alphaXiv vs Semantic Scholar
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
alphaXiv
arXiv reading and discovery site with an AI research assistant
Semantic Scholar
Free AI-powered search engine for scientific literature
Where they differ
- alphaXiv starts at $8 per month (alphaXiv Go). Semantic Scholar is free.
- Only alphaXiv lists an iOS app.
- alphaXiv also covers chat assistant and highlights.
- Semantic Scholar also covers citations.
At a glance
| alphaXiv | Semantic Scholar | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free |
| Starts at | $8 per month (alphaXiv Go) | Free |
| Free plan | Chat with any arXiv paper, with preset models only and strict usage limits on the assistant. | 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 | ||
| iOS | ||
| Browser extension | ||
| Made by | alphaXiv Inc. | Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) |
| Price read from | alphaxiv.org | semanticscholar.org |
| Checked | Oct 5, 2026 | Oct 5, 2026 |
Who each one suits
alphaXiv
- Following new machine learning and AI research on arXiv
- Asking questions about a paper while reading it
- Reading papers on an iPhone or iPad
- Developers who want paper search inside a coding agent
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
alphaXiv
- The site has no public pricing page; plans and prices are shown on the Subscription/Usage page in account settings.
- The free plan limits the assistant to preset models with strict usage limits; choosing any model needs alphaXiv Pro.
- alphaXiv Go raises limits on open-source models only and does not include Pro-tier models.
- There is an iPhone and iPad app and a Chrome extension; the site lists no Android or desktop app.
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
alphaXiv
- Trending feed
- A feed of research curated by what the community is reading, with a short summary for each paper and a view tailored to your research interests.
- AI assistant
- Answers research questions and produces literature reviews grounded in the underlying papers, and can point to who is working on a topic.
- Paper reader
- Read a paper with highlights and personal notes, chat with the assistant about a highlighted section, and add other papers to the conversation with an @ mention.
- AI visual blogs
- Turns a paper into a blog-style explanation with figures, equations and key insights in one click, readable in several languages.
- Library
- Bookmark papers to read later with BibTeX citations generated automatically, and upload a paper that is missing to get the same assistant and overviews.
- MCP server
- Gives AI agents 19 tools to search and read papers, analyze PDFs, explore paper codebases and find researchers. It works with clients such as Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code.
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
alphaXiv
Free$0
For occasional reading and quick follow-up questions: chat with any arXiv paper on preset models, under strict usage limits.
alphaXiv Go$8
per month
Higher limits on lower-cost open-source models; Pro-tier models are not included. $5 a month for student researchers.
alphaXiv Pro$20
per month
Higher assistant usage limits, a choice of any model, longer context windows and early access to beta features.
alphaXiv Pro 5× usage$100
per month
The Pro plan with 5 times the assistant usage and priority routing.
Semantic Scholar
Free$0
Search, TLDR summaries, Semantic Reader, a paper library, alerts and Research Feeds, plus rate-limited API access.
Ways to pay less
alphaXiv
- Education
alphaXiv Go at $5 a month for student researchers
Linking a recognized academic email, such as an .edu address, to the account lowers alphaXiv Go from $8 to $5 a month.
Semantic Scholar
No public discounts listed.
