By Connected PapersTel Aviv, Israel1 product across 1 category
Built for this. Builds a similarity graph from citation data rather than from a language model, so nothing in the output is generated and there is nothing to hallucinate.
Free plan
Yes
5 graphs a month, with all features included
Month to month
None
Shortest billing is quarterly: $10/mo ($30 a quarter)
Billed yearly
$6/mo
$72 a year, Academic plan −40%
Watch out: It finds neighbours of one seed paper, so a bad starting point gives a confidently wrong map. The free tier is 5 graphs a month with every feature included, so paying buys volume rather than capability, and there is no monthly option — billing is annual or quarterly.
All plans (5)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free plan at $0: 5 graphs a month, with all features included
Academic
$10/mo quarterly · $6/mo yearly
unlimited graphs and every feature, for academics, non-profits and personal use
Business
$30/mo quarterly · $20/mo yearly
the same again, for business and industry
Academic Group and Business Group
$30/mo quarterly · $20/mo yearly
Academic Library
Custom
unlimited graphs for all students and staff, with email, IP and single sign-on access and zero-effort integration
By ConsensusBoston, United States1 product across 1 category
Built for this. Searches published papers and tells you how many of them support a claim, which turns a yes-or-no question into a count you can inspect.
Free plan
Yes
Basic paper search, 15 Pro messages a month and up to 3 Deep reviews a month
Month to month
$20/mo
Pro
Billed yearly
$12/mo
$144 a year, Pro plan −40%
Watch out: The consensus meter reflects the papers it found, not the state of the field. Deep reviews are the metered resource — 3 a month free, 15 on Pro, 200 on Deep — so that is what decides the tier rather than how much you search.
All plans (3)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free plan at $0: basic paper search, 15 Pro messages a month and up to 3 Deep reviews a month, though the same card also describes the free tier as being without AI analysis
Pro
$20/mo · $12/mo yearly
unlimited Pro messages, 15 Deep reviews a month and unlimited access to every research tool
Deep
$65/mo · $45/mo yearly
everything in Pro with 200 Deep reviews a month, aimed at researchers and clinicians running frequent literature reviews. Team and Enterprise are priced on their own tab
By ElicitOakland, United States1 product across 1 category
Built for this. Searches actual papers and extracts findings into a table you can check, one row per study, rather than answering in prose.
Free plan
Yes
Limited use of the Research Agent and Research Reports, but unlimited search across more than
Month to month
$19/mo
Academic Plus
Billed yearly
$11/mo
$132 a year, Academic Plus plan −42%
Watch out: Coverage is strongest in empirical fields. Extraction is a starting point for a literature review, not the review.
All plans (7)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Basic plan, free on both tabs: limited use of the Research Agent and Research Reports, but unlimited search across more than 138 million papers, unlimited summaries and unlimited chat with papers at full text
Academic Plus
$19/mo · $11/mo yearly
standard Research Agent, Reports and systematic review usage, export to RIS, CSV, BIB, PDF and DOCX, and 5 table columns at a time
Academic Pro
$69/mo · $39/mo yearly
5x usage, the dedicated systematic review workflow that screens 5,000 papers, and 20 columns at a time
Academic Scale
$149/mo · $89/mo yearly
9x usage, extraction and interpretation of figures, and live real-time collaboration
Industry Pro
$75/mo · $49/mo yearly
standard usage, the systematic review workflow, 20 columns and reports drawing on up to 135 data sources
Industry Scale
$279/mo · $169/mo yearly
5x usage, figure extraction, live collaboration and up to 200 data sources
Enterprise
Custom
custom usage, unlimited paper alerts, no training on your data by default, screening of 40,000 papers with 40 columns, and PRISMA-grade screening and extraction accuracy. Academic and industry are separate ladders — academics get an extra Plus tier and pay less at every step
By EvidenceHuntAmsterdam, Netherlands1 product across 1 category
Built for this. Scoped to clinical evidence and built with practising clinicians, so the filters match how medical literature is actually appraised.
Free plan
Yes
Unlimited questions on the low-cost models plus 3 PRO-quality questions, with chat history
Month to month
None
Not published
Billed yearly
—
No yearly price published
Watch out: Medicine only, and no use for research in any other field. It prices in euros rather than dollars, and the free tier gives you 3 PRO-quality questions before dropping you to the low-cost models.
