Tools
Consensus vs Semantic Scholar
Consensus or Semantic Scholar? Their plans monthly and yearly, the capabilities their makers state, security and latest updates, side by side — read from the makers' own pages.
In short
- Both: Searches papers, Cites sources, Summaries, API
- Only Consensus states: Extracts data
- Only Semantic Scholar states: Exports references
Consensus
Consensus searches scientific literature and uses AI to summarize, compare, and cite research papers.
Plans
Free
Free
- Basic paper search
- 10 Pro messages per month
- Dynamic AI-powered search and analysis
- Up to 3 Deep reviews per month
Pro
- $12/mo
- $144 annually
- $20/mo
- Everything in Free
- Unlimited Pro messages
- Dynamic AI-powered search and analysis
- 15 Deep reviews per month
- Unlimited access to every research tool
- 500 API & MCP uses included per month
Deep
- $45/mo
- $540 annually
- $65/mo
- Everything in Pro
- Unlimited Pro messages
- Dynamic AI-powered search and analysis
- 200 Deep reviews per month
- Unlimited access to every research tool
- 2,000 API & MCP uses included per month
Prices checked 2026-09-25 on the maker’s page.
Capabilities
- Searches papers — “Consensus searches across a database of over 220 million peer-reviewed research papers.” source
- Cites sources — “Every AI-generated synthesis includes citations so you can trace claims back to the research used.” source
- Summaries — “Summarize findings across multiple papers” source
- Extracts data — “Extract details such as methods, sample size, and results” source
- API — “The Consensus API is now open to everyone.” source
Latest updates
- September 18th, 2026 - Full text now available in the Consensus API
The Consensus API can now return relevant full-text passages from open-access papers, including methods, results, doses, and more.
- September 15th, 2026 - Consensus is now available in Microsoft 365 Copilot
Consensus is now an official app in the Microsoft Marketplace, making it possible to search Consensus’s database of 220M+ peer-reviewed papers directly inside Microsoft…
- August 26th, 2026 - Consensus API now available to everyone
The Consensus API is now self-serve and available to everyone. Developers can bring Consensus search directly into their own apps, tools, and workflows.
Semantic Scholar
Semantic Scholar helps researchers search, understand, save, and monitor scientific papers with AI-assisted tools.
Plans
Free
Free
- Search over 214 million papers
- TLDR summaries for ~60M papers
- Highly Influential Citations
- Personal library with folders and exports
- AI-powered Research Feeds and alerts
- Free Academic Graph API with rate limits
Prices checked 2026-09-25 by web search.
Capabilities
- Searches papers — “Search over 214 million papers from all fields of science, with filters such as journals and conferences, authors, publication types, and date range.” source
- Cites sources — “Get AI-generated answers to your questions along with supporting statements from the paper.” source
- Summaries — “TLDRs are super-short summaries of the main objective and results of a paper, generated using expert background knowledge and NLP techniques, available for nearly 60 million papers in computer science, biology, and medicine.” source
- Exports references — “You can also create public folders and easily share them with collaborators, who can copy the folder to their own library in one click.” source
- API — “The Semantic Scholar REST API allows you to find and explore scientific publication data about authors, papers, citations, venues, and more.” source