Elicit vs Perplexity

Tagline

AI research assistant for scientific papers

AI answer engine with real-time citations

Category

Pricing

Rating

Platforms

API

Open source

Description

Elicit finds, summarizes, and extracts data from millions of research papers.

Perplexity answers complex questions with cited web sources and AI-native search.

Key features

• Section-level QA
• Zotero sync

• Source diversity
• Audio brief

Pros

• Semantic search across papers
• Automated data extraction
• Citation graph exploration
• Paper summarization
• Systematic-review workflows
• Generous free tier
• Export to CSV and Zotero
• Trusted by academic researchers

• Real-time web search grounding
• Citations to sources
• Choice of LLMs on Pro
• Focus modes (academic, Reddit, etc.)
• Threads keep context
• Deep-research Copilot
• Native mobile apps
• Sonar developer API

Cons

• Free tier is credit-limited
• Primarily English papers
• Occasional extraction errors
• Weaker for humanities
• Requires paper access rights
• Limited fine-tuning
• Slow on very large corpora
• Team plans get expensive

• Free tier has query limits
• Citations sometimes mismatched
• Less conversational depth than ChatGPT
• Best models gated to Pro
• Occasional hallucinations
• Search bias toward popular sources
• Limited customization
• No file training

Pricing plans

• BasicUSD0
  • • Unlimited search across more than 138 million papers
  • • Unlimited summaries across as many papers as you want
  • • Unlimited chat with papers with full-text access
  • • Unlimited search across more than 500 thousand clinical trials
• PlusUSD11/month
  • • Standard usage for Research Agent, Research Reports, and Systematic Literature Reviews
• ProUSD39/month
  • • Custom extractions from uploaded papers
  • • Standard usage for Research Agent, Research Reports, and Systematic Literature Reviews
• ScaleUSD89/month
  • • 5x usage for Research Agent, Research Reports, and Systematic Literature Reviews
  • • Dedicated Systematic Review Workflow that can screen 5,000 papers
  • • Reports extract from up to 135 data sources
  • • Subscribe to 10 personalized research Alerts
• Enterprise—
  • • Custom usage for Research Agent, Research Reports, and Systematic Literature Reviews
  • • Greater scale: screen 40,000 papers and extract 40 columns
  • • Enterprise-level security and controls, including SSO & SAML, 2FA, user analytics, domain verification, and custom deployments
  • • Dedicated customer success team providing training, onboarding, and success planning
• Team—
  • • 9x usage for Research Agent, Research Reports, and Systematic Literature Reviews
  • • Extract and interpret from figures in research papers
  • • Live editing and real-time collaboration with your team
  • • Admin panel with usage tracking and seat management

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