All plans (3)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Basic plan, free: unlimited questions on the low-cost models plus 3 PRO-quality questions, with chat history
Pro
16.50 euros a month billed yearly, or 20 euros month to month, opening on a 7-day free trial
unlimited questions on the best models rather than only the low-cost ones. EvidenceHunt prices in euros, not dollars, so these figures are not directly comparable with the rest of this list
Team or Organisation
no price published
tailored to the organisation through a sales conversation or a booked demo
By Google DeepMindLondon, United Kingdom6 products across 6 categories
Built for this. Runs a multi-step search across dozens of sources and returns a structured, referenced report. Strong first pass on an unfamiliar field.
Free plan
Yes
Included in the free Gemini tier, with a limited number of reports
Month to month
$4.99/mo
Google AI Plus
Billed yearly
$4.17/mo
$49.99 a year, Google AI Plus plan −16%
Watch out: Searches the open web, not scholarly databases. It will miss paywalled literature a library search would find.
All plans (4)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Included in the free Gemini tier, with a limited number of reports
Google AI Plus
$4.99/mo
2x the usage limits. Deep Research is part of the Google AI plans, not sold separately
Google AI Pro
$19.99/mo
4x the usage limits and the Pro model behind longer reports
By Google DeepMindLondon, United Kingdom6 products across 6 categories
Built for this. You upload the sources and it answers only from them, linking every sentence to the passage it came from. The strongest verification pattern here.
Free plan
Yes
Free, and the core product is not gated: what a paid plan buys is headroom — a bigger notebook
Month to month
$4.99/mo
Google AI Plus
Billed yearly
$4.17/mo
$49.99 a year, Google AI Plus plan −16%
Watch out: Deliberately limited — it will not answer what your documents do not cover, and cannot tell you whether they are any good. Paid headroom comes from a Google AI subscription rather than a plan of its own.
All plans (4)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free, and the core product is not gated: what a paid plan buys is headroom — a bigger notebook, more sources per notebook and higher limits on Audio and Video Overviews and Slides
Google AI Plus
$4.99/mo
the cheapest step that raises its limits, with more Gemini access, increased feature limits and a bigger notebook. Introductory offers were showing: $1.29/month for 3 months, or $44.99 for the first year
Google AI Pro
$19.99/mo
expanded Gemini access for complex research, expanded feature limits and a large notebook size. Introductory offers were showing: $4.99/month for 3 months, or $179.99 for the first year
Google AI Ultra
$99.99/mo
the highest Gemini access and the largest source limits, for working across several big notebooks
By LitmapsWellington, New Zealand2 products across 1 category
Built for this. Draws a citation map you can steer, so the shape of a literature becomes visible rather than being a list of titles.
Free plan
Yes
Free, capped rather than trial-limited: 2 Litmaps with 100 articles per map, basic search
Month to month
$12.50/mo
Pro
Billed yearly
$10/mo
Pro plan −20%
Watch out: A map is a prompt to read, not a substitute for reading. The free tier stops at 2 maps of 100 articles each, so a real review needs Pro, and Pro is priced on separate education and commercial tabs.
All plans (3)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free, capped rather than trial-limited: 2 Litmaps with 100 articles per map, basic search taking up to 20 seed inputs, monthly literature alerts and no collaboration
Pro
$12.50/mo · $10/mo yearly
unlimited Litmaps and unlimited articles per map, advanced search with unlimited inputs, and weekly or configurable alerts rather than monthly. Litmaps prices Pro on two sub-tabs, education and commercial; these are the education figures
Team
no price published on the pricing page
Pro features plus team-wide collaboration, which neither Free nor Pro includes
By PaperguideMilton, United States1 product across 1 category
Built for this. Covers finding papers, reading them, managing references and drafting in one place, which is unusually broad for this category.
Free plan
Yes
Free, capped by credits: 2,000 AI credits a month across Research Agents, Research Reports and
Month to month
$15/mo
Academic Plus
Billed yearly
$9/mo
Academic Plus plan −40%
Watch out: Breadth costs depth against the tools that do one of those jobs properly. A young product, so expect it to keep changing shape.
