Elicit vs Consensus: Which AI Research Tool Should You Use in 2026?

Choose Consensus if you want fast, cited answers to research questions at a low price: Pro costs $20 a month or $144 a year. Choose Elicit if you run systematic reviews or need structured data extraction across many papers: Pro costs $49 per user per month, billed annually. Both offer free plans worth trying first.

By Michael Okeje · Updated: November 5, 2026

Elicit and Consensus both promise the same thing on the surface: ask a research question in plain language and get an answer grounded in academic papers instead of the open web. In practice they are built for different jobs. Consensus is a search engine first, tuned for quick, citation-backed answers. Elicit leans toward structured research workflows, especially screening and extracting data for literature reviews.

This guide compares them on the things that actually change your day: what each one searches, what it costs, how it handles systematic reviews, and how to prompt it well. If you are still choosing a wider toolkit, see our roundup of the best AI research tools.

What is the difference between Elicit and Consensus?

The short version is answers versus workflows.

Consensus describes itself as "an AI search engine for research." According to its documentation, you ask a question, it searches over 400 million scholarly articles, including 350 million peer-reviewed research papers, and it writes an answer where every sentence links back to the paper it came from. Its docs stress that search happens before AI, so the model only summarizes papers Consensus actually found, and it tells you when nothing relevant turns up.

Elicit searches a corpus of more than 138 million academic papers drawn from Semantic Scholar, PubMed and OpenAlex, according to its help center. On top of search it offers paper chat, summaries, data extraction tables, research reports and a dedicated systematic review workflow on paid plans.

So if your question is "what does the evidence say about X?", Consensus is built to answer it quickly. If your task is "screen 2,000 abstracts and pull sample sizes and outcomes into a table", Elicit is built for that.

Elicit vs Consensus at a glance

Sources for every row are listed at the end of this page.

How much do Elicit and Consensus cost?

Pricing is where the two separate most clearly.

Consensus pricing

Consensus lists three individual plans in its help center and docs:

• Free: $0, with unlimited paper searches, 10 Pro messages, 3 Deep reviews, 10 Study Snapshots and 30 API and MCP calls per month.
• Pro: $20 a month or $144 a year (about $12 a month), with unlimited Pro messages, 15 Deep reviews, unlimited Study Snapshots and 500 API and MCP calls per month.
• Deep: $65 a month or $540 a year (about $45 a month), with 200 Deep reviews and 2,000 API and MCP calls per month.

A Teams plan adds 50 Deep reviews and 500 API and MCP calls per user per month. Consensus says a Pro message summarizes up to 20 papers from your search, while a Deep review covers up to 50 papers.

Elicit pricing

Elicit's pricing page lists four tiers:

• Basic: free, with unlimited search across 138 million+ papers, unlimited summaries, unlimited chat with papers that have full-text access, source viewing and Zotero import. Research Agent and Research Reports usage is limited.
• Pro: $49 per user per month, billed as $588 annually. Adds the Systematic Review workflow (screening up to 5,000 papers), 20 table columns at a time, reports from up to 135 data sources, Routines, custom extractions from uploaded papers, multiple output templates and API access.
• Scale: $229 per user per month, billed as $2,748 annually. Adds 5x usage, extraction from figures, real-time collaboration, reports from up to 200 sources, 30 columns at a time and an admin panel.
• Enterprise: custom pricing, with screening of 40,000 papers, 40 extraction columns, SSO and SAML, no training on your data by default, and a dedicated success team.

For a student or solo researcher, Consensus Pro on annual billing is the cheaper paid option by a wide margin. Elicit Pro makes sense when a single systematic review would otherwise eat weeks of manual screening.

Which tool is better for systematic reviews and meta-analyses?

Elicit is the stronger fit. Its Pro plan includes a "dedicated Systematic Review Workflow that can screen 5,000 papers," and Enterprise raises that to 40,000 papers with what Elicit calls "PRISMA-grade screening and extraction." Extraction tables let you pull the same fields, such as population, intervention, sample size and outcomes, from every included study.

Elicit's help center also gives you wording to report your search strategy in a methods section, and it is candid about limits: grey literature and some clinical trial reports may have lower retrieval, some regional gaps exist (it names Chinese publications), and it does not include books or dissertations. For the most thorough reviews it recommends supplementary searches in specialized databases.

Consensus Deep reviews are useful for scoping a topic before you commit to a full protocol. Each one covers up to 50 papers, which is good for mapping a field but not a replacement for a formal screening process.

Practical rule: scope with Consensus, screen and extract with Elicit, and still search your field's core database by hand before you submit anything.

Which tool gives more trustworthy citations?

Both are designed around traceable sources, but they show it differently.

Consensus links every sentence in its answer to a paper, and you can hover a citation to see the exact quote it relied on. Its docs also say retracted papers are flagged and never used in answers.

