Elicit Review: Features, Pricing & Alternatives
AI research assistant that finds, summarises and extracts data from academic papers.
What is Elicit?
Elicit is an AI research assistant built for academic and scientific research. It searches over 138 million papers, summarises findings and can extract specific data, such as sample sizes, methods or outcomes, into a structured table across dozens or thousands of studies.
Elicit was created by the non-profit research lab Ought and became an independent company. It is especially popular for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, where screening and data extraction normally take weeks of manual work.
Its Research Agent and Research Reports features can also produce cited overviews of a research question.
Key features of Elicit
- Semantic paper searchFinds relevant papers from a plain-language question, not just keywords.
- Data extraction tablesExtract custom columns, such as population, intervention and results, across many papers.
- Systematic review workflowScreen thousands of papers against criteria and document decisions.
- Research reportsGenerate structured, cited reports on a research question.
- Chat with papersAsk questions about a specific paper or upload your own PDFs.
- Zotero import and exportsBring in your library and export results to CSV or BibTeX.
Who is Elicit best for?
- Academic researchers running systematic or scoping reviews.
- Pharma, policy and consulting teams who synthesise evidence.
- Graduate students doing literature reviews.
Elicit pricing (October 2026)
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | Free | Unlimited search, summaries and paper chat, limited reports and agent use |
| Pro | $49/month (or $588/year) | Systematic review workflow, more extraction columns and data sources, API access |
| Scale | $169/month (or $2,028/year) | 5x usage, figure extraction, team collaboration and admin panel |
| Enterprise | Custom | Large-scale screening, SSO and dedicated support |
Elicit is priced for professional research. Students doing occasional searches can usually stay on Basic.
Elicit pros and cons
Pros
- Purpose-built for literature reviews
- Saves huge time on data extraction
- Transparent: links each answer to source text
- Strong free tier for search
Cons
- More expensive than general research tools
- Extraction should be spot-checked for accuracy
- Best for empirical research; less useful for humanities
How to get started with Elicit
- Sign up at elicit.com.
- Ask a research question and review the top papers.
- Add extraction columns for the data you need.
- Upgrade to Pro if you need the systematic review workflow.
Elicit vs alternatives
Consensus is faster for quick evidence checks. Perplexity searches the wider web. Gemini Notebook is great for studying papers you already have.
See all tools in our best AI research tools guide.
Our verdict: is Elicit worth it?
Elicit is the most capable AI tool for structured literature reviews and data extraction. It is overkill for casual questions, but for researchers it can turn weeks of work into days.
Elicit FAQs
Is Elicit free?
How accurate is Elicit’s data extraction?
Can Elicit do systematic reviews?
How many papers does Elicit search?
Pricing and features change often. Details on this page were last reviewed in October 2026. Always confirm current plans on the official Elicit website.
Best Elicit alternatives
Consensus
An AI search engine that answers questions using peer-reviewed scientific research.
Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM)
Google's AI research notebook that answers questions using only the sources you add.
Kagi
Paid, ad-free search engine with personalised results and a multi-model AI Assistant built on its search.
Liner
AI research engine with cited answers, a scholarly search agent and a writing workspace for academics.
Paperpal
AI academic writing assistant for grammar, paraphrasing, citations, plagiarism and pre-submission checks.
Perplexity
An AI answer engine that searches the web in real time and cites every source.