# Ai2 Asta

> AI research assistant for finding papers and analyzing data

Asta is a scholarly research assistant from Ai2, the nonprofit Allen Institute for AI. It has three agents: Find papers searches the literature and explains why each result is relevant, Generate a report writes a cited answer drawn from many papers, and Analyze data runs Python analyses on datasets you upload. It searches about 108 million abstracts and 12 million full-text papers, and Ai2 publishes the agents and their benchmark suite as open source.

- **Category:** AI Research Tools
- **Made by:** Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) (since 2025)
- **Website:** https://asta.allen.ai
- **Runs on:** Web
- **Facts last checked:** Oct 5, 2026

## Pricing

Ai2 Asta is free to use.

- **Pricing model:** Free
- **Free plan:** No paid plans are offered. The three agents can be used without an account; signing in saves queries and results so they can be reopened later.
- **Free trial:** None listed.

| Plan | Price | What you get |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free | $0 | Find papers, Generate a report and Analyze data, usable anonymously or with a free sign-in that keeps a history of queries. |

Read from https://asta.allen.ai on Oct 5, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Ai2 Asta before buying.

## Key features

- **Find papers:** Breaks a query into parts, searches, follows citations and judges relevance, then lists papers with a note on why each fits. A slower deep search mode handles complex questions.
- **Generate a report:** Answers questions that need many papers with a structured report: expandable sections, comparison tables and inline citations with excerpts. Uncited text is labeled as model-generated.
- **Analyze data:** Upload CSV, TSV, Excel, JSON, HDF5 or Parquet data and ask questions in plain language. Asta writes and runs Python and returns findings with charts, the code and a methods section.
- **Follow-ups and sharing:** Reports can be refined over several turns, with specific papers referenced by an @ mention. A Share button copies a link to the results of any query.
- **AstaLabs prototypes:** Hosted previews include AutoDiscovery, which generates and tests hypotheses on a dataset, and Paper + Figure QA, which answers questions about figures and tables in papers.
- **Open-source agents and AstaBench:** Ai2 publishes open-source versions of the agents behind the three tools, along with AstaBench, a benchmark suite and leaderboard for scientific AI agents.

## Good for

- Researchers who want a stated reason for each paper a search returns
- Getting a cited overview of a question that spans many papers
- Exploring a tabular dataset with analysis code that stays visible
- Developers building or evaluating scientific AI agents

## Worth knowing

- Ai2 publishes no pricing page; the app runs without an account, and its credit panel lists no credit cost for the three main agents.
- The getting started guide says Generate a report searches computer science, medicine, environmental science and biology papers.
- Data explorations stay active for 24 hours and then become read-only, and uploaded datasets are deleted after 7 days.
- Ai2 says not to upload sensitive or regulated data to the hosted version; that requires a self-hosted deployment.

## Works with

Semantic Scholar

**Tags:** Research, AI search, Citations, AI agents, Open source, Self-hostable

## Alternatives

- [Undermind](https://toolgpa.com/tools/undermind): AI literature search agent that reads hundreds of papers. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/ai2-asta-vs-undermind)
- [Elicit](https://toolgpa.com/tools/elicit): AI research assistant for literature search and systematic reviews. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/ai2-asta-vs-elicit)
- [Edison Scientific](https://toolgpa.com/tools/edison-scientific): AI agents for scientific research, led by the Kosmos AI Scientist. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/ai2-asta-vs-edison-scientific)
- [Consensus](https://toolgpa.com/tools/consensus): AI search engine that answers questions from peer-reviewed papers. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/ai2-asta-vs-consensus)
- [Semantic Scholar](https://toolgpa.com/tools/semantic-scholar): Free AI-powered search engine for scientific literature. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/ai2-asta-vs-semantic-scholar)

## Sources

The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Oct 5, 2026:

- https://asta.allen.ai
- https://asta.allen.ai/faq
- https://allenai.org/asta
- https://allenai.org/asta/agents
- https://allenai.org/asta/resources
- https://allenai.org/blog/asta
- https://allenai.org/papers/asta-guide

Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/ai2-asta
Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).