{"name":"State of Research & Education AI Tools","source":"RightAIChoice","url":"https://rightaichoice.com/research/state-of-ai-tools-research-education","license":"CC BY 4.0","as_of":"2026-10-23","edition":"2026-10-01","temporal_coverage":"2026-09-23/2026-10-23","headline":"228 Research & Education tools are under continuous verification: 81.6% offer a free way in, the median starting price is not reportable yet, 31.6% score as a safe bet, and 5+ have a website that is currently down or parked.","summary":["AI tools for research, learning, and summarization This page is the category's monthly health check: how many tools exist, how they charge, how viable they look from verification history, and which of them AI assistants are reading right now.","Every figure is computed from the live catalog on October 23, 2026; AI-read bands cover the 30 days ending October 22, 2026. Small counts are described rather than printed, and per-tool read volumes are shown as bands only.","For the cross-category view, see the AI Price Index, the Free-Tier Tracker and the monthly graveyard report."],"tables":[{"title":"What does the Research & Education category look like today?","note":"Every published tool in the category on October 23, 2026.","columns":["Measure","Value","Share of category"],"rows":[["Published tools",228,"2.8%"],["Re-verified in the last 7 days",217,"95.2%"],["Website currently down or parked",8,"3.5%"],["Went dark in the last 90 days",8,"3.5%"],["Website redirects to another domain","none recorded","—"],["Confirmed vendor price changes, last 90 days","fewer than 5",null],["AI-engine reads of the category's tool pages, last 30 days","5,000+",null],["Tools individually read 100+ times by AI engines",9,"3.9%"]]},{"title":"How are Research & Education tools priced?","note":"Pricing model of each tool; the median is the cheapest non-zero monthly plan among the 6 tools publishing a clear monthly dollar price.","columns":["Pricing model","Tools","Share"],"rows":[["Fully free",80,"35.1%"],["Free plan + paid tiers",106,"46.5%"],["Paid only",20,"8.8%"],["Contact sales",22,"9.6%"],["Median starting price / month","too few clearly-priced tools",null]]},{"title":"How viable are Research & Education tools?","note":"Viability is 0–100 from verification history: 70+ safe bet, 40–69 moderate, below 40 at risk.","columns":["Band","Tools","Share"],"rows":[["Safe bet (70+)",72,"31.6%"],["Moderate (40–69)",144,"63.2%"],["At risk (below 40)",12,"5.3%"],["Average score",63.7,null]]},{"title":"Which Research & Education tools do AI engines read most?","note":"Tool pages fetched by AI answer engines in the last 30 days, as bands; tools below the reporting floor are not listed.","columns":["Rank","Tool","AI-engine reads (band)"],"rows":[[1,"Genspark","500+"],[2,"Undermind","100+"],[3,"Elicit","100+"],[4,"Litmaps","100+"],[5,"SciSpace","100+"],[6,"Semantic Scholar","100+"],[7,"Perplexity","100+"],[8,"Goodfire","100+"],[9,"Sakana AI","100+"]]}],"methodology":["Population: every published tool assigned to the category. Counts, pricing mix and viability bands are read from the live catalog on the as-of date.","\"Website currently down or parked\" is the tool's own homepage status from the latest probe (dead, parked, or serving unrelated content); \"went dark in the last 90 days\" counts tools whose first such failure was within 90 days and that have stayed down.","Confirmed vendor price changes follow the AI Price Index definition: a pricing re-read classified as a vendor change, not a re-wording.","AI-engine reads sum answer-engine and user-triggered fetches of each tool page over 30 days and are converted to bands inside the database; raw counts are never exported."],"sources":["tools","tool_categories / categories","tool_state_history","tool_change_origin","crawler_tool_daily","SQL function research_category_state('research-education')"],"variables":[{"name":"tools","description":"Published tools in the category"},{"name":"pricing.free / freemium / paid / contact","description":"Pricing-model counts"},{"name":"median_monthly_usd","description":"Median cheapest non-zero monthly plan price"},{"name":"viability.safe_bet / moderate / at_risk","description":"Viability band counts"},{"name":"ai_reads_band","description":"Category-wide AI-engine reads over 30 days, as a band"}]}