Scite.ai
AI research assistant that classifies citations as supporting or contrasting across 300M+ sources
Scite's Smart Citations add a dimension no other tool offers—seeing whether later research supports or contradicts a claim saves hours in a systematic review. The recent expansion into patents, trials, and grants, plus enhanced MCP integration, makes it a one-stop shop for evidence tracking. But it's overkill for simple lookups; stick with Google Scholar or PubMed for quick searches.
Verified 3h ago · liveness 97/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/scite-ai
- Researchers conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses
- PhD students evaluating literature and building evidence-based arguments
- Grant writers verifying cited findings and tracing research lineage
- Librarians supporting evidence-based research and reference services
- Casual literature searches or quick lookups
- Researchers needing comprehensive non-English literature coverage
- Undergraduates writing basic term papers without need for citation analysis
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Skip Scite if you only need occasional paper lookups or basic keyword searches, as the free tier is too restrictive and the paid plans are overkill for casual use.
MCP credits are capped at 250/month on Basic, and exceeding that requires upgrading to Pro.
Scite's Basic at $20/mo fits individual researchers who need unlimited Assistant usage and full-text search; Pro at $50/mo adds API access and patent datasets. Compared to Elicit (free tier) or Semantic Scholar (free), Scite is pricier but offers unique citation classification and broader data coverage. For teams needing shared workflows, Enterprise custom pricing is available.
In short
Scite.ai — AI research assistant that classifies citations as supporting or contrasting across 300M+ sources. Best for Researchers conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses, PhD students evaluating literature and building evidence-based arguments, Grant writers verifying cited findings and tracing research lineage. Free to start; paid plans from $20/mo.
What's new in Scite.ai
Checked 8 days agoAcross the latest 4 updates: 4 feature updates.
July 2026 Release Notes
Adds alerts for key research and visibility/control features for using Scite across AI tools.
June 2026 Release Notes
Collections manageable inside MCP, AI suggestions for next questions, and quick setup for small teams.
May 2026 Release Notes
New plan for power users, improved research organization, Assistant reads user documents, expanded data access.
April 2026 Release Notes
MCP extended to patents, clinical trials, grants; microsite for AI clients; one-tap Google sign-in.
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Scite.ai? 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: August 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Smart Citations classify supporting, contrasting, or mentioning citations
- Scite Assistant provides AI answers grounded in specific paper sentences
- Full-Text Search across 300M+ scholarly articles
- Patent Search covering 90M+ patent families
- Clinical trials search with 719K+ records
- Grants search across 3.5M+ funded projects
- Collections manage papers and monitor updates
- Reference Check verifies and corrects manuscript citations
- Citation Dashboard offers analytics for papers, authors, journals
- MCP-compatible integration with Claude, ChatGPT, and other assistants
- API access for custom tools and data integration
- Citation Alerts for key research updates
- One-tap Google sign-in for quick account creation
About Scite.ai
Scite is an AI-powered research platform that helps researchers, students, and industry professionals discover, evaluate, and verify scientific literature. Its core innovation is Smart Citations, which classify each citation as supporting, contrasting, or merely mentioning the cited work, letting you quickly assess the weight of evidence behind a claim. Built on direct agreements with 40+ publishers including Wiley and SAGE, Scite provides access to 300M+ full-text articles, preprints, books, patents, clinical trials, and grants. The platform now indexes 1.6B+ citations and is trusted by over 2 million researchers worldwide. Scite's key features include the Scite Assistant, which provides AI-powered answers grounded in specific sentences from real papers, and Full-Text Search that goes beyond abstracts to uncover findings hidden inside documents. Smart Citations show how later research has supported, challenged, or discussed a paper, claim, method, or author. Collections allow you to gather papers, monitor updates, and ask scoped questions against your curated set. Reference Check verifies and corrects manuscript citations, and the Citation Dashboard offers analytics for papers, authors, journals, and institutions. Beyond articles, Scite's database extends to patents, clinical trials, and grants, enabling you to trace an idea from funded proposal to published finding to commercial application. The platform works where you work: it runs inside Claude, ChatGPT, and any MCP-compatible assistant, plugs into Zotero, and is available via API for teams building custom tools. Recent updates have made Collections manageable directly within MCP and added AI-powered suggestions for research questions. Compared to Semantic Scholar or Elicit, Scite's unique strength is its explicit citation classification and licensed full-text access, making it ideal for systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and evidence-based research. Its paid tiers limit casual use, and coverage of
Behind the Verdict
Scite is not just another AI literature search tool—it's a verification engine. If your work involves systematic reviews, meta-analyses, or any research where you need to know whether a finding has been supported or contradicted by subsequent studies, the Smart Citations feature alone justifies the cost. It turns hours of manual sifting into a glance at a citation's context. Where it shines: The recent news confirms Scite is doubling down on its MCP integration. Collections are now manageable directly inside MCP, and the assistant can read your documents. This is a serious workflow upgrade for teams already living in Claude or ChatGPT. If you're building custom research tools, the API access (on Pro) and expanded data coverage for patents and grants make it a compelling backend. But it's not for everyone. The free tier is limited, and the paid plans start at $20/month (yearly billing) — that's a real investment for casual users. If you're an undergraduate writing a term paper or someone who just needs to find a few papers, Google Scholar or PubMed will do the job without the subscription. The closest alternative is Semantic Scholar, which offers free citation graphs and some AI features, but it lacks the explicit support/contrast classification and the licensed full-text depth that Scite has. Elicit is also strong for literature review workflows, but it doesn't provide the same publisher-direct access. Watch out for: non-English literature coverage is sparse, so if your research involves significant non-English sources, this is a limitation. Also, the citation classification is based on the text of the citing paper, so it's not perfect — but it's a powerful heuristic.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Scite.ai actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Use Smart Citations to see which papers support or contradict a key claim.
