Ai2 Asta vs Edison Scientific
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Edison Scientific
AI agents for scientific research, led by the Kosmos AI Scientist
Free plan
Where they differ
- Ai2 Asta is open source, according to its own site.
- Ai2 Asta also covers AI search.
In commonFree planWebSelf-hostableAI agentsResearchCitations
At a glance
| Ai2 Asta | Edison Scientific | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free | Free plan |
| Starts at | Free | Not published |
| Free plan | No paid plans are offered. The three agents can be used without an account; signing in saves queries and results so they can be reopened later. | The documentation describes a free tier for academics, with paid plans for higher rate limits and extra features. Current limits and prices could not be read. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) | Edison Scientific |
| Price read from | asta.allen.ai | Not confirmed |
| Checked | Oct 5, 2026 | Oct 5, 2026 |
Who each one suits
Ai2 Asta
- Researchers who want a stated reason for each paper a search returns
- Getting a cited overview of a question that spans many papers
- Exploring a tabular dataset with analysis code that stays visible
- Developers building or evaluating scientific AI agents
Edison Scientific
- Biology and drug-discovery teams analyzing large experimental datasets
- Academic researchers, for whom the docs describe a free tier
- Checking whether a research idea has already been tried
- Organizations that want research agents deployed in their own environment
Worth knowing
Ai2 Asta
- Ai2 publishes no pricing page; the app runs without an account, and its credit panel lists no credit cost for the three main agents.
- The getting started guide says Generate a report searches computer science, medicine, environmental science and biology papers.
- Data explorations stay active for 24 hours and then become read-only, and uploaded datasets are deleted after 7 days.
- Ai2 says not to upload sensitive or regulated data to the hosted version; that requires a self-hosted deployment.
Edison Scientific
- Prices are not published on the public site; plans appear inside the platform after sign-up.
- At its November 2025 launch a Kosmos run cost 200 credits at $1 a credit, and the company said that rate would probably rise.
- In the same launch post, Edison reported that 79.4% of Kosmos's conclusions were accurate.
- The public site is aimed at biopharma R&D, with demos booked through sales.
Key features
Ai2 Asta
- Find papers
- Breaks a query into parts, searches, follows citations and judges relevance, then lists papers with a note on why each fits. A slower deep search mode handles complex questions.
- Generate a report
- Answers questions that need many papers with a structured report: expandable sections, comparison tables and inline citations with excerpts. Uncited text is labeled as model-generated.
- Analyze data
- Upload CSV, TSV, Excel, JSON, HDF5 or Parquet data and ask questions in plain language. Asta writes and runs Python and returns findings with charts, the code and a methods section.
- Follow-ups and sharing
- Reports can be refined over several turns, with specific papers referenced by an @ mention. A Share button copies a link to the results of any query.
- AstaLabs prototypes
- Hosted previews include AutoDiscovery, which generates and tests hypotheses on a dataset, and Paper + Figure QA, which answers questions about figures and tables in papers.
- Open-source agents and AstaBench
- Ai2 publishes open-source versions of the agents behind the three tools, along with AstaBench, a benchmark suite and leaderboard for scientific AI agents.
Edison Scientific
- Kosmos
- An autonomous AI scientist: given an objective and datasets, it reads literature, runs analysis code and writes a cited report. The docs say one run reads about 1,500 papers and executes about 42,000 lines of code.
- Literature
- Search and synthesis across more than 175 million papers, trials and patents, returning cited answers or a deep review of conflicting evidence.
- Analysis
- Processes experimental data such as flow cytometry and RNA-seq results into statistical analyses and publication-ready figures.
- Precedent
- Searches across fields to judge whether a research idea has been tried before, pointing out prior work and open gaps.
- Molecules
- A chemistry agent that predicts ADMET properties, plans retrosynthesis routes, runs safety assessments and searches databases such as ChEMBL.
- API client and enterprise deployment
- A Python client runs agent tasks programmatically with an API key. For enterprises, the company offers on-premises deployment and scientists embedded with the customer's team.
Plans
Ai2 Asta
Free$0
Find papers, Generate a report and Analyze data, usable anonymously or with a free sign-in that keeps a history of queries.
Edison Scientific
Pricing could not be confirmed. See edisonscientific.com.
