Elicit is a strong product. People look for an Elicit alternative for three reasons: the price of the Pro plan, a workflow step Elicit does not cover the way they need, or a team process that lives in a dedicated screening tool. This page compares seven alternatives on what each one is actually for, with prices taken from each vendor’s own page.
Last checked: 2026-10-29. Prices and limits change. Each fact below links to the page it came from, listed under Sources at the end.
What Elicit offers today
Elicit’s free Basic plan includes unlimited search across more than 138 million papers, summaries and chat with papers. Pro is listed at $49 per user per month, billed as $588 a year, and adds a dedicated systematic review workflow that can screen 5,000 papers, custom extractions and API access. Scale is $229 per user per month, billed as $2,748 a year, with five times Pro’s usage and real-time collaboration. Enterprise raises screening to 40,000 papers. [1]
That is a lot of product. The alternatives below win on one specific job each, not on everything.
The seven alternatives at a glance
| Tool | Best at | Published price | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consensus | Fast answers from a very large paper index | Free; Pro $20/month or $144/year; Deep $65/month or $540/year [2] | Deep reviews are capped per month on each plan [2] |
| SciSpace | Reading and chatting with PDFs, writing help | No public price we could verify [3] | Plan prices not readable on its pricing page when we checked |
| Undermind | Deep literature discovery that follows citation trails | No public price found [4] | Pricing is not published |
| Rayyan | Team title and abstract screening | Free (3 active reviews); paid individual plans [5] | You bring the records; it does not search for you |
| Covidence | Full systematic review management for teams | $339/year for one review; $907/year for up to three [6] | Priced per review, not per user |
| ASReview | Free, open-source AI-prioritised screening | Free (open source) [7] | You run and configure it yourself |
| Phở Chat | Search, screening, cited answers and export in one place | Free $0; Pro $10/month or $99/year (your own model key) | Screening runs are 60 records each |
Consensus
Consensus searches what it describes as an index of 400 million scholarly articles, including 350 million peer-reviewed papers, built from sources such as Semantic Scholar and OpenAlex plus publisher partnerships. [2] A Pro search reads up to 20 papers; a Deep Review runs up to 20 searches in parallel and reads 50 to 100 papers before answering. [2]
Choose it when you want a quick, cited answer to a research question from a very large index. Where Elicit is stronger: a dedicated systematic review workflow with screening at scale.
SciSpace
SciSpace says its literature review tool searches 280 million papers, and its agent guide lists 50 million full-text PDFs. Its chat-with-PDF feature answers questions with citations to specific sections and supports more than 75 languages. In October 2026 SciSpace added a Citation Verifier that checks whether your sources actually support your claims and flags weak or mismatched evidence before you submit, and made agent usage unlimited on its Advanced and Max plans. [3]
Choose it when your work is reading and writing around papers you already have. We could not read plan prices from its pricing page during our check, so we do not quote them.
Undermind
Undermind describes itself as an AI co-researcher that reads and evaluates hundreds of papers and follows citation trails, then keeps watching your topic and notifies you of updates. [4]
Choose it when you need a thorough first map of a field and suspect keyword search is missing papers. We found no published price.
Rayyan
Rayyan focuses on screening with collaborators. Its free plan allows three active reviews with duplicate detection; paid individual plans add more active reviews, risk-of-bias tools and conflict resolution. It also sells institutional licences. [5]
Choose it when a team screens records it has already exported from databases.
Covidence
Covidence manages the whole review for a team. It lists $339 a year for a single review and $907 a year for up to three reviews, each with unlimited collaborators, and imports from EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley, RevMan and any tool that exports RIS, CSV or PubMed XML. [6]
Choose it when you run a formal systematic review with several reviewers and need an audit trail. It is often what your institution already licenses.
ASReview
ASReview is open-source screening software coordinated at Utrecht University. It uses active learning to put the most likely relevant records first and lets you simulate and benchmark performance. It states it can cut screening workload by 95 percent, which is its own figure. [7]
Choose it when you want free, transparent, reproducible screening and are comfortable running the software.
Phở Chat
Phở Chat keeps the steps in one workspace. You search PubMed, OpenAlex, arXiv and ClinicalTrials.gov, run AI title and abstract screening on up to 60 records per run, and export the results to Word or RIS. Screening is recall first: when the AI is unsure, the record stays undecided for you rather than being excluded, and every verdict carries a reason tied to your criteria. Answers cite real PubMed or DOI sources, and a claim that cannot be supported is labelled unverified instead of getting an invented citation.
You can also bring your own OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, xAI or OpenRouter key and pay the provider directly, with no markup. The Free plan costs nothing; Pro, which runs on your own model key, is $10 per month or $99 per year.
Where others are stronger: Elicit screens thousands of papers in one workflow, and Covidence and Rayyan are built for multi-reviewer teams. Phở’s 60-record runs suit a focused question or a first pass, not a 5,000-record review.
How to choose
- You need a big, team-run systematic review: Covidence or Rayyan for screening, plus your usual database searches.
- You need Elicit’s scale but cheaper per seat: compare Consensus Pro for answers, and ASReview for free screening.
- You want one place for search, focused screening, cited answers and an exportable file: try Phở Chat.
For a closer head-to-head, see Elicit vs Phở Chat and Consensus, SciSpace and Phở Chat compared.
Try it: open Phở Chat’s research workspace and run a screening pass on your own question. It is free to start.
Sources
- Elicit, Pricing. https://elicit.com/pricing (checked 2026-10-29)
- Consensus, Subscription plans. https://help.consensus.app/en/articles/10087865-subscription-plans ; Where papers come from. https://docs.consensus.app/get-started/where-papers-come-from ; Research database. https://help.consensus.app/en/articles/10055108-consensus-research-database ; Deep Review. https://docs.consensus.app/core-features/deep-search (checked 2026-10-29)
- SciSpace, Literature review. https://scispace.com/literature-review ; Chat with PDF. https://scispace.com/chat-pdf ; AI research agent guide. https://scispace.com/guides/scispace-ai-research-super-agent ; Pricing. https://scispace.com/pricing ; Citation Verifier (7 October 2026). https://scispace.com/guides/introducing-scispace-citation-verifier-do-your-sources-support-your-claims ; Unlimited agent usage (9 October 2026). https://scispace.com/guides/introducing-unlimited-agent-usage-on-scispace (checked 2026-10-29)
- Undermind, Home. https://www.undermind.ai/ (checked 2026-10-29)
- Rayyan, Pricing. https://www.rayyan.ai/pricing ; Plans overview. https://help.rayyan.ai/hc/en-us/articles/46067741714321-Rayyan-Plans-Overview (checked 2026-10-29)
- Covidence, Pricing. https://www.covidence.org/pricing/ (checked 2026-10-29)
- ASReview, Home and product. https://asreview.nl/ ; https://asreview.nl/product/ (checked 2026-10-29)