Elicit: The AI Research Assistant
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Notable Features: Detailed comparative table
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Core Abilities: Elicit is an AI-powered research assistant designed to accelerate literature discovery and evidence synthesis. Its primary ability is to perform natural language literature searches, finding relevant papers by understanding the meaning of a research question, not just matching keywords. For each paper, it can generate concise, query-focused summaries and extract key data points—such as methodology, population characteristics, or outcomes—into a structured, comparative table. All extracted information is linked directly to quotes from the source document, allowing for rapid verification and reducing the risk of AI hallucination. It also includes features for managing systematic review workflows and a "chat with your PDF" function for targeted information retrieval from uploaded papers.
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Limitations/ Risks: The primary limitation of Elicit is that its data extraction is not infallible and requires human oversight; users must verify critical details, as the tool's accuracy is high but not perfect. Its search corpus, while extensive, is based on Semantic Scholar corpus (135+ million papers) and may not include the most recent pre-indexed publications or certain paywalled articles. Critically, it does not appraise study quality, meaning researchers must apply their own critical judgment to evaluate the scientific merit of the sources it finds.
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Platform/ Integrations: Web application with import/export (supports Zotero, RIS, BibTeX , CSV for reference management). No mobile app, No API
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Pricing: Basic (Free) – Unlimited searches over papers, unlimited summaries and chat with up to 4 papers at once. Free tier includes one-time 5,000 bonus credits and then allows limited extractions (20 papers/mo). Plus – $12/mo (or $10/mo billed annually), which raises extraction to 50 papers/mo (600/year) and expands multi-paper chat to 8 at once.
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Tutorials/ Reviews
How to Use Elicit AI, Literature Reviews + More: Beginner Tutorial and Research Tips!