Consensus vs Elicit vs Gemini Notebook

Written head to head: Elicit vs Consensus, with when to choose each side.

Compared on	Consensus Free plan · from $12/mo VisitRemove	Elicit Free plan · from $49/user/mo VisitRemove	Gemini Notebook Free plan · from $4.99/mo VisitRemove
What it is	AI search engine for peer-reviewed research papers	AI research assistant that searches and summarises academic papers	Google's source-grounded research notebook, renamed Gemini Notebook in 2026
Free plan	Basic paper search, 10 Pro messages per month, up to 3 Deep reviews per month	Limited Research Agent and Research Reports usage; unlimited search across 138M+ papers, summaries and chat with papers; Zotero import; 20MB PDF limit	100 notebooks, 50 sources per notebook, 50 chats per day, 3 Audio Overviews and 3 Video Overviews per day, 10 Deep Research reports per month
Cheapest paid plan	$12/mo billed annually (Pro)Consensus pricing	$49/user/mo billed annually (Pro)Elicit pricing	$4.99/mo (Google AI Plus)Gemini Notebook pricing
What it covers	$144 billed annually; the monthly-billing price is behind a toggle and was not captured. Students, faculty and US clinicians can get up to 40% off.	Billed $588 a year on annual billing; academic users can choose discounted plans, from Plus at $11 per user a month billed annually.	Upgrades come through Google AI plans, which also cover the Gemini app and cloud storage. Plus raises limits to 200 notebooks, 100 sources per notebook and 200 chats per day.
Free trial	None stated	None stated	None stated
Platforms	Web, API	Web, API	Web
Integrations (vendor's figure)	Not stated	Not stated	Not stated
Open source	No	No	No
Good for	Checking what published studies say about a question Starting a literature review for coursework or a report Finding peer-reviewed sources to cite	Finding and summarising studies on a topic Pulling key figures from many papers into one table Running a structured literature review	Studying a set of reports or papers and asking questions about them Turning documents into an audio summary to listen to Preparing a briefing from meeting notes and research files
Watch out for	The free plan includes 10 Pro messages and 3 Deep reviews per month Pro includes 15 Deep reviews per month API and MCP use beyond the included amount costs $0.05 per use, with monthly caps	The free plan has limited Research Agent and report usage One monthly usage pool per plan; unused usage does not roll over Pro screens up to 5,000 papers in a systematic review	The free plan allows 50 sources per notebook and 50 chats per day Audio and Video Overviews are capped at 3 per day on the free plan Watermark removal is limited to Pro and Ultra
Made by	Consensus	Elicit	Google

Entry prices are the cheapest paid plan, as each vendor publishes it; “What it covers” says what that price is per (a user, a channel, a brand, a number of contacts). The sources are listed on each tool's page.

Every tool in AI research tools is on its category page, with the written head-to-heads on Compare.