1. Should you try Consensus? Overview

What it is	AI research search engine
Country / HQ	Boston, USA
Best for	Answering research questions with cited academic papers
Check before buying	Type a question in plain English (e.g. ‘does X improve Y?’) on the free tier to see cited claims.
Pricing signal	Free tier + paid from $20/mo

2. Features What it does

Feature	What it does
220M+ papers	Searches a large corpus of peer-reviewed research.
Cited answers	Returns claims backed by studies, with links and evidence grades.
Deep Research	Runs multi-step literature reviews on a question.
Study snapshots	Summarises what a paper found and how strong the evidence is.
API & MCP	Embed research search into apps and AI agents.

Plan	Price / mo	Key limits & who it fits
Free	$0	Oct 2026 ~20 searches, 10 Pro messages, 3 Deep reviews, 30 API/MCP calls
Pro	$20/mo ($12 annual)	Oct 2026 Higher search and message limits, deep reviews
Deep	$65/mo ($45 annual)	Oct 2026 Unlimited deep research and highest limits
Teams	$30/seat/mo	Oct 2026 Shared workspace for research teams
Enterprise	Custom	Oct 2026 Volume, SSO, custom corpus access

Type a question in plain English (e.g. ‘does X improve Y?’) on the free tier to see cited claims.

Access type	Details
Web	and iOS apps, plus a browser extension.
API	and MCP server for embedding into workflows and agents.
Citations	link out to the underlying papers.

Source	Rating	What it says
Editorial	Researcher favourite	Praised for saving literature-review time with real citations.
Students	Positive	Loved for quick, sourced answers over a topic.
Community	Growing	Strong word-of-mouth among academics and analysts.

✔ Suitable	✘ Not suitable
• Students, researchers and analysts who need evidence-backed answers fast.	• Reading full papers behind paywalls – it summarises and cites, it is not a full-text library.

Competitor	How it differs	Best for
Elicit	Elicit automates literature reviews with table extraction.	Choose Elicit for structured extraction across many papers.
Scite	Scite shows how papers cite and contrast each other.	Choose Scite for citation-context analysis.
Semantic Scholar	Semantic Scholar is a free academic search with AI features.	Choose Semantic Scholar for free, broad paper search.
Google Scholar	Google Scholar is the free, comprehensive paper index.	Choose Google Scholar as the free baseline everyone uses.
ResearchRabbit	ResearchRabbit maps paper networks and recommendations.	Choose ResearchRabbit for visual citation mapping.
Perplexity	Perplexity is a general AI search with some citations.	Choose Perplexity for general questions beyond academia.
Jenni	Jenni is an AI writing assistant for academic papers.	Choose Jenni when the job is writing the paper, not just finding evidence.

Takeaway	Consensus turns the dreaded literature review into a few minutes of cited, evidence-graded answers, which is why students and analysts love it. It will not replace reading the actual papers for a thesis, but for scoping a topic or checking whether the evidence supports a claim it is superb.
Who should pick it	Students, researchers and analysts who need evidence-backed answers fast.
Who should skip it	Reading full papers behind paywalls – it summarises and cites, it is not a full-text library.