Overview
Elicit is an AI research assistant built by Ought and now developed by Elicit Research, aimed squarely at academics, analysts, and R&D teams who need to work through large volumes of scientific literature. Instead of answering questions from general web data, it searches a corpus of more than 138 million academic papers, returns summaries with linked citations, and lets you chat with the full text of individual papers.
Its signature workflow is the data extraction table: you upload or select a set of papers and Elicit pulls out structured fields — interventions, sample sizes, effect sizes, limitations — into a spreadsheet-like view with up to 20-30 columns depending on plan. The paid tiers add a dedicated Systematic Literature Review workflow that can screen up to 5,000 papers against inclusion criteria, plus research alerts, API access, and team collaboration on the Scale plan. Zotero import makes it fit into existing academic pipelines.
Key Features
- Semantic search across 138M+ academic papers with cited summaries — provides sourced, citable answers.
- Chat with full-text papers and view sources for every answer — goes beyond basic keyword matching.
- Extract structured data from PDFs into multi-column tables — useful for deep research tasks.
- Systematic review workflow that screens up to 5,000 papers — provides sourced, citable answers.
- Research alerts, Zotero import, and API access on paid plans — goes beyond basic keyword matching.
Pricing
| Plan | Price | For |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Unlimited search and summaries, limited agent usage |
| Pro | $49/mo (annual) | Systematic reviews, 20 table columns, API access |
| Scale | $169/mo (annual) | 5x usage, figure extraction, team collaboration |
| Enterprise | Custom | 40K-paper screening, SSO, custom deployments |
Pricing is subject to change. Check the official website for current plans and regional discounts. Free tiers often have usage limits — evaluate whether those limits match your expected volume before committing.
Comparison
Compared to Consensus, Elicit goes deeper into workflow territory: Consensus excels at quick evidence-backed answers, while Elicit handles multi-paper extraction and full systematic reviews. Compared to Perplexity, Elicit trades general web breadth for academic rigor — every claim links back to a paper, not a blog post. And versus NotebookLM, which analyzes documents you bring, Elicit finds the papers for you first.
Getting Started
- Visit https://elicit.com and sign up for the free tier if available — test the core workflow before committing to a paid plan.
- Spend 10–15 minutes exploring the interface and pre-built templates — familiarity with the tool’s layout pays off quickly.
- Connect or integrate Elicit with your existing tools and workflows where possible — standalone use underestimates its value.
Hands-on Verdict
Elicit is the research tool I use to find and summarize academic papers by question — it pulls claims, methods, and citations across the literature. It’s more science-native than ChatPDF on discovery and a faster survey than manual search. For general docs I use AskYourPDF.
Who it’s for: researchers, students, analysts. Tip: ask a specific research question, not a topic — Elicit surfaces papers by relevance to the query, so precision up front saves a literature rabbit hole.