Elicit
← Back to All AI Tools1. Should you try Elicit? Overview
| What it is | AI research assistant for literature review |
| Country / HQ | Oakland, California, USA |
| Best for | Answering research questions with cited papers and table extraction |
| Check before buying | Ask 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 $12/mo |
2. Features What it does
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| 138M+ 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. |
| Data extraction | Pulls structured data from PDFs into tables across many papers. |
| Systematic review | Supports screening up to 5,000 studies on Pro. |
| API and MCP | Embed research search into apps and AI agents. |
3. Pricing Pricing (2026-10, USD)
| Plan | Price / mo | Key limits & who it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $0 | Oct 2026 Unlimited search, 2 reports/month, 2 columns |
| Plus | $12/mo | Oct 2026 More reports and columns, faster access |
| Pro | $49/mo (academic $69 / industry $75) | Oct 2026 144 reports/year, 20 columns, systematic review up to 5,000, API |
| Scale | $169/mo | Oct 2026 Higher volume for power users |
| Team | $79/seat/mo | Oct 2026 Shared workspace for research teams |
Ask a question in plain English (e.g. ‘does X improve Y?’) on the free tier to see cited claims.
4. Integration Access & integrations
| Access type | Details |
|---|---|
| Web | and iOS apps plus a browser extension. |
| API | and MCP server for embedding into workflows and agents. |
| Citation | links point to the underlying papers. |
5. Reviews & Sources External reviews
| Source | Rating | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| Editorial | Researcher favourite | Praised for turning literature reviews into minutes of cited, evidence-graded answers. |
| Community | Growing | Strong word-of-mouth among grad students and analysts. |
| Benchmark | 95% recall / 97% screening | Vendor-cited accuracy on citation and abstract screening tasks. |
6. Best for / Not for Fit
| ✔ Suitable | ✘ Not suitable |
|---|---|
| • Students, researchers and analysts who need evidence-backed answers fast. | • Reading full paywalled papers – it summarises and cites, not a full-text library. |
7. Competitors How it compares
| Competitor | How it differs | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Consensus | Consensus answers research questions with cited claims. | Choose Consensus for quick evidence-graded answers. |
| 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. |
| ResearchRabbit | ResearchRabbit maps paper networks and recommendations. | Choose ResearchRabbit for visual citation mapping. |
| Connected Papers | Connected Papers visualises a paper’s neighbourhood. | Choose Connected Papers for a visual literature graph. |
| Litmaps | Litmaps tracks citations over time on a map. | Choose Litmaps for citation-timeline tracking. |
| Jenni | Jenni is an AI writing assistant for academic papers. | Choose Jenni when the job is writing the paper. |
8. Summary Verdict
| Takeaway | Elicit is the tool that compresses a dreaded literature review into a few minutes of cited, structured output, and the data-extraction tables are a genuine unfair advantage for meta-style work. Backed by the non-profit Ought, it has earned trust among researchers for evidence grading. |
| Who should pick it | Students, researchers and analysts who need evidence-backed answers fast. |
| Who should skip it | Reading full paywalled papers – it summarises and cites, not a full-text library. |