Elicit
AI research assistant for academic papers and literature review
Elicit is purpose-built for academic research, using AI to search 200M+ papers, extract key findings, and synthesize literature reviews. It saves researchers 10+ hours per systematic review.
Editor rating is our overall editorial judgment of the tool, out of 5. It is not a test score and not a user-review average. Ratings have not been re-scored since the tool was listed here. The reasons are in Best for and Pros & cons below.
You can use this without coding, but there is some setup before it is useful.
Best for
Pros & cons
✓ Pros
✗ What this won't do
Use cases
Systematic literature reviews
Finding supporting evidence for claims
Extracting data from research papers
Identifying research gaps
Pick Research Report
Sign in to Elicit. The home page offers three starts: a Research Agent session, a Research Report and a Systematic Review, so choose Report.
Ask a precise question
Type a research question, for example "Does sleep length affect exam results in teenagers?" Use Elicit's suggestions to make it more precise, which improves the report.
Choose and generate
Pick a template (General Review, 1-Page Overview or Research Gap Analysis) and a depth, then click Generate Report. Elicit searches over 138 million papers, screens them and writes a report with citations.
Watch your monthly usage
Each report uses part of your plan's monthly allowance, and deeper reports use more. Start with a fast report while you learn.
Compare alternatives
| Tool | Category | Editor rating | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elicit (current) | Research / Search | 4.5 | Free / from $49/user/mo |
| Perplexity AI | Research / Search | 4.7 | Free / $20 mo |
| You.com | Research / Search | 4.4 | Free / $15 mo |
| Claude | LLM / Assistant | 4.8 | Free / $20 mo |