All plans (8)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free, capped by credits: 2,000 AI credits a month across Research Agents, Research Reports and the AI Writer, with a limited reference manager and limited AI searches, and no systematic reviews
Academic Plus
$15/mo · $9/mo yearly
12,500 credits a month, unlimited reference manager and systematic reviews of up to 1,000 papers
Academic Pro
$49/mo · $29/mo yearly
50,000 credits a month, systematic reviews of up to 5,000 papers and image and table extraction
Academic Evidence
$99/mo · $69/mo yearly
150,000 credits a month and PRISMA-grade dual screening. This is the team tier
Industry Plus
$29/mo · $17/mo yearly
Industry Pro
$69/mo · $39/mo yearly
Industry Evidence
$199/mo · $119/mo yearly
Enterprise
Custom
custom credits and systematic reviews of up to 20,000 papers
By Rayyan SystemsCambridge, United States1 product across 1 category
Built for this. Built for systematic reviews — thousands of abstracts screened by a team, with blinding and conflict resolution built into the workflow.
Free plan
Yes
Free forever, pitched at your first systematic review rather than as a trial
Month to month
None
Shortest billing is quarterly: $8.33/mo ($24.99 a quarter)
Billed yearly
$4.99/mo
$59.88 a year, Essential plan −40%
Watch out: Overkill for anything smaller than a formal review. Individual seats are cheap, but the institutional tier starts at 5 licenses for $2,500 a year.
All plans (5)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free forever, pitched at your first systematic review rather than as a trial
By LitmapsWellington, New Zealand2 products across 1 category
Built for this. Follows citations outward from papers you already trust and keeps alerting you as new ones appear. Strong for finding what you did not know to look for.
Free plan
Yes
Free forever, and unusually complete: unlimited searches across more than 310 million articles
Month to month
$12.50/mo
ResearchRabbit+
Billed yearly
$10/mo
ResearchRabbit+ plan −20%
Watch out: Owned by Litmaps since May 2025 and overlaps it heavily, down to charging the same $10 and $12.50. Discovery only — it will not read or summarise anything for you, and the free tier stops at 50 seed articles.
All plans (3)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free forever, and unusually complete: unlimited searches across more than 310 million articles, unlimited library and collections, and sharing a collection to collaborate. The cap is 50 seed articles and core rather than advanced search settings
ResearchRabbit+
$12.50/mo · $10/mo yearly
raises the seed-article cap from 50 to 300, adds advanced search controls, multiple projects and Signals alerts
Institution
no price published, sold through a sales conversation
everything in RR+ plus volume discounts, LibKey integration with your research library, thousands of managed users, usage statistics and dedicated support
By ScholarcyLondon, United Kingdom1 product across 1 category
Built for this. Breaks a paper into structured cards — aims, method, findings, limitations — instead of one block of summary, which makes skimming a stack of them practical.
Free plan
Yes
Free Article Summarizer: imports a range of file formats but stops at 10 summaries, and exports
Month to month
$9.99/mo
Scholarcy Plus
Billed yearly
$7.50/mo
$90 a year, Scholarcy Plus plan −25%
Watch out: Structure comes from the paper being conventionally written; it copes badly with anything that is not. The free tier stops at 10 summaries, so a reading list of any size needs the paid plan.
All plans (2)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free Article Summarizer: imports a range of file formats but stops at 10 summaries, and exports flashcards only one at a time
By SciteBrooklyn, United States1 product across 1 category
Built for this. Shows whether later papers supported or contradicted the one you are reading. Nothing else on this site answers that question.
Free plan
Yes
Connect, free and without a card: 25 MCP credits a month to use Scite inside ChatGPT, Claude
Month to month
$20/mo
Basic
Billed yearly
$12/mo
Basic plan −40%
Watch out: Coverage depends on publisher agreements, so an absence of contrasting citations is not evidence of agreement. The free tier is a connector for other AI tools, not the Scite platform: no Assistant, no Search.
