Consensus vs Clay

Tagline

AI academic search engine for peer-reviewed literature—your research OS for finding, organizing, and analyzing science 10x faster.

Build systems to grow revenue

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Platforms

API

Open source

Description

Consensus is an AI academic search engine for peer-reviewed literature. Designed to act as an AI workspace for scientific research, it enables researchers, students, and clinicians to find, organize, and analyze scientific findings efficiently. It offers search across millions of scientific papers with synthesized AI summaries, natural language querying, consensus metrics on scientific topics, citation graphing, and custom citation exporting.

Clay is a go-to-market (GTM) engineering platform that provides the infrastructure to get any data, run agentic workflows, and automate outbound plays. Users can scale their GTM operations by accessing 150+ premium data sources, waterfalling enrichment, and using AI research agents.

Key features

• Search 220M+ scientific papers
• Pro Search and Deep Search modes with synthesized AI answers
• Ask Paper to chat with any paper
• Consensus Meter showing scientific agreement on yes/no questions
• Study Snapshots with key findings and methodology
• Citation Graph for paper relationships
• Citation export in RIS, BibTeX, and CSV
• Collections to organize research libraries
• Consensus API integration

• Claygent AI research agents
• Sculptor workflow builder
• Signals tracking
• Audiences management
• Waterfall enrichment
• Ad sync to LinkedIn, Meta, and Google
• Email sequencer
• CRM enrichment
• Sandbox Mode
• Credit Usage Dashboard

Pros

• Allows searching through over 220 million scientific papers.
• Features Pro Search and Deep Search modes that synthesize papers into direct AI answers.
• Allows users to directly chat with any paper via 'Ask Paper'.
• Includes a Consensus Meter showing scientific agreement on yes/no scientific questions.
• Provides Study Snapshots highlighting key findings and methodology.
• Enables exported citations in specialized formats like RIS, BibTeX, and CSV.
• Exposes an API to integrate citations and paper metadata directly into external tools.
• Available for free accessibility, allowing users to try core capabilities without immediate payment.

• Enables users to combine multiple data providers via waterfall enrichment for the best possible coverage.
• Integrates over 150+ premium data sources and AI research agents into a single unified platform.
• Offers a 14-day Pro trial with no credit card required to test the software.
• Allows developers to build directly in Clay using a coding agent accompanied by an API and CLI.
• Enables direct synchronization of targeted ad audiences to LinkedIn, Meta, and Google.
• Features an enterprise-grade security framework compliant with SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and CCPA.
• Provides a free tier option alongside flexible paid plans (Launch, Growth, Enterprise).
• Provides sandbox features for safer environment testing and table lookup executions.

Cons

• No desktop software for macOS, Windows, or Linux is listed on the site.
• No native mobile apps (iOS, Android) are listed in the product description pages.
• Exact pricing details and plan figures for paid tiers are not disclosed in the text.
• Requires JavaScript and a modern web browser to run, limiting accessibility on older systems.
• The Consensus API is capped returning up to a limit of 20 papers per query.

• No mobile application for iOS or Android platforms is listed on the website.
• No offline desktop client for macOS, Windows, or Linux is mentioned in the official pages.
• Actual baseline dollar costs for Launch, Growth, and Enterprise plans are not explicitly declared on the main pricing page.
• Detailed credit consumption limits or allowance constraints for the Free tier are not disclosed on the pricing page.
• No self-hosted, on-premise, or completely open-source version of the infrastructure is available.

Pricing plans

• FreeUSD0
  • • Find and enrich data from 150+ providers
  • • Run multi-provider waterfalls
  • • Launch email campaigns with Clay sequencer
• LaunchUSD167/month
  • • Everything in Free, plus...
  • • Bring your own API key
  • • Priority support queue
  • • Credit reporting dashboard
• GrowthUSD446/month
  • • Everything in Launch, plus...
  • • Run enrichment in bulk
  • • Schedule recurring enrichment runs
  • • Unlimited Ads Audiences
• Enterprise—
  • • Everything in Growth, plus...
  • • Get dedicated growth strategist
  • • Custom CSA and DPA
  • • Dedicated growth strategist (CSM)

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