Scira
Open-source AI search with citations — now has a $15/mo Pro tier
Overview
Scira (formerly MiniPerplx) is an AGPL-3.0, self-hostable AI search engine that breaks questions into sub-tasks and grounds answers in live web sources with inline citations. Free tier: 150 searches/day. Pro ($15/mo) removes the cap and unlocks every supported model.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 4 Sep 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
- 150 searches/day
- 20 extreme searches/month
- Unlimited searches
- All AI models
- PDF document analysis
- Priority support
- Pooled weekly quota across premium models
- AI image generation
- Scira Agent mode
What you can produce with Scira
- AGPL-3.0 open-source, self-hostable codebase
- Inline citations grounded in live web search
- Agentic multi-step query planning
- Multi-model support (Grok, GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini, Llama)
- Free tier: 150 searches/day + 20 extreme searches/month
- Pro tier: unlimited searches, PDF document analysis
Scira remains one of the cleanest open-source takes on cited AI search: AGPL-3.0 licensed, over 7,000 GitHub stars, self-hostable, and genuinely useful as a reference for anyone who wants to see how a Perplexity-style answer engine is built end to end. It's stuck around since its MiniPerplx days as largely a solo-developer project (Zaid Mukaddam).
What's changed: after ten months running entirely free, Scira introduced its first paid plan in mid-2026 — Pro at $15/month for unlimited searches and every model, Max at $60/month for heavier model quotas plus an agent mode and image generation. The free tier survives at 150 searches a day, which is generous. It's still a small operation depending on third-party model and search APIs underneath, so temper uptime and freshness expectations accordingly — this isn't a funded incumbent's SLA.
What people say
Scira doesn't show up on G2, Capterra or Trustpilot in any meaningful volume — this is a project with community traction rather than enterprise review-site presence. The clearest signal of adoption is on GitHub: over 7,000 stars and, per the project's own about page, around 100,000 monthly users, plus a mention on Vercel's blog (the project is built on the Vercel AI SDK) as a notable community project.
Independent AI-tool directories (AIChief, BestAITools, TinyStartups) are broadly positive, praising the minimalist interface and the fact that answers come back cited rather than as an unsourced wall of text — the core Perplexity-style pitch. Reviewers also point to genuine breadth of model choice (Grok, GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini, Llama) as unusual for a project this size, and the AGPL license plus self-hosting option as a real differentiator versus closed competitors.
The bigger news in 2026 is monetization: Scira ran free for its first ten months before introducing Scira Pro. Per the team's own announcement, Pro is $15/month for unlimited searches, all AI models, PDF document analysis, and priority support — a straightforward, single-tier pitch. A second tier, Max, launched at $60/month with substantially higher weekly usage pools across premium models plus an image-generation feature and a "Scira Agent" mode for more autonomous multi-step tasks.
There isn't yet a substantial body of reviews evaluating the paid tiers specifically — most public commentary predates the Pro/Max launch and describes the free, open-source product. Anyone evaluating Scira today should weigh that the entity behind it is still small: a single named developer is the public face of the project, and while that's normal for open-source tools, it means support and roadmap pace will differ from a funded startup.
Summary of public user & expert reviews, compiled by RECATOOLS.
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including Scira's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with Scira unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
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