Outcome: Quickly identify the most supported findings and cite confidently.
Use Reference Check to ensure all cited studies are valid and not retracted.
Outcome: Submit a grant proposal with verified, reliable references.
Search 90M+ patents with citation context to assess prior art.
Outcome: Find relevant patents and understand their support in the literature.
Use Cases
- Evaluate a paper's credibility before citing it in your own work.
- Get a quick, evidence-backed literature review on a research question.
- Check a manuscript's references for retracted or contradicted studies.
- Track how a finding has been supported or contradicted over time.
- Monitor a research field for new supporting or contrasting citations.
- Search patents and clinical trials alongside academic literature.
- Verify claims in AI chat outputs using Scite MCP within Claude or ChatGPT.
- Create and monitor Collections of papers for ongoing projects.
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-08-15
Limitations
- Scite's coverage is strongest in life sciences and biomedicine; citation classification quality may vary by discipline.
- The free tier is extremely limited, and paid plans cap MCP credits at 250/month on Basic.
- Full-text access depends on institutional subscriptions for paywalled articles.
- The Assistant can return suboptimal results if literature is thin on a topic.
as of 2026-08-15
Verification history
We have re-verified Scite.ai 17 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-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — 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 17 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 Scite.ai tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Basic
$20/mo (billed yearly)
Ideal for
Individual researchers needing unlimited Assistant usage and full-text search for literature reviews without API access.
What this tier adds
Starting paid tier with 250 MCP credits/month, Collections up to 1,000 papers, and ChatGPT/Claude integrations.
Pro
$50/mo (billed yearly)
Ideal for
Deep research professionals who need API access, higher MCP credits (2,500/month), and access to patent, clinical trial, and grant datasets.
What this tier adds
Adds API access, 10x MCP credits, Collections up to 10,000 papers, and patent/trial/grant data.
Enterprise
Contact sales
Ideal for
Organizations needing custom solutions, additional data access, and dedicated support for team-wide research workflows.
What this tier adds
Custom pricing with organization-level features and support beyond Pro capabilities.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Scite.ai's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Scite's Basic at $20/mo fits individual researchers who need unlimited Assistant usage and full-text search; Pro at $50/mo adds API access and patent datasets. Compared to Elicit (free tier) or Semantic Scholar (free), Scite is pricier but offers unique citation classification and broader data coverage. For teams needing shared workflows, Enterprise custom pricing is available.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Scite.ai — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Most users get value within minutes: create an account with Google sign-in, run a search, and see Smart Citations immediately. Setting up the browser extension or MCP integration takes about 10-15 minutes. Full setup of Collections and alerts may take an hour.
Switching to or from Scite.ai
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Semantic Scholar: import your saved papers by exporting citations and adding them to Scite Collections.
- →From PubMed: use Full-Text Search to find richer context and add papers to your Collections.
- ↗To Elicit: export your Collections as BibTeX and import into Elicit for systematic reviews.
- ↗To Google Scholar: manually add key papers to your library; Scite does not offer bulk export.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
- Resourcescite.ai
AI for Research | Scite
Researchers around the world use Scite to better understand research, uncover debates, ensure they are citing reliable studies, and improve their writing.
- Quickstartscite.ai
AI for Research | Scite
Researchers around the world use Scite to better understand research, uncover debates, ensure they are citing reliable studies, and improve their writing.
- Resourcescite.ai
Scite Features
Research tools built on evidence, not guesswork. Every Scite feature is powered by 1.6B+ Smart Citations and 280M+ full-text articles — including paywalled sources other AI tools can't access.
Tutorials & Learning
Frequently Asked Questions
Categories
Topics
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