Elicit lets you view sources for answers on every plan, and paid plans add explanations for AI-generated answers. For full-text analysis, Elicit reads the complete paper only when it is open access or when you use its browser extension with a journal subscription. Otherwise it works from the title and abstract, which matters when you extract detailed numbers.

Neither tool removes the need to read the papers that drive your conclusions. Consensus's own docs put it plainly: "AI is a research assistant, not a replacement for reading."

Who should choose Elicit?

Pick Elicit if you:

• Are writing a systematic review, scoping review or meta-analysis and need to screen hundreds or thousands of abstracts.
• Want structured extraction tables you can export and audit.
• Already keep your library in Zotero and want to bring it in.
• Work in a team or company that needs collaboration, admin controls or enterprise security.

Who should choose Consensus?

Pick Consensus if you:

• Want quick, evidence-based answers with sentence-level citations.
• Are a student or early-stage researcher on a tight budget.
• Want to use a research search engine inside ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot, or through MCP.
• Mostly need to map a topic and find the strongest papers before you read deeply.

Plenty of researchers use both: the free tiers are generous enough to run the same question through each and compare.

Copy-ready prompts for Elicit and Consensus

These prompts are written for each tool's strengths. Replace the bracketed parts with your topic.

Prompts for Consensus

1. "What does peer-reviewed research say about [intervention] for [population]? Separate randomized controlled trials from observational studies."
2. "Where do studies disagree on [topic]? List the main positions and the strongest paper supporting each."
3. "What are the most cited review papers on [topic] published since [year]?"
4. "Which study designs and sample sizes are most common in research on [topic]?"
5. "What gaps do recent papers on [topic] say still need research?"

Prompts for Elicit

1. "Find randomized controlled trials on [intervention] in [population] measuring [outcome]."
2. Extraction columns to add: "Population and sample size", "Intervention and comparator", "Primary outcome and effect size", "Study design", "Limitations stated by authors".
3. Screening criterion: "Include only studies with adult participants, a control group, and follow-up of at least [duration]."
4. "Summarize the methods each paper used to measure [construct], and note which validated instruments appear more than once."
5. "Which papers report results for [subgroup] separately?"

For more prompt patterns across the research process, see our AI prompts for researchers, our guide to using AI for a literature review, and our ChatGPT prompts for academic writing.

How do Elicit and Consensus compare with ChatGPT or Perplexity for research?

General assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity search much more than academic literature, so you have to check whether each source is a paper, a blog or a press release. Elicit and Consensus restrict themselves to scholarly sources, which makes them safer starting points for academic work. Consensus also plugs into ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot, so you can keep your usual assistant and route research questions through Consensus. If you prefer Perplexity, our guide on using Perplexity for academic research covers how to keep it focused on papers.

Frequently asked questions

Is Elicit or Consensus free?

Both have free plans. Elicit Basic includes unlimited search, summaries and chat with full-text papers, with limited Research Agent and Reports usage. Consensus Free includes unlimited paper searches, 10 Pro messages and 3 Deep reviews per month.

Which is cheaper, Elicit or Consensus?

Consensus. Its Pro plan is $20 a month or $144 a year. Elicit Pro is $49 per user per month, billed $588 annually.

Can Elicit do a systematic review?

Yes. Elicit Pro includes a dedicated Systematic Review workflow that can screen up to 5,000 papers, and Enterprise raises that to 40,000. You should still document your search strategy and run supplementary database searches where your field requires them.

How many papers do Elicit and Consensus search?

Elicit says it searches more than 138 million papers from Semantic Scholar, PubMed and OpenAlex. Consensus says it searches over 400 million scholarly articles, including 350 million peer-reviewed papers. The two companies count differently, so treat the figures as vendor claims rather than a like-for-like test.

Does Elicit include dissertations or books?

No. Elicit's help center says it focuses on journal articles, conference proceedings, preprints and working papers, and does not include books or dissertations.

Can I use Consensus inside ChatGPT or Claude?

Yes. Consensus says it connects to ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot and also offers an API and MCP server, with call limits that depend on your plan.

Sources

• Elicit, Pricing: https://elicit.com/pricing (checked November 5, 2026)
• Elicit Help Center, "Elicit's source for papers": https://support.elicit.com/en/articles/553025 (checked November 5, 2026)
• Consensus Docs, "Start here": https://docs.consensus.app/get-started/what-is-consensus (checked November 5, 2026)
• Consensus Help Center, "Subscription Plans": https://help.consensus.app/en/articles/10087865-subscription-plans (checked November 5, 2026)
• Consensus Help Center, "What Do You Get With a Pro Subscription?": https://help.consensus.app/en/articles/11408820-what-do-you-get-with-a-pro-subscription (checked November 5, 2026)