CloakShare
Cloak vs Peony
Peony is an AI-native document sharing platform that launched in August 2025. It offers an AI assistant that answers recipient questions about your documents. Cloak is an API-first alternative that's open source, self-hostable, supports video, and has no per-seat pricing.
| Feature | Cloak | Peony |
|---|---|---|
| API-first | Yes | No |
| Open source | MIT | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No |
| Video sharing | HLS streaming | No |
| AI assistant | No | Yes |
| Per-seat pricing | No | $40/user/mo |
| Dynamic watermarks | Yes | Basic |
| Embeddable viewer | npm package (free) | No |
| Webhooks | Yes | No |
| Canvas-based viewer | Yes | No |
| Email gate | Yes | Yes |
| Page-level analytics | Yes | Yes |
| Password protection | Yes | Yes |
| Starting price | $0 (free tier) | $0 (free tier) |
Open source vs closed SaaS
Cloak's core is MIT licensed and fully self-hostable. Deploy it on your own infrastructure for complete data sovereignty, audit the source code, and extend it however you need. Peony is a closed-source SaaS with no self-hosting option and no public source code.
AI document assistant
Peony's standout feature is its AI assistant that lets recipients ask questions about shared documents and get instant answers. This is a genuinely useful capability that Cloak does not offer. If AI-powered Q&A on your documents is a priority, Peony is worth evaluating for that specific use case.
Performance
During Peony's Hacker News launch, users reported document load times of 5 to 8 seconds. Cloak pre-renders document pages as optimized WebP images via a background worker, so viewers load near-instantly. The canvas-based viewer streams individual page images rather than loading an entire PDF in the browser.
No per-seat pricing
Peony charges $40 per user per month. A team of 10 costs $400/month. Cloak uses flat tier pricing that covers your entire team regardless of size. The Growth plan at $99/month includes 2,500 links, 25,000 views, and video support for unlimited users.