Elicit

Elicit is a research intelligence platform built for academics, evidence synthesis teams, and anyone doing serious literature work. It searches a corpus of more than 138 million papers and 545,000 clinical trials, summarizes findings, lets you chat with papers, and pulls specific data points into structured tables.

The tool has changed significantly. What began as a paper-search and extraction assistant is now a broader platform. Research Agents launched in late 2025 to automate multi-step review workflows, and in March 2026 Elicit released a public API so teams can embed its search, extraction, and report generation into their own tools. The underlying language model was upgraded for more accurate, context-aware summaries and better citation handling.

The core paid offering centers on systematic literature review and data extraction: you can screen thousands of papers, define custom extraction columns, and generate structured reports with sources you can verify.

Pricing is tiered. The Free plan costs $0 and includes unlimited search, unlimited summaries, unlimited chat-with-papers, source viewing and Zotero import, with limited Research Agent and Report usage. Pro is $49/month (or $588/year) and covers standard agent, report, and systematic-review usage, screening up to 5,000 papers, 20 table columns, extraction from up to 135 sources, 10 alerts, and API access. Scale is $169/month (or $2,028/year) with 5x usage, figure extraction, live collaboration, up to 200 sources and admin controls. Enterprise is custom-priced with 40,000-paper screening, PRISMA-grade accuracy, SSO/SAML/2FA and unlimited API.

Limitations are worth noting: the tool is tuned for academic and clinical literature rather than general web research, serious extraction and screening volumes require a paid plan, and as with any AI summarizer, extracted claims and citations still need human verification.

Elicit is a strong fit for researchers, PhD students, systematic reviewers, and R&D or clinical teams who need to move quickly through large bodies of evidence without losing the ability to trace every claim back to its source.