AnswerThis vs Consensus
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
AnswerThis
AI literature review assistant with a library and writer
Consensus
AI search engine that answers questions from peer-reviewed papers
Where they differ
- Only Consensus lists an Android app.
- AnswerThis also covers long-form writing.
At a glance
| AnswerThis | Consensus | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free plan |
| Starts at | $14 per month, billed yearly ($35 billed monthly) | Not published |
| Free plan | Search across 250M+ papers with cited answers and summaries, 5 saved projects and export to Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote. No card required. | Basic paper search across 220M+ papers, plus 10 Pro messages and 3 Deep Searches per month. Paid tiers are Pro, Deep, Team and Enterprise; their prices could not be read. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Android | ||
| Made by | AnswerThis | Consensus NLP, Inc. |
| Price read from | app.answerthis.io | Not confirmed |
| Checked | Oct 5, 2026 | Oct 5, 2026 |
Who each one suits
AnswerThis
- Graduate students writing a literature review for a thesis
- Clinical and medical teams running systematic reviews
- Researchers who keep their references in Zotero or Mendeley
- Writers who want search, library and drafting in one tab
Consensus
- Checking what peer-reviewed studies say about a specific question
- Students and researchers starting a literature review
- Teams that want cited paper search inside ChatGPT, Claude or their own tools
Worth knowing
AnswerThis
- Pro includes 10 Max queries and 2 systematic reviews a month; unlimited systematic reviews start on Research.
- The marketing pricing page and the in-app pricing page disagree on tier names and limits; the plans here follow the in-app page.
- The marketing page also lists separate Industry plans at higher prices, starting at $90 per seat a month billed monthly.
- Only a web app is listed; the site mentions no mobile or desktop apps.
Consensus
- Paid prices could not be confirmed: the pricing page did not show them when read, and Consensus's own pricing summary leaves out dollar amounts.
- The free tier allows 10 Pro messages and 3 Deep Searches per month. Pro includes 15 Deep Searches, Deep 200 and Team 50 per seat.
- API calls beyond a plan's included credits cost $0.05 each; 500 are included on Pro, Team and Enterprise and 2,000 on Deep.
- An Android app is listed on Google Play. No iOS app was found on the US App Store when checked.
Key features
AnswerThis
- Cited search and chat
- Ask a question or paste a protocol, then filter by database, journal quality, date and study type. Each answer carries clickable citations that jump to the passage they rely on.
- Library
- Collections, tags, highlights and full-text search across the papers you save or upload, with sync to Zotero and Mendeley.
- AI Writer
- Import a draft or start a new one, cite from the library in one click, check for AI-written or plagiarized text and switch between more than 2,000 citation styles.
- Systematic review pipeline
- Screening, data extraction, meta-analysis and evidence grading run in one workflow with each change logged. The site describes it as PRISMA and Cochrane compliant.
- Shared workspaces
- Co-authors can be invited into a shared workspace to suggest changes, with roles and permissions set by the owner.
- Research gaps and citation maps
- Separate tools look for research gaps, map citations, run bibliometric analysis and draw diagrams from the literature.
Consensus
- Cited answers from 220M+ papers
- Ask a research question in plain language and get a summary tied to its source papers, with filters for study type, journal rank, citation count, sample size and year.
- Deep Search
- Builds and runs a search strategy, screens up to 1,000 papers and writes a report on the 50 most relevant. The monthly allowance depends on the plan.
- Research agent
- Chains citation crawling, DOI lookup, author search and similar-paper search, and can build a comparison table from the full text of the results.
- Citation Graph
- Starts from one or more seed papers and maps what they cite and what has cited them since. It is included with every account.
- Library with Zotero import
- Imports papers from Zotero, BibTeX, RIS or PDF, then searches the collection, looks for gaps in it and generates bibliographies.
- API and MCP connector
- The API returns ranked papers with metadata for use in other tools, and the MCP connector links Consensus search to ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot.
Plans
AnswerThis
Free$0
Search across 250M+ papers with cited answers and summaries, 5 saved projects and export to Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote.
Pro$14
per month, billed yearly ($168); $35 billed monthly
Unlimited basic queries, 10 Max queries and 2 systematic reviews a month, unlimited library storage and the AI Writer on standard models.
Research$30
per month, billed yearly ($360)
Unlimited systematic reviews, 50 Max queries a month on advanced research models, full-text AI screening and an onboarding call.
Max$100
per month, billed yearly ($1,200)
300 Max queries a month on frontier models, unlimited systematic reviews and library, and priority support.
Consensus
Pricing could not be confirmed. See consensus.app.
Ways to pay less
AnswerThis
- Annual discount
Save 60% with annual billing
The in-app pricing page labels annual billing as saving 60%. Pro is $14 a month billed yearly ($168 up front) against $35 a month billed monthly.
Consensus
- Education
Up to 40% off for students, faculty and US clinicians
Students and faculty with a valid school email, and US clinicians with a valid NPI number, can claim up to 40% off. Consensus's pricing summary gives students 1 year free, then 40% off until graduation.
