Litmaps vs Semantic Scholar

Litmaps

• Literature reviews that start from a handful of known papers
• Students and academics, who get 75% off Pro with an academic email
• Zotero users who want collections kept in sync while they search
• Researchers who want email alerts when related papers are published

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

Litmaps

• The free plan allows 20 input articles per search and 2 Litmaps of up to 100 articles each.
• Advanced search filters, customizable Monitor alerts and Zotero Sync all need Litmaps Pro.
• The $10 Education price needs an academic email address; the standard Commercial license is $40 a month, billed annually.
• The homepage tells visitors on small screens that creating a Litmap needs a bigger screen, and no mobile app is listed.

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.

Litmaps

Citation-network search

Start from one or more articles and Litmaps returns the most connected papers among their citations, references and co-citations, from a database of 270+ million articles.

Three search algorithms

Shared Citations & References is the default. Common Authors finds other work by the same collaborators, and Similar Text uses AI semantic analysis of titles and abstracts.

Visual literature maps

Results are shown as a Litmap of articles linked by citation. A map can be shared through a public link, with specific email addresses or as an exported image.

Monitor alerts

Monitor reruns a map's search and emails you about newly published articles. Every user can enable it; Pro users can set the frequency, algorithm and filters.

Import, export and Zotero Sync

Import BibTeX, RIS or PubMed files and export as BibTeX, RIS or CSV. Zotero Sync, a Pro feature, keeps Zotero collections and Litmaps Tags matched in both directions.

Advanced search filters

Pro users can narrow results by publication date, keyword, author, journal title, journal h-index and SJR quartile.

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.

Litmaps

• Free$0

  Basic search with up to 20 inputs, 2 Litmaps of up to 100 articles each and monthly literature alerts.

• Pro (Education)$10

  per month, billed annually ($120); $12.50 billed monthly

  Needs an academic email address. Unlimited inputs, articles and Litmaps, advanced search and configurable alerts.

• Pro (Commercial)$40

  per month, billed annually ($480); $50 billed monthly

  The same Pro features on the standard license, for people without an academic affiliation.

• TeamCustom

  Pro features for every member in shared Team Workspaces, bought by the seat. The pricing page gives no public price.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Institution-wide and customizable licensing, arranged with the sales team.

Semantic Scholar

• Free$0

  Search, TLDR summaries, Semantic Reader, a paper library, alerts and Research Feeds, plus rate-limited API access.

Litmaps

• Annual discount

  Save 20% with annual billing

  Pro costs $10 a month billed annually against $12.50 billed monthly on an Education license, and $40 against $50 on a Commercial one. The pricing page labels the annual price as a 20% saving.

• Education

  75% off with an Educational License

  Students, professors and others affiliated with an educational institution qualify for the Educational License, which is 75% off the standard price.

• Other savings

  Country discounts in over 100 countries

  People doing most of their research in an eligible low or middle income country are shown a discount code when they upgrade in the app. More than 100 countries qualify.

• Nonprofit

  Special rates for nonprofits on request

  The Litmaps Pro help article invites nonprofits, publicly funded research and government education research to contact the company about special rates.

Semantic Scholar

No public discounts listed.