Tools
scite vs Semantic Scholar
scite 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, API
- Only Semantic Scholar states: Summaries, Exports references
scite
Scite helps researchers search scientific literature, evaluate citation context, and trace whether findings are supported, contradicted, or mentioned.
Plans
Connect
Free
- 25 MCP credits/month
- Use in ChatGPT, Claude, & more
- Grounded in 300M+ papers
- No Assistant or Search access
Basic
- $20 / month Billed yearly
- Full Assistant & Search access
- 250 MCP credits/month
- Article Smart Citation reports
- Collections up to 1,000 papers
- Citation alerts & dashboards
Pro
- $50 / month Billed yearly
- Everything in Basic, plus:
- API access
- $60 API credit included, limited time only
- 2,500 MCP credits/month
- Collections up to 10,000 papers
- Patent, clinical trial, & grant datasets
Prices checked 2026-09-24 on the maker’s page.
Capabilities
- Searches papers — “Scite Search lets you match on citation statements extracted from the full text” source
- Cites sources — “Unlike general-purpose AI tools, every answer is drawn from peer-reviewed literature and linked to its source.” source
- API — “and is available through our API for teams building their own tools.” source
Latest updates
- Citation Surfing with Scite MCP
Scite MCP includes a citation graph tool that lets AI agents like ChatGPT and Claude explore how papers are connected through citations.
- August 2026 Release Notes
Connect Scite to AI assistants, try Scite, and choose a plan.
- July 2026 Release Notes
Stay on top of research and get more visibility and control over using Scite across AI tools.
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