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Productivity & research

Which AI tool should I use to find and summarise academic papers?

Academic AI tools search scholarly databases rather than the open web, which reduces made-up citations.

  1. Rank 1

    Elicit

    Verdict Great for literature reviews: search, summarise and extract data from papers into tables. Advanced reports and systematic reviews need paid plans, and Industry Pro is $49/user/mo.

    Best for
    Literature reviews and extracting data from many papers
    Price
    Free tier: yes. $49/user/mo (billed annually). Price shown is Industry Pro billed annually. Cheaper academic pricing reported by third parties was not visible on the fetched page.
    Last checked

  2. Rank 2

    Consensus

    Verdict Quickly shows what peer-reviewed research says about a question, with a useful free tier. Better for yes/no-style questions than deep extraction.

    Best for
    Checking what the evidence says on a specific question
    Price
    Free tier: yes. $20/mo. Pro $12/mo equivalent billed annually ($144/yr).
    Last checked

  3. Rank 3

    Semantic Scholar

    Verdict Completely free, huge index, TLDR summaries and citation graphs from Ai2. A search engine rather than an AI assistant, so no synthesised answers.

    Best for
    Free paper discovery and citation tracing
    Price
    Free tier: yes. Free. Free service; no paid plan (starting_price intentionally null).
    Last checked

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