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 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
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 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 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 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 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
Two things separate these and both are on every card.
Fit
Whether a tool is built for this job, a strong fit for it, or
able to do it without that being its focus.
Free plan
Whether there is a tier you can keep using rather than a
trial that expires.
The order
Fit first, then a free plan, then alphabetical. There is
no score, no weighting we decline to publish, and nothing on this site a company can buy.
Questions
What is the best ai for summarizing research papers?
There is no single answer, which is why this page lists 9 rather than one: Scholarcy, SciSpace, Explainpaper, Gemini Notebook, Paperguide, Claude research mode, Elicit, Humata, ChatGPT. 5 of them are built for this kind of work rather than able to do it. Start with a free one.
Which of these have a free plan?
9 of the 9: Scholarcy, SciSpace, Explainpaper, Gemini Notebook, Paperguide, Claude research mode, Elicit, Humata, ChatGPT. Free means a real free tier you can keep using, not a trial that expires.
How was this list chosen?
By hand, from the 750 products this site tracks, and it is checked against the catalogue on every build — a product renamed or removed breaks the build rather than quietly disappearing from here. Nothing on this site can be paid for: no listing, no position, no wording.
