Scite
Citation index that flags support vs. contradiction, not just count
Overview
Scite classifies how later papers cite a study — supporting, contradicting, or just mentioning it — instead of only counting citations. Used by 15,000+ institutions; now owned by Research Solutions (acquired Dec 2023).
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 11 Jul 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete.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.
- Smart Citations
- Scite Assistant
- Full-text search
- Citation alerts
- SSO
- Usage analytics
- API/MCP access
- Dedicated support
- Credit-based pricing
- API + MCP access to citation data
Use cases
ASEAN Perspective
Scite in Southeast Asia
ASEAN-region availability and pricing notes coming soon. Drop the editorial team a note via /contact/ if you can supply local context (Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia/Thailand/Vietnam).
Scite's core idea — classifying whether a citing paper actually supports, contradicts, or just name-checks a claim — is still the sharpest tool in academic citation analysis, and Smart Citations make it fast to see how well a finding has held up under later scrutiny. Scite Assistant layers cited Q&A on top, grounding answers in real papers rather than a language model's memory.
It's a credibility-checking companion, not a discovery engine, and the useful parts sit behind a $20/month Personal plan (student and annual discounts bring that down). Research Solutions acquired Scite in December 2023, and development has continued steadily since — the index now covers 1.3 billion-plus citation statements — but treat it as one layer in a research stack, not a replacement for a search tool.
What people say
Citation counts lie about quality, and Scite built its whole product around fixing that. For any paper, it shows not just how many times it's been cited but whether later papers backed the finding, pushed back on it, or just mentioned it in passing — a distinction PubMed and Google Scholar don't give you.
The company was acquired by Research Solutions in December 2023, which folded scite into a bigger publisher-services business rather than shutting it down — a reasonably common, and reasonably good, outcome for a research-tooling startup. Coverage has kept growing since: scite now classifies more than 1.3 billion citation statements across upwards of 38 million papers, and reviewers consistently point to the interface and the Assistant's cited answers as the strongest parts of the product. A few reviewers note the interface can lag on larger searches.
Where it falls short is scope — this is an evidence-evaluation layer, not a primary search tool, so most researchers pair it with Scopus, Web of Science or Google Scholar rather than replacing them. Pricing is $20/month for the Personal plan, or $12/month billed annually, with student discounts available; institutional and API/developer access go through custom quotes. Founded in 2018 by Josh Nicholson — not 2017, as some directories list it — scite has become a fixture in US university libraries and is increasingly used by academic institutions across Singapore and ASEAN.
Summary of public user & expert reviews, compiled by RECATOOLS.
Notable facts
- Scite has classified over 1.2 billion citation statements as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning — a dataset that took years to create using a combination of AI and human review.
- A study using Scite found that up to 30% of citations in some fields refer to papers whose findings the citing author actually disagrees with — invisible to traditional citation metrics.
- The platform is used by 7 of the top 10 research universities in the world to help their researchers evaluate evidence quality rather than just citation volume.
Frequently asked questions
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including Scite's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with Scite 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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