Ai2 Asta vs Semantic Scholar
We give Ai2 Asta and Semantic Scholar the same GPA: 3.4 out of 4.0. They get the same grade on all five counts.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Semantic Scholar
Free AI-powered search engine for scientific literature
Free
How we grade them
| 3.4GPAAi2 AstaVery good | 3.4GPASemantic ScholarVery good | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | AIt's free. Ai2 is a nonprofit and offers no paid plans, so there's nothing to weigh up here. Tools like this usually start around $12 a month. | AEntirely free, with no paid plans, and built by a nonprofit. In a category where paid plans usually start around $12 a month, that's as good as value gets. |
| Free plan and trial | AAll three agents work without an account, and signing in (also free) keeps your history. Two limits to know: a data exploration goes read-only after 24 hours, and uploaded datasets are deleted after 7 days. | AYou can search and read papers without an account. A free account adds a library, email alerts, Research Feeds and author page claiming. Nothing is held back for paying users, because there aren't any. |
| Features | BFind papers gives a reason for each result, reports carry inline citations with excerpts, and Analyze data writes and runs Python on your files. It searches about 108 million abstracts and 12 million full-text papers. But the getting started guide says reports only draw on four fields. | BMore than 200 million papers with filters for venue, author, type and date, a flag on the citations that really mattered, and feeds that recommend papers from what you've saved. But TLDR summaries only cover computer science, biology and medicine, and Semantic Reader is in beta and mostly for arXiv papers. |
| Ease of use | BThere's no App Store rating to go on, so B is as high as we go. Nothing to install and no sign-up needed: open the page and type a question. Uncited text in a report is labelled as model-generated, which helps. | BNo App Store rating on record, so B is as high as we go. It works like any search engine: type, filter, read. No account is needed to get going, and a TLDR saves you opening papers that aren't for you. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb only, with no phone app or extension on the listing. It ties into Semantic Scholar, though, and Ai2 publishes the agents as open source, so developers can run their own copy. | BWeb and a browser extension, with links to Zotero and Mendeley and an Academic Graph API where most endpoints work without a key. There's no smartphone app. The FAQ says the site is designed to be used in mobile browsers. |
| Best for | free paper search that explains its picks | free search across the scientific literature |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Ai2 Asta and Semantic Scholar. How we grade
Where they differ
- Ai2 Asta is free. Semantic Scholar is free.
- Only Semantic Scholar lists a browser extension.
- Ai2 Asta is open source and self-hostable, according to its own site.
- Ai2 Asta also covers AI agents.
In commonFree planWebAI searchResearchCitations
At a glance
| Ai2 Asta | Semantic Scholar | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| Starts at | Free | Free |
| 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. | Entirely free, with no paid plans. Papers can be read without an account; a free account adds a library, email alerts, Research Feeds and author page claiming. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Browser extension | ||
| Made by | Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) | Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) |
| Price read from | asta.allen.ai | semanticscholar.org |
| 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
Semantic Scholar
- Free literature search across all fields of science
- Keeping up with new papers through alerts and recommendation feeds
- Developers who need open scholarly data through an API
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.
Semantic Scholar
- There is no smartphone app; the FAQ says the site is designed to be used in mobile browsers.
- TLDR summaries are limited to papers in computer science and the biomedical fields.
- Semantic Reader is in beta and covers mostly arXiv papers, and Ask This Paper works on a limited set of papers.
- Unauthenticated API calls share one pool of 1,000 requests per second; an API key starts at 1 request per second.
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.
Semantic Scholar
- Paper search with TLDR summaries
- Searches papers with filters for venue, author, publication type and date. TLDRs are very short AI summaries, available for nearly 60 million papers in computer science, biology and medicine.
- Highly Influential Citations
- A machine-learning model flags the citations where the cited paper had a significant effect on the citing one, so a long citation list has a starting point.
- Library and Research Feeds
- Save papers into folders, share public folders and bulk export citations. Turning on a Research Feed for a folder brings paper recommendations based on its contents.
- Paper and author alerts
- Email alerts report new citations of a chosen paper, or new papers and citations for an author you follow.
- Semantic Reader
- A beta reading view for most arXiv papers, with in-line citation cards, a table of contents, AI skimming highlights and on-demand definitions of terms.
- Academic Graph API and datasets
- A REST API for papers, authors, citations, venues and recommendations, plus downloadable datasets. Most endpoints work without a key.
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.
Semantic Scholar
Free$0
Search, TLDR summaries, Semantic Reader, a paper library, alerts and Research Feeds, plus rate-limited API access.
