Semantic Scholar vs Elicit

Tagline

A free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature

AI research assistant for scientific papers

Category

Pricing

Rating

Platforms

API

Open source

Description

Semantic Scholar uses groundbreaking AI and engineering to understand the semantics of scientific literature to help scholars discover relevant research. Users can search over 214 million papers across all fields, organize them in a personal library, access AI-powered summaries, and build projects using the Academic Graph API.

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

Key features

• AI-powered search filters
• One-sentence paper TLDRs
• Highly Influential Citations highlight
• Ask This Paper companion tool
• Semantic Reader augmented interface
• Personalized AI-powered Research Feeds
• Shared folders and collaboration
• Academic Graph REST API
• Cite export (BibTex, MLA, APA, Chicago)

• Section-level QA
• Zotero sync

Pros

• Entirely free to use for scientific literature search and library management.
• Provides AI-generated TLDR summaries for nearly 60 million papers in computer science, biology, and medicine to save reading time.
• Highly Influential Citations feature highlights which citing publications had the most significant impact.
• AI-powered Research Feeds automatically recommend relevant new literature based on saved library folders.
• The Ask This Paper tool allows users to ask questions and get direct answers backed by supporting statements from the text.
• Semantic Reader offers augmented features including in-line citation cards and on-demand definitions.
• Enables creation of public, shareable folders that other users can copy to their library in a single click.
• Free downloadable full datasets are compiled as an easy-to-use JSON archive for external research projects.
• Open-access REST API is publicly accessible for developers without mandatory authentication overhead.

• 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

Cons

• Unauthenticated API usage is strictly rate-limited to 1,000 requests per second shared globally across all anonymous users.
• The introductory rate limit for private API key holders is highly restricted at 1 request per second on all endpoints.
• The interactive Ask This Paper tool is only available on selected pages and has been tested only on English-language literature.
• AI skimming highlights are currently limited mostly to English-language arXiv papers within computer science.
• Personalized inline citations in the Semantic Reader are restricted and only available on desktop devices.
• The API license agreement prohibits users from repackaging, renting, leasing, selling, or distributing API access.

• 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

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

Website