Overview
Scite is a smart-citation research engine that changes how you read the scientific record. Instead of simply counting how often a paper is cited, it uses deep learning to classify the intent of more than 1.5 billion citation statements as Supporting, Contrasting, or Mentioning — so you can see not just that a study was cited, but whether later work confirmed or disputed it. A Reference Check tool scans your draft and flags retracted or heavily criticized sources before you submit, which is near-essential for theses, grants, and medical briefs. The scite Assistant answers questions using only verified citation statements, limiting hallucinations, and a browser extension surfaces Smart Citation badges inside Zotero, PubMed, and publisher sites. Coverage is deepest in STEM; humanities and law are thinner. A 7-day trial is followed by individual and institutional tiers, with an annual plan that drops the effective rate to about $12 per month.
Key Features
- Smart Citations — Classifies each citation as Supporting, Contrasting, or Mentioning with the surrounding sentence shown.
- Reference Check — Upload a draft to flag retracted, disputed, or corrected references before submission.
- scite Assistant — A research chat grounded only in verified citation statements, reducing hallucination.
- Citation Statement Search — Find every specific claim (for example ‘CRISPR off-target’) across the indexed corpus.
- Dashboards and Alerts — Watch topics or authors and get notified of new Contrasting citations.
- Browser extension — Smart Citation badges inside Zotero, Mendeley, PubMed, and publisher pages.
Pricing
| Plan | Price | What’s included |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Limited Assistant queries and capped Smart Citation views |
| Individual (annual) | ~$12/mo ($144/yr) | Unlimited Smart Citations, Reference Check, dashboards, alerts |
| Individual (monthly) | $20/mo | Same features, billed month-to-month |
| Student | ~$12/mo | Discounted rate for verified .edu users |
| Institutional | Custom | FTE-based pricing, SSO, API access for universities and teams |
Comparison
vs. Elicit: Elicit automates finding and extracting data from papers for systematic reviews, while Scite evaluates how existing papers are cited. Use Elicit to build your evidence base; use Scite to verify the reliability of sources you plan to cite.
vs. Consensus: Consensus answers ‘what does the research say?’ with a confidence meter for fast yes/no checks. Scite goes deeper on citation context and contradiction detection, which matters more for high-stakes writing.
vs. SciSpace: SciSpace is strong at explaining PDFs and answering questions about a single paper. Scite’s edge is the cross-paper contradiction map that catches retracted or disputed work across the literature.