All plans (6)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Connect, free and without a card: 25 MCP credits a month to use Scite inside ChatGPT, Claude and other AI tools, grounded in more than 300 million papers. It is a connector rather than a cut-down platform — the Assistant and Search are not included at all
Basic
$20/mo · $12/mo yearly
the full platform, with Assistant and Search, 250 MCP credits a month, Article Smart Citation reports, collections up to 1,000 papers and citation alerts. Opens on a 7-day free trial
Pro
$50/mo · $40/mo yearly
adds API access, 2,500 MCP credits a month, collections up to 10,000 papers and the patent, clinical trial and grant datasets. Opens on a 7-day free trial
Team
$50/mo
everything in Pro plus private and shared collections, team usage analytics, centralised billing and 2,500 MCP credits per user
Academic
no price published, sold through a sales conversation and based on users and usage
campus or department-level access by domain, IP or university email, unlimited users inside the licensed group, collections up to 50,000 papers and librarian dashboards
Enterprise
no price published, also sales-led
full API access with custom limits, collections up to 50,000 papers, enterprise MCP integration, SAML and SSO, and Article Galaxy full-text delivery
By You.comPalo Alto, United States1 product across 2 categories
Built for this. Answers a question from one live search pass and lists the pages it used beside the answer, so a claim can be checked without leaving it.
Free plan
Yes
Free tier of 100 web search queries a day, no API key required
Month to month
None
Not published
Billed yearly
—
No yearly price published
Watch out: The company has moved toward developers: the pricing page now sells APIs by the thousand calls, and the consumer assistant has changed shape several times while that happened. Good for checking a fact, less safe to build a habit on.
All plans (6)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free tier of 100 web search queries a day, no API key required
Web Search API
$5 per 1,000 calls, 1 to 100 results a call, news included
$100 free credit
Contents API
$1 per 1,000 pages extracted as Markdown or HTML, several URLs a request
$100 free credit
Answer API
$5 per 1,000 calls for a cited, synthesised answer
$100 free credit
Research API
from $12 per 1,000 calls on Lite, rising through Standard, Deep, Exhaustive and Frontier tiers
$100 free credit
Finance Research API
from $110 per 1,000 calls on Deep, with an Exhaustive tier above
By ProtonLabs TechnologyBirmingham, United Kingdom1 product across 1 category
Strong fit. Straightforward document chat with citation back to the page, and it handles long PDFs without the usual truncation.
Free plan
Yes
Free, but tightly capped: 1 document a day, 100 pages per document and a 15MB upload limit
Month to month
$14.99/mo
Premium
Billed yearly
$11.99/mo
Premium plan −20%
Watch out: A thin layer over a general model, so it inherits that model’s habits. Little here that a general assistant with file upload does not also do.
All plans (4)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free, but tightly capped: 1 document a day, 100 pages per document and a 15MB upload limit
Premium
$14.99/mo · $11.99/mo yearly
50 documents a day, 2,500 pages per document and a 31MB upload limit
Pro
$19.99/mo · $14.99/mo yearly
150 documents a day, 6,000 pages per document and an 877MB upload limit
Enterprise
Custom
1,000 documents a day, unlimited pages per document and a 1,431MB upload limit
By ExplainpaperUnited States1 product across 1 category
Strong fit. Highlight the passage that lost you and get it explained at the level you ask for, in place, without leaving the paper.
Free plan
Yes
Free for everyone, forever, and not metered: unlimited highlight explanations, follow-up
Month to month
$16/mo
Pro
Billed yearly
$12/mo
Pro plan −25%
Watch out: Explains what a passage says rather than whether it is right, and a confident explanation of a flawed method reads exactly like a good one. The free tier is unlimited but runs on weaker models, so what you pay for is the quality of the explanation rather than more of it.
All plans (3)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free for everyone, forever, and not metered: unlimited highlight explanations, follow-up questions and Zotero import. The limit is model quality — the free tier runs on what Explainpaper calls basic AI models
Pro
$16/mo · $12/mo yearly
Teams
no price published, sold through a sales conversation
everything in Pro plus team management, priority support and volume discounts
By HumataAustin, United States1 product across 1 category
Strong fit. Ask questions across a set of uploaded documents and get answers with the page they came from, which suits a folder of papers rather than one.
Free plan
Yes
Free, capped at 60 pages of use in total rather than per month, with the basic features and
Month to month
$9.99/mo
Expert
Billed yearly
—
No yearly price published
Watch out: Answers only from what you upload, so the quality of the shortlist is the quality of the answer. The free tier is 60 pages in total, and the step from Expert to Team switches from a flat rate to per user.
