Elicit
Visit Elicit →About 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 platform has moved well beyond simple paper search. Elicit introduced a public API and an MCP server in July 2026 and launched the Elicit Research Agent in August 2026. As of September 30, 2026, Find Papers and Extract Data now run as skills inside the Research Agent, and Routines let the Agent run recurring work on a schedule and email updates, replacing the legacy Alerts tool, which is retired as of October 31, 2026. The company's homepage currently states it is used by over 5 million researchers.
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 Basic plan is free and includes unlimited search, unlimited summaries, unlimited chat-with-papers, source viewing, and Zotero import, with limited Research Agent and Reports usage. Pro costs $75 per user per month billed monthly, or $49 per user per month billed annually ($588/year), and covers screening up to 5,000 papers, 20 extraction columns, and reports from up to 135 sources, plus API access. Scale costs $279 per user per month billed monthly, or $169 per user per month billed annually ($2,028/year), with roughly 5x the usage of Pro, 30 columns, figure extraction, live collaboration, up to 200 sources, and admin controls. Enterprise is custom-priced and covers screening up to 40,000 papers, 40 columns, unlimited API access, and SSO/SAML/2FA.
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, monthly billing costs considerably more than committing to an annual 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.
- Searches an unusually large corpus: 138M+ papers plus 545,000+ clinical trials
- Structured data extraction into custom columns is genuinely useful for systematic reviews
- Free Basic plan offers unlimited search, summaries and chat-with-papers
- Research Agent runs Find Papers and Extract Data as skills, plus scheduled Routines and a public API with MCP server for automation into external workflows
- Every summary and extraction links back to sources you can verify
- Focused on academic and clinical literature, not general-purpose web research
- Meaningful screening and extraction volumes are locked behind paid tiers
- Pro caps at 5,000 papers and 135 sources; large reviews push you toward Scale or Enterprise
- AI-generated summaries and citations still require manual checking
- Monthly billing costs much more than annual: Pro is $75/user/month vs $49/user/month billed annually, Scale is $279/user/month vs $169/user/month billed annually
Choose Elicit if…
- You run systematic literature reviews and need to screen thousands of papers
- You want structured data extraction into tables rather than just search results
- You need verifiable citations tied to every summarized claim
- You want to embed academic search and extraction into your own tools via the API
- You need coverage of clinical trials alongside published papers
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