read statuses are real strengths. Swizero is built for one person's personal email.
You need to search years of mail
Shortwave's natural language AI search reaches back years, up to unlimited history on its higher tiers. Swizero gives you standard search and nothing more.
You need a free plan
Shortwave has a permanent free tier with limited AI and a 90-day search window. Swizero is free only while the beta runs, then it is paid.
Shortwave plans and platforms taken from shortwave.com: a permanent free tier (limited AI, 90-day search history), Pro at $18 per seat per month for individuals, and Business, Premier, and Max at $30, $45, and $120 per seat per month, with web, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android apps. Swizero is $9.99/mo or $79.99/yr, iOS and Gmail at launch. Last checked July 2026.
Check Shortwave's current pricingSwitching from Shortwave takes 2 minutes
What you keep, what changes, and what gets better.
Your Gmail stays untouched
Swizero connects via secure OAuth. Your existing labels, filters, and email history remain exactly where they are.
Your Shortwave labels carry over
Any labels or organization you built in Shortwave live in Gmail. They stay. Swizero reads them too.
From AI chat to a ranked stack
Instead of chatting with your inbox, you swipe through the emails that matter. Most people adapt in one session.
From exploring to finishing
The biggest shift: you stop discovering more and start experiencing the relief of done. The AI shows you less, not more.
Simpler, more honest pricing
$9.99/mo for everything. No tiers, no feature gates, no upsells. Shortwave's comparable tier costs nearly 2x more.
Your mornings back
When email actually ends, you get back the 30-50 minutes per day Shortwave's AI kept filling with more insights, more threads, more reasons to stay.
“Shortwave is genuinely impressive software. But I was in the app for an hour every morning. Swizero gets me through email in minutes. Turns out I wanted less, not more.”
Beta tester, former Shortwave user
<10 min
Average session in beta
~2x
Less expensive than Shortwave Pro
0
Emails stored on our servers
100%
Human-in-the-loop
Compare Swizero to every other email app
Same finish line, a different starting point. Here is how Swizero stacks up against the rest.
Ready for permission to stop?
Shortwave keeps surfacing more. Swizero gives you a stack that empties and stays empty. No credit card. No commitment.