What is Elicit?
Elicit is a web-based AI research assistant for scientific literature. It searches academic papers, summarizes them, chats with full-text papers, extracts data into tables, and produces cited research reports and systematic reviews.
Who it's for
Researchers, students and teams that do literature reviews, evidence synthesis or data extraction from papers. Higher tiers add team collaboration and admin controls.
Pros & cons
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
- Systematic Reviews need Pro, Scale or Enterprise. Extracting from figures needs Scale or Enterprise, and dual review is Enterprise only
- 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'
Plans and pricing
- Basic: $0. Unlimited search, summaries and full-text chat. Limited Research Agent and Reports. Zotero import.
- Pro: Reported: $588 a year billed annually ($49 per user a month). Systematic reviews up to 5,000 papers, 20 table columns at a time, reports from up to 135 sources, API access. We did not see a monthly-billing price.
- Scale: Reported: $2,028 a year billed annually ($169 per user a month). Five times the Pro usage, figure extraction, live collaboration, 30 columns, up to 200 sources, admin panel.
- Enterprise: Custom (contact sales). Custom usage, screening up to 40,000 papers, 40 columns, SSO and 2FA.
Elicit's pricing page returned two conflicting versions when we read it. One listed a Plus tier at $11 a month and Pro at $39; the other, which matches the help center's usage article, lists only Basic, Pro, Scale and Enterprise with Pro at $49 and Scale at $169. We used the second and label the prices as reported. Older help articles still show Plus at $12 a month, and an independent report says Plus was retired in June 2026. Confirm on the live pricing page.
Details checked October 2026 against the vendor's own pages. Prices and limits change, so confirm before you buy. Official pricing page ↗
Sources
This profile was compiled from these public pages. We have not run hands-on tests.
Elicit — at a glance
Elicit is a web-based AI research assistant for scientific literature. It searches academic papers, summarizes them, chats with full-text papers, extracts data into tables, and produces cited research reports and systematic reviews.
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