All plans (4)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free, capped at 60 pages of use in total rather than per month, with the basic features and GPT-5 support
Expert
$9.99/mo
Team
$49/mo
Enterprise
Custom
personalised service and enterprise security for large teams
By PetalCambridge, United States1 product across 1 category
Strong fit. A document library with AI built in rather than a chat window you paste into, so your sources stay organised between sessions.
Free plan
Yes
Free, with 1GB of cloud storage, one seat and three guests. Support is included rather than
Month to month
$4.25/mo
Plus
Billed yearly
$2.55/mo
Plus plan −40%
Watch out: You have to commit to keeping documents in it for the value to appear. The individual tiers are separated by storage rather than by features, and the two cheapest are priced for .edu addresses — without one they cost around two thirds more.
All plans (7)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free, with 1GB of cloud storage, one seat and three guests. Support is included rather than priority
Plus
$4.25/mo · $2.55/mo yearly
$2.99 and $4.99 respectively month to month. 2GB of storage
Advanced
$8.49/mo yearly
$9.99 and $13.99 month to month. 10GB of storage and priority support
By SciSpaceBengaluru, India1 product across 1 category
Strong fit. Explains a paper section by section while you read it, and will answer questions against the PDF in front of you.
Free plan
Yes
Free tier with limited papers
Month to month
$20/mo
Premium
Billed yearly
$12/mo
Premium plan −40%
Watch out: Explanations are only as good as the paper is clear, and it will paraphrase confidently past a passage it has not understood. Paid tiers are metered in credits rather than papers, and the jump from the entry tier to the next is more than five times the price.
All plans (7)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free tier with limited papers
Premium
$20/mo · $12/mo yearly
1,200 credits a month, Pro model access, unlimited file downloads, deep research, systematic review and papers from Google Scholar, PubMed and arXiv
Advanced
$90/mo · $70/mo yearly
10,000 credits a month, ten times Premium, expert models, verified reports and unlimited refreshes at 5,000 credits each time you hit the limit
Max
$200/mo · $160/mo yearly
40,000 credits a month, up to 16 parallel agent chats and early feature access
Teams Premium
$25/mo · $15/mo yearly
the same 1,200 credits per user, plus admin role management
Teams Advanced
$100/mo · $75/mo yearly
10,000 credits per user and up to 8 parallel agent chats each
Teams Max
$220/mo · $175/mo yearly
40,000 credits per user and 16 parallel chats each
Programming, debugging, data analysis, spreadsheets, math, engineering, technical research.
What this leaves out
These 30 are on the
site and may be excellent, but not tagged for a researcher — usually price, an enterprise
sales process, or the technical knowledge assumed.
Search, Research & Academics tools not tagged for a researcher.
What is the best AI for search, research & academics if you are a researcher?
22 of the 52 tools we track for this category are tagged as suiting a researcher: Connected Papers, Consensus, Elicit, EvidenceHunt, Gemini Deep Research, Gemini Notebook, Litmaps, OpenEvidence, Paperguide, Perplexity, Rayyan, ResearchRabbit, Scholarcy, Scite, You.com, AskYourPDF, ChatGPT deep research, Claude research mode, Explainpaper, Humata, Petal, SciSpace. 15 of them are built for this kind of work.
Are any of them free?
22: Connected Papers, Consensus, Elicit, EvidenceHunt, Gemini Deep Research, Gemini Notebook, Litmaps, OpenEvidence, Paperguide, Perplexity, Rayyan, ResearchRabbit, Scholarcy, Scite, You.com, AskYourPDF, ChatGPT deep research, Claude research mode, Explainpaper, Humata, Petal, SciSpace.
Which search, research & academics tools are not for a researcher?
BLUF, BookAbout, chatd, ChatPDF, DocuChat, IKI AI, Iris.ai, Komo Search, Liner, Map This, Otio, PDF Parser, Qwen, Recap, Simplescraper, SkimIt.ai, Slite - Ask, Talk Web, Teach Anything, The Drive AI, Yonoo, Youtube Transcript AI Summary, Anara, Andi, Checkmyidea, Feedly Leo, Genei, InfraNodus, Insight7, Skipit.ai — 30 of the 52. They are on the site and may be excellent, but not tagged for this reader, usually because of price, an enterprise sales process, or the technical knowledge assumed.
