Elicit vs Consensus
Elicit or Consensus? Here is how they compare on price, free plan, platforms and the jobs each does best, from each vendor's own pages.
| Compared on | Visit | Visit |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | AI research assistant that searches and summarises academic papers | AI search engine for peer-reviewed research papers |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | $49/user/mo billed annually (Pro)Elicit pricing | $12/mo billed annually (Pro)Consensus pricing |
| What it covers | Billed $588 a year on annual billing; academic users can choose discounted plans, from Plus at $11 per user a month billed annually. | $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. |
| Free trial | None stated | None stated |
| Platforms | Web, API | Web, API |
| Integrations (vendor's figure) | Not stated | Not stated |
| Open source | No | No |
| Made by | Elicit | Consensus |
Choose Elicit if…
- The job is finding and summarising studies on a topic.
- The job is pulling key figures from many papers into one table.
Choose Consensus if…
- The job is checking what published studies say about a question.
- The job is starting a literature review for coursework or a report.
What Elicit does
- Search across 138M+ academic papers
- Paper summaries and chat with papers
- Data extraction into tables with custom columns
- Research Agent and Research Reports
- Systematic literature reviews with paper screening
- Import from Zotero
Watch out for
- 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
What Consensus does
- Search across 220M+ peer-reviewed papers
- Cited AI analysis of research
- Deep reviews for longer literature reviews
- Citation graph and other research tools on paid plans
- API and MCP access on paid plans
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
Questions
Is Elicit or Consensus cheaper?
They price different things, so neither is simply cheaper. Elicit's entry price, $49/user/mo billed annually (Pro), is per user or seat; Consensus's, $12/mo billed annually (Pro), is for the whole plan. Price the number of people, channels or contacts you have on each.
Do Elicit and Consensus have free plans?
Both do. Elicit: Limited Research Agent and Research Reports usage; unlimited search across 138M+ papers, summaries and chat with papers; Zotero import; 20MB PDF limit. Consensus: Basic paper search, 10 Pro messages per month, up to 3 Deep reviews per month.