Consensus vs Elicit vs Paperguide vs Scholarcy
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
Consensus
AI search engine that shows what the science actually says
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Elicit
AI research assistant for academic literature reviews
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Paperguide
AI research assistant with semantic paper search
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Scholarcy
Turns papers into structured flashcards: findings, methods, refs.
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| RECATOOLS Score | 7.3 / 10 | 7.6 / 10 | 6.8 / 10 | 6.3 / 10 |
| Capability | ||||
| Value for money | ||||
| Ease of use | ||||
| ASEAN readiness | ||||
| API quality | ||||
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium | Freemium | Freemium |
| Free tier | 20 searches per day with basic features | Basic: unlimited search + 2 automated reports/month; ~125-200M-paper corpus | — | 5 paper summaries per month |
| Paid from | Pro $15/mo ($10/mo annual); Deep tier for power users/researchers | Plus $12/mo; Pro $49/mo; Team $79/mo | — | $9.99/month (Personal) |
| Has API | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Users | 500k+ users | 200k+ researchers | — | 1m+ researchers |
| Founded | 2022 | 2018 | 2023 | 2018 |
| Maker | Eric Olson, Christian Salem | Ought (non-profit) | — | Phil Gooch |
| Verdict | Consensus answers research questions by pulling from peer-reviewed literature rather than the open web: type a question, get a synthesized answer with citations, a Consensus Meter showing what share of studies actually a... |
Elicit owns the literature-review niche: it searches 138 million papers, pulls methods, sample sizes and findings into structured comparison tables, and links every extraction back to source text, which makes verificatio... |
Paperguide bundles AI literature search, citation-backed answers, a reference manager and an academic writing assistant over a large paper database, putting several research workflows in one tool. The free tier is unusua... |
Scholarcy does one job: feed it a paper and it hands back a structured summary — key findings, methods, tables, a pulled reference list — instead of you reading twenty pages to get there. The Chrome extension is the most... |
| Full review → | Full review → | Full review → | Full review → |
Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.