Elicit is a research assistant built for academic papers. Ask a research question and it searches a corpus of more than 138 million papers, summarises what it finds, and can pull specific data points into a table, which is the slow part of a literature review.
It suits researchers, students and analysts doing literature or systematic reviews. The free Basic plan includes unlimited search and summaries, with limited use of its Research Agent and Research Reports. Paid plans add much more agent usage and, on Pro, a systematic-review workflow. Elicit publishes its prices billed annually, so check the monthly figure on its pricing page before you commit.
It is not a general question-answering tool; for everyday or non-academic questions, use a chat assistant or Perplexity. Elicit says uploaded PDFs stay private and are not added to its corpus.
Pricing
Free plan: Basic plan: unlimited search across 138M+ papers, unlimited summaries and chat with papers, Zotero import; limited Research Agent and Research Reports usage.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|
| Basic | $0 | Limited Research Agent/Reports |
| Plus | $11/month billed annually ($132/yr) | Annual price (Elicit says it saves 42%); monthly billing costs more |
| Pro | $49/month billed annually ($588/yr) | Annual price (saves 35%); 5x usage, systematic review workflow, API access |
| Scale | $169/month billed annually ($2,028/yr) | Annual price (saves 39%); 9x usage, team collaboration, admin panel |
Prices in US dollars, billed monthly unless the plan says otherwise. Makers change prices often; check their site before you buy.
Your data
Elicit says uploaded PDFs stay private and aren't added to its corpus, but its privacy policy doesn't clearly say whether queries are used for AI training; 'no training on your data by default' is listed only for Enterprise (Elicit pricing page, help center).
Under the hood
Runs on: Claude Opus 4.5 (available on Pro, Teams, Enterprise). Compare the models themselves in the model directory.
Sources checked (4)
- elicit.com
- support.elicit.com
- elicit.com
- elicit.com
