Scite

Scite helps you judge research, not just find it. Its signature feature, Smart Citations, shows how later papers have cited a study: whether they supported it, contradicted it or simply mentioned it. That lets you see quickly whether a finding has held up or is still contested before you build an argument on it. Scite's homepage says the same evidence signals ground its AI Assistant, which answers questions from the scholarly literature with references.

According to Scite's site, checked on October 24, 2026, it reads across more than 300 million scholarly sources, including articles, preprints, books, patents and datasets, and it has licensing agreements with more than 40 publishers, which lets it search inside full text rather than abstracts alone. It offers a browser extension that shows citation badges on pages you visit, a Zotero plugin, an API and an MCP server for connecting AI agents. Scite says it is now part of Research Solutions.

Pricing, as listed on scite.ai/pricing when we checked: the Basic plan is listed at $12 and includes Article Smart Citation reports, collections of up to 1,000 papers and monthly MCP credits. A Pro plan adds API access, larger collections and patent, clinical trial and grant datasets, and organizations can get custom pricing. Scite offers a 7 day free trial; its FAQ says you are enrolled in the plan you chose when the trial ends unless you cancel first. The FAQ also says students and academics can get a discount by recommending Scite to their institution.

Who it suits: graduate students, researchers, journalists and anyone checking whether a claim in a paper has been confirmed by later work. Who should look elsewhere: people who want a free tool for occasional searches, where Semantic Scholar or the free tiers of Elicit and Consensus may be enough, and anyone researching everyday web topics, where Perplexity fits better.