Consensus vs Elicit

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

Elicit

• Researchers running systematic reviews with screening and data extraction
• Finding papers from a research question instead of exact keywords
• Teams that need cited evidence reports to support a decision

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.

Elicit

• The pricing page defaults to industry rates; the $11 Plus plan appears only when Academic is selected.
• The systematic review workflow, Routines and API access start at the Pro plan.
• Monthly usage does not roll over. Extra usage on Pro and Scale is billed in $100 increments, up to a limit you set.
• Real-time collaboration, extraction from figures and the admin panel need Scale or Enterprise.

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.

Elicit

Research Agent

Gathers evidence from scientific databases, journals, public data sources and uploaded documents, then produces cited reports, tables, figures and slides.

Paper and clinical trial search

Semantic search over more than 138 million papers from Semantic Scholar, PubMed and OpenAlex, plus about 545,000 clinical trials, so a query does not depend on exact keywords.

Research reports

Generates research briefs through a process modeled on systematic reviews. You can change which papers and what information a report covers.

Systematic review workflow

Automates screening and data extraction, with a Pro workflow that can screen 5,000 papers. A Chrome extension fetches full texts through your institution's journal access.

Library and Zotero import

Stores sources in collections with tags so they can be reused across projects, and takes in papers from Zotero, PDFs, and .ris or .bib files.

Routines and API

Routines rerun Research Agent work to pick up new evidence, and an API covers search, reports and systematic reviews. Both start at the Pro plan.

Consensus

Pricing could not be confirmed. See consensus.app.

Elicit

• Basic$0

  Unlimited paper search, summaries and chat with papers, Zotero import, and limited Research Agent and report usage.

• Pro$49

  per user / month, billed annually ($588); $75 billed monthly

  Standard usage, a systematic review workflow that screens 5,000 papers, 20 table columns at a time, Routines and API access.

• Scale$169

  per user / month, billed annually ($2,028); $279 billed monthly

  5x the usage of Pro, real-time collaboration, extraction from figures, 30 table columns at a time and an admin panel with seat management.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Custom usage, SSO and SAML, screening of 40,000 papers, 40 extraction columns, custom data sources and unlimited API access.

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.

Elicit

• Annual discount

  Save 35% to 39% with annual billing

  On industry pricing, Pro is $49 a month billed annually against $75 billed monthly, and Scale is $169 against $279. The pricing page labels these as savings of 35% and 39%.

• Education

  Academic pricing from $11 per user / month

  Choosing Academic on the pricing page shows Plus at $11, Pro at $39 and Scale at $89 per user / month, billed annually, or $19, $69 and $149 billed monthly.

• Nonprofit

  Nonprofits can use the academic plans

  Elicit has no separate nonprofit discount, but its help center says nonprofits can subscribe to the academic plans, its lowest pricing tier.