Semantic Scholar vs Elicit vs Consensus vs Scite
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
Semantic Scholar
Free AI-assisted academic search across 200M+ papers, from Ai2
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Elicit
AI literature search, extraction and systematic reviews with sentence-...
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Consensus
AI search engine that shows what the research says
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Scite
Shows whether later research supported or contradicted a paper
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| RECATOOLS Score | 8 / 10 | 7.6 / 10 | 7.3 / 10 | 6.8 / 10 |
| Capability | ||||
| Value for money | ||||
| Ease of use | ||||
| ASEAN readiness | ||||
| API quality | ||||
| Pricing | Free | Freemium | Freemium | Subscription |
| Free tier | Search, paper pages, TLDRs (CS/biomed), Semantic Reader, alerts, feeds and the API are free; an API key gives 1 request/sec | Basic: unlimited search of 138M+ papers, unlimited summaries and full-text paper chat, Zotero import; limited Research Agent and Reports usage | Basic paper search, 10 Pro messages and up to 3 Deep reviews a month | 7-day free trial of Basic or Pro; no lasting free plan |
| Paid from | — | From $11/month (academic Plus billed yearly, or $19 monthly); industry Pro $49/month yearly | Pro $12/mo billed annually ($20 monthly); Deep $45/mo annually ($65 monthly) | $12/month (Basic, billed yearly) |
| Has API | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Users | 50m+ monthly visits | 200k+ researchers | 500k+ users | 15000+ institutions |
| Founded | 2015 | 2020 | 2021 | 2018 |
| Maker | Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) | Andreas Stuhlmuller | Eric Olson, Christian Salem | Research Solutions, Inc. |
| Verdict | Semantic Scholar remains one of the best free tools for finding and tracing academic literature, with excellent citation data and a generous free API that other research tools build on. Its AI features are narrower than... |
Elicit is the most complete AI tool for structured literature work: search, screening, extraction tables and cited reports in one place, with every claim tied to a source sentence. Published studies support it as a secon... |
Consensus answers research questions from academic literature rather than the open web: a cited synthesis, natural-language filters for population, design and time frame, and a Consensus Meter showing how far studies agr... |
Scite's Smart Citations remain the quickest way to see whether a finding has held up: the citing sentence and its classification sit next to the count, and the Assistant links each answer back to that evidence. The MCP s... |
| Full review → | Full review → | Full review → | Directory listing → |
Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.