Consensus vs Undermind

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

Undermind

• Complex research questions where keyword search misses relevant papers
• Academics, who pay $16 a month on annual billing instead of the $60 industry rate
• People who want literature search inside Claude, ChatGPT or a coding agent
• R&D teams tracking new publications in specific technical areas

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.

Undermind

• Free-tier searches read abstracts and metadata only; full-text search of open-access papers and preprints needs Pro.
• Industry pricing is far higher than academic: Pro is $60 a month billed annually against $16.
• A deep search typically takes about 2 minutes to finish, so results are not instant.
• Charges are non-refundable once a billing period has begun, except where the law requires a refund.

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.

Undermind

Deep literature search

You describe a research goal in plain language and answer follow-up questions. Undermind then reads and evaluates hundreds of papers and follows citation trails; a typical search takes about 2 minutes.

Reports with in-line citations

Findings come back as a report in which statements carry in-line citations that lead to the source paper, alongside a paper list you can sort and filter to judge relevance.

Chat and custom tables

After a search you can brainstorm with an assistant grounded in the papers it found, extract details from full texts and generate custom tables.

Alerts for new papers

Undermind keeps track of your areas of interest and notifies you when relevant papers are published.

Agent connections over MCP

An MCP server lets assistants and coding agents such as Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and VS Code run Undermind searches. Connecting agents is included in the Free plan.

Full-text search on Pro

The Free tier searches abstracts and metadata. Pro adds compute to search the full texts of nearly all open-access and preprint articles.

Consensus

Pricing could not be confirmed. See consensus.app.

Undermind

• Free$0

  Chat, deep searches and reports with standard rate limits, shared workspaces and agent connections over MCP.

• Pro (Academic)$16

  per month, billed annually ($192); $20 billed monthly

  The newest AI models, full-text analysis, 10x higher usage limits, and unlimited workspaces, files and paper libraries.

• Pro (Industry)$60

  per month, billed annually ($720); $75 billed monthly

  The same Pro features at the industry rate.

• Team (Academic)$15

  per person / month, billed annually; $18.70 billed monthly

  From 3 seats. Pro features plus member management, priority support and central billing. Falls to $12.50 per person at 60 or more seats.

• Team (Industry)$60

  per person / month, billed annually; $75 billed monthly

  From 3 seats at the industry rate, with member management, priority support and central billing.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Increased compute, sitewide organizational login, an admin dashboard, onboarding seminars, and custom terms, SLA and security review.

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.

Undermind

• Annual discount

  Save 20% with annual billing

  Pro is $16 a month billed annually against $20 billed monthly at the academic rate, and $60 against $75 at the industry rate. The pricing section labels this a 20% saving.

• Education

  Academic pricing from $16 a month

  Choosing Academic in the pricing section shows Pro at $16 a month billed annually or $20 billed monthly, against $60 and $75 under Industry.

• Other savings

  Volume pricing on academic Team plans

  On annual billing the academic Team price per person is $15 for 3 to 10 seats, $14.17 for 11 to 25, $13.33 for 30 to 50 and $12.50 for 60 to 200.