Liner
AI search engine that answers with cited sources across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.
If your work lives or dies on whether a citation is real, Liner is worth the subscription — Line-by-Line Citation plus the SimpleQA accuracy claim against ChatGPT's advanced model and Perplexity Pro is a combination the flat-fee chatbots don't match. The credit meter is the catch: Deep Research burns 40 credits a pop and Scholar's heavier agents hit 80, so Pro's 1,000 monthly credits disappear faster than the $14.99/mo billed annually sticker suggests. Buy it for research, not for casual Q&A volume.
Verified 40m ago · liveness 62/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/liner
- Students and academics who need cited sources they can defend in a paper
- Researchers analyzing large PDFs up to 200MB with unlimited uploads on Max
- Professionals who fact-check AI answers before putting them in front of clients
- Teams of 2–20 wanting multi-model AI access with admin controls in one workspace
- Casual users who want a flat-fee AI assistant they can use all day without a credit meter
- Anyone running mostly heavy agents — Survey Simulator at 80 credits drains Pro's 1,000 fast
- Free-tier users who won't tolerate ads or a 25MB once-daily upload cap
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- Real pros & cons from real users
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Skip Liner if you want a flat-rate unlimited-query assistant and would rather not track credits — every meaningful action (Deep Research at 40 credits, premium models at 30) draws from a monthly balance of 0 on Free, 1,000 on Pro, or 2,500 on Max.
Deep Research draws 40 credits per request, so a handful of reports can eat a meaningful chunk of Pro's 1,000-credit monthly balance.
Pro at $14.99/mo (billed annually, list $17.99) fits solo researchers, students, and professionals running occasional Deep Research within 1,000 credits. Max at $29.99/mo suits heavy users needing 2,500 credits and 200MB unlimited uploads. Team at $26.99/seat/mo for 2–20 members adds admin controls and excludes team data from AI training. Compare to Perplexity Pro, which offers unlimited queries at a flat rate — Liner trades volume for multi-model access and cited accuracy.
In short
Liner — AI search engine that answers with cited sources across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Best for Students and academics who need cited sources they can defend in a paper, Researchers analyzing large PDFs up to 200MB with unlimited uploads on Max, Professionals who fact-check AI answers before putting them in front of clients. Free to start; paid plans from $14.99/mo.
What people actually say about Liner — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
63 mentions across 4 sources (Reddit, Hacker News, App Store, Lemmy) · researched Jul 3, 2026.
Average across the 4 sources that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +Provides more detailed output than Perplexity, according to users.
- +Multi-model access (GPT-5, Gemini, Claude) in one interface.
- +Good for general coding and daily AI queries.
- +Research-focused with cited sources in answers.
- +Deep Research reports and file upload available.
- −Subscription scams: charges without granting access, no refunds.
- −Academic citations are sometimes invented or inaccurate.
- −Customer support unresponsive to billing complaints.
- −Credit system limits free users heavily (100 credits/month).
- −Free tier cannot upload images, limiting functionality.
- • Deep Research costs 40 credits per use
- • Premium external models cost 30 credits each
- • No refunds for yearly auto-renewals
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Liner? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Advanced Search with cited sources
- Line-by-Line Citation showing answer provenance
- Multi-model access: ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude
- Deep Research report generation (40 credits/request)
- Image generation (20 credits/request)
- Premium external models (30 credits/request)
- File upload and PDF analysis: 25MB × 1/day on Free, 100MB × 5/question up to 20 times a day on Pro, 200MB × 20/question
- Liner Scholar: Literature Review (40 credits)
- Liner Scholar: Citation Recommender (50 credits)
- Liner Scholar: Hypothesis Generator and Peer Review (60 credits)
- Liner Scholar: Survey Simulator (80 credits)
- Liner Scholar: Hypothesis Evaluator, Survey Generator, Research Tracer (30 credits)
- Research Assistant, 10 requests/day on Free and unlimited on paid plans
- Highlighting tool for marking up answers and sources
- Browser extension for Chrome and Edge
About Liner
Liner is an AI search engine that answers questions from multiple major models — ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude — and attaches citations to every claim so you can check the work yourself. One subscription covers three surfaces: Liner Search for everyday queries, Liner Scholar for academic workflows, and Liner Write for drafting. Where Liner pushes hardest is accuracy. Its Advanced Search picks through sources more carefully, and Liner says it scored higher than ChatGPT's advanced model and the Perplexity Pro model on OpenAI's SimpleQA accuracy tests. For early-stage investigation, Deep Research (40 credits/request) returns a structured report instead of a wall of links. You can also drop in PDFs — 25MB × 1/day on Free, 100MB × 5/question up to 20 times a day on Pro, and 200MB × 20/question unlimited on Max — to pull summaries and focused insights out of papers you already have. Liner Scholar is the academic layer: Literature Review (40 credits), Citation Recommender (50), Hypothesis Generator and Peer Review (60 each), plus Hypothesis Evaluator, Survey Generator, Research Tracer, and Survey Simulator. Line-by-Line Citation shows where each part of an answer came from, which is the feature that keeps researchers from re-verifying everything by hand. Pricing runs on credits. Free is $0 with unlimited Advanced Search but ads and no real agent capacity; Pro is $14.99/mo billed annually (1,000 credits); Max is $29.99/mo billed annually (2,500 credits); Team is $26.99/seat/mo for 2–20 members; Enterprise is custom. Against a flat ChatGPT or Perplexity subscription, you trade unlimited chatting for cited, source-scored answers and a dedicated research toolkit — a fair swap if verification is the job, a poor one if you just want cheap volume.
Behind the Verdict
Pick Liner when the answer has to be defensible. Students writing a literature review, analysts fact-checking a claim before it goes into a deck, researchers digging through 200MB PDFs — these are the people who extract value from citations and the Scholar agents, and the multi-model access means you aren't locked to one vendor's blind spots. The Advanced Search accuracy result is self-reported by Liner, so treat it as a strong signal rather than gospel, but the Line-by-Line Citation feature is verifiable on your first query. Pass if you want a flat-fee assistant you can hammer all day. Liner is credit-based, and the heaviest tools are the most expensive: Deep Research at 40 credits, Literature Review at 40, Citation Recommender at 50, Hypothesis Generator and Peer Review at 60, Survey Simulator at 80. On Pro's 1,000 credits that's roughly a dozen Survey Simulator runs before you're topping up. The Free tier answers with ads and caps file uploads at 25MB once a day. Against Perplexity, the closest alternative, Liner's pitch is breadth of agent tooling and academic depth rather than a slicker everyday search box. Against a plain ChatGPT subscription, you give up unstructured free-form use in exchange for citations, source scoring, and Scholar's research-specific agents. Decide which of those two you actually do most days. Usage caveats are practical. Pro's 100MB × 5/question, 20-times-a-day upload ceiling is more generous than the old profile implied, but Max is where unlimited uploads live. Team adds a master account, admin controls, and data excluded from AI training; Enterprise layers on audit logs, onboarding sessions, and a dedicated manager. Web app and browser extensions cover the desktop case, with iOS, Android, and Mac apps for everything else. We'd reach
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Liner actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Uploads 10 PDF papers, runs Liner Scholar's Literature Review (40 credits), then uses Citation Recommender (50 credits) to find new sources and Peer Review (60 credits) to stress-test the draft.
Outcome: Gets an organized, sourced literature synthesis and citation list in one session, verifying each claim via Line-by-Line Citation — though the session costs roughly 150 credits against Pro's 1,000/month pool.
Runs three Deep Research requests (40 credits each) on adjacent markets, uploads client PDFs up to 100MB each on Pro, and cross-checks findings against ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude in the same interface.
Outcome: Produces a cited, multi-model brief in a few hours; 120 credits spent, leaving 880 for the rest of the month.
Sets up a Team workspace at $26.99/seat/mo so 5 members can search with cited sources, keep team data out of AI training, and manage billing from a master account.
Outcome: Centralized workspace with admin controls and shared 2,500 credits per seat; team answers carry Line-by-Line Citations the lead can spot-check quickly.
Use Cases
- Search the web and get answers backed by cited sources you can verify line by line.
- Upload a PDF research paper and receive a concise summary of key points and focused insights.
- Run a Deep Research report on a complex topic during early-stage investigation (40 credits/request).
- Conduct a literature review or generate a survey using Liner Scholar's academic tools.
- Draft or refine documents with AI assistance in Liner Write.
- Cross-check a claim across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude in a single query.
- Use the Chrome or Edge extension to search with cited results while browsing any page.
- Manage team research in a shared workspace with admin controls on the Team plan.
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-10-08
Limitations
- The Free tier includes 0 Agent credits per month, so Deep Research, premium external models, and image generation are effectively locked behind paid plans unless you burn through credits quickly.
- Paid tiers meter usage: Pro gives 1,000 credits/month and Max 2,500, but individual actions are expensive — Deep Research at 40 credits/request, premium external models at 30, Scholar's Survey Simulator at 80 — and a heavy research week can exhaust a Pro balance.
- File uploads are gated by plan: 25MB once daily on Free, 100MB × 5/question 20 times a day on Pro, and up to 200MB × 20/question unlimited on Max.
- Free-tier answers include ads.
- The accuracy claim (outscoring ChatGPT's advanced model and Perplexity Pro on OpenAI's SimpleQA tests) is Liner's own reporting and not independently benchmarked.
as of 2026-09-22
Verification history
We have re-verified Liner 8 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 8 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Liner tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free
$0.00
Ideal for
Casual users who want to try Liner's Advanced Search and see cited answers before committing a budget.
What this tier adds
Starting tier: $0 with 0 Agent credits, so Deep Research, premium models, and image generation draw from an empty pool.
Pro
$14.99/mo billed annually (list $17.99)
Ideal for
Solo students, researchers, and professionals running regular Deep Research or Scholar work within a monthly budget.
What this tier adds
Adds 1,000 Agent credits/month, premium model access (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude), 20 file uploads/day up to 100MB, and ad-free answers.
Max
$29.99/mo billed annually (list $35.99)
Ideal for
Heavy researchers and power users who routinely upload large PDFs and run many Deep Research or Scholar requests.
What this tier adds
Raises credits to 2,500/month and unlocks unlimited file uploads at up to 200MB per file (20 per question).
Team
$26.99/mo per seat (2–20 members)
Ideal for
Small teams of 2–20 (research groups, agencies, professional services) needing shared billing and data controls.
What this tier adds
Everything in Max per seat at $26.99/mo, plus a master account, secure workspace with admin controls, and team data excluded from AI training.
Enterprise
Custom
Ideal for
Large organizations requiring governance, audit trails, and customized onboarding across many seats.
What this tier adds
Everything in Team plus a dedicated manager, onboarding sessions, audit logs, and higher discount rates.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Liner's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Pro at $14.99/mo (billed annually, list $17.99) fits solo researchers, students, and professionals running occasional Deep Research within 1,000 credits. Max at $29.99/mo suits heavy users needing 2,500 credits and 200MB unlimited uploads. Team at $26.99/seat/mo for 2–20 members adds admin controls and excludes team data from AI training. Compare to Perplexity Pro, which offers unlimited queries at a flat rate — Liner trades volume for multi-model access and cited accuracy.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Liner — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Free and Pro users: sign up at app.liner.com and start searching within minutes — no configuration needed, and the Chrome or Edge extension installs in seconds. Team plan: budget a short session to provision seats and the master account before collaborative use. Enterprise: onboarding sessions are included, so plan a guided rollout with your dedicated manager.
Switching to or from Liner
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Perplexity Pro: export your saved searches as text and recreate key queries in Liner Advanced Search to compare cited-answer quality side by side.
- →From ChatGPT or Gemini: map your recurring prompts to Liner's multi-model interface so the same query can route across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude with citations attached.
- →From Google Scholar: move PDF-based literature work into Liner Scholar's Literature Review and Citation Recommender to consolidate reading and citation discovery.
- ↗To Perplexity Pro: switch for flat-rate unlimited queries if credit tracking becomes a burden; keep Liner's exported research reports as source material.
- ↗To ChatGPT or Gemini directly: use a single-model tool if multi-model access and Line-by-Line Citation aren't worth the credit system.
- ↗To Elicit or Scite: move to a purpose-built academic tool if Liner Scholar's credit costs (40–80 per request) outpace your budget.
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Liner”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Liner” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Liner.
Official links
Tools that pair well with Liner
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Liner, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Claude
Claude is Anthropic's AI assistant for long-document analysis, coding, and agentic work in one chat-and-Cowork surface.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is OpenAI's AI chat assistant for reasoning, Codex coding, deep research, voice and agentic work on one subscription
Felo
Felo is a free multilingual AI search and creation workspace that answers in your language, then turns the answer into a doc, deck, or clip.
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Liner vs Surge Ai
If you need accurate, cited answers for research or daily queries, Liner is your tool with its credit-based freemium model. If you're a frontier AI lab training or evaluating advanced models with expert human feedback, Surge AI is purpose-built with domain experts and rigorous benchmarks. Choose Liner for consumption of verified information; choose Surge for production of high-quality AI alignment data.
Liner vs Praktika
Choose Praktika if you want to improve conversational language skills via AI role-play with instant feedback. Choose Liner if you need accurate, source-cited answers for research or fact-checking. They serve different needs entirely.
Grantable vs Liner
If you need verifiable, cited answers for academic or professional research, Liner's multi-model approach with source attribution is unmatched. But if you're a nonprofit grant writer juggling funder discovery and proposal drafting, Grantable's specialized workflow and funder matching will save you far more time. Choose Liner for research credibility, Grantable for grants management.
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