Elicit vs Scite.ai

E

Elicit

AI research assistant that searches 138M+ papers, summarizes them, extracts data and writes cited reports and systematic reviews. Free Basic plan; Pro reported at $49 a month billed annually.

Who it is for

Researchers, students and teams that do literature reviews, evidence synthesis or data extraction from papers. Higher tiers add team collaboration and admin controls.

Strengths

• Elicit says search across 138M+ academic papers is unlimited on the free Basic plan
• Summaries and chat with full-text papers are listed as unlimited on Basic
• The systematic review workflow covers paper gathering, screening, data extraction and a report, and extracted cells show supporting quotes
• Zotero import is listed on all plans, and API access on Pro
• A single review can hold up to 5,000 papers on Pro, 20,000 on Scale and 40,000 on Enterprise, per Elicit's help center

Limitations

• Basic gives 'limited' Research Agent and Research Report usage, and the pricing page publishes no numbers
• All plans share one monthly usage pool across the Research Agent, Reports and Systematic Reviews. It resets monthly, even on annual plans, and unused usage does not roll over
• Larger inputs use more of the pool: long PDFs, more extraction columns and more thorough screening
• Extra usage on Pro and Scale is billed in $100 increments up to a monthly limit you set
• Elicit's privacy policy page shows a last update of September 2023 and does not mention model training. Enterprise lists 'no training on your data by default'

S

Scite.ai

AI research platform with an Assistant, full-text citation search and Smart Citations. Basic is $12 a month billed annually ($20 monthly); no free plan, 7-day trial.

Strengths

• Scite says it reads across 323M+ full-text scholarly articles and has indexed 1.6B+ citations; its Assistant page gives a different figure (250M+ in page metadata), so treat the totals as Reported.
• Scite says Smart Citations show how later research has supported, challenged or discussed a paper, with classification as supporting or contrasting evidence.
• Scite lists unlimited Assistant queries, full-text literature search, Smart Citation reports and citation alerts on Basic, plus collections of up to 1,000 papers.
• Scite lists a browser extension that shows citation badges, a Zotero plugin, library Holdings access for full text, an MCP server and an API.
• Pro adds patents, clinical trials and grants, collections of up to 10,000 papers, 2,500 MCP credits a month (Basic has 250) and self-service API access.
• Enterprise lists unlimited users with pooled usage, access by SSO, IP, domain or email, collections of up to 50,000 papers and regulatory and safety datasets such as FAERS, MAUDE and 510(k).

Limitations

• MCP credits are capped (250 a month on Basic, 2,500 on Pro); the pages do not explain how credits are used per call or whether they roll over, and REST API limits are enforced separately.
• Scite's API docs say a Pro self-service key is for evaluation (Search snippets are redacted), commercial or research use of Search needs a separate license, and the terms say API and connector access is licensed to you personally.
• The terms say fees are non-refundable and subscriptions renew monthly, with cancellation needed at least 30 days before the month you want to avoid; the pricing page says you can cancel from the Subscription section and avoid trial charges by canceling before the trial ends. The pages differ, so confirm before buying.
• The terms prohibit scraping and bulk or systematic retrieval, bar using retrieved content to train AI models, and provide the service as is, leaving it to users to verify sources. Scite says it does not use Customer Data to train AI systems.