Scite

Scite is a research tool that started as a way to see how a scientific paper has been cited. Instead of a raw citation count, its Smart Citations tell you whether each citing paper supports, mentions or contradicts the original claim, which makes it easier to judge how well a finding has held up.

The product is continuously updated rather than versioned. The most significant recent change came in February 2026 with the launch of the Scite MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration, which lets Scite work inside ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Cursor and Claude Code. From those tools you can search over 250 million articles, evaluate results with Smart Citations and pull full-text PDFs. The same release removed data caps on chats and saved searches, added newer AI models to the Assistant while retiring older ones, and introduced AI Report Summaries. In March 2026 Scite added the ability to paste DOIs straight into the Assistant, save up to five named settings presets, drag citation popups around, and expanded MCP coverage to patents, clinical trials and grants.

The core capabilities now span three areas: the Smart Citation database and browser extension, an AI Assistant for literature search and report writing, and the MCP layer that exposes all of this to external AI tools and coding agents.

Pricing is tiered. The free tier gives you Smart Citation badges and the extension plus capped Assistant use, with a 7-day Personal trial. Personal costs $20 per user monthly or $12 per user on an annual plan (roughly $144 a year, about 40% off), with student discounts of around 30 to 50 percent. Organization plans are custom-quoted and add SSO, analytics and support, while the Developer tier for API and MCP access is credit-based and also custom.

The limitations are worth knowing. Coverage is strong in the sciences but thinner in some humanities fields, Smart Citation classifications are automated and occasionally wrong, and the useful Assistant features sit behind the paid tier. Developer and Organization pricing is opaque until you request a quote.

Scite fits researchers, graduate students, librarians and evidence-analysts who need to verify claims rather than just count citations, and it is particularly appealing now if you already work inside an AI assistant or coding agent and want scholarly search available there through MCP.