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scite

AI-powered research platform that helps users evaluate scholarly literature with Smart Citations, AI answers grounded in research papers, reference checks, and citation-context analysis.

Starting at$0 for 7 days
Visit scite →
💡

In Plain English

AI-powered research platform that helps users search scholarly literature, ask cited research questions, evaluate citation context with Smart Citations, and check references before publication.

OverviewFeaturesPricingUse CasesLimitationsFAQ

Overview

scite offers a free trial, an Individual subscription listed at $20 per month or $12 per month when billed annually ($144 per year), and custom Team or Institution plans, making it a paid research-intelligence tool for users who need citation context, AI answers, and reference checks beyond free scholarly search. scite is an AI research and citation intelligence platform for researchers, students, clinicians, journalists, and evidence-focused teams. It helps users search scholarly literature, ask research questions, inspect citation context, and see whether later papers support, contrast, or simply mention earlier work. The platform is best known for Smart Citations, which classify citation statements into 3 practical labels: supporting, contrasting, and mentioning. Instead of treating all citations as equal, scite shows the sentence-level context around a citation so users can evaluate evidence quality beyond raw citation counts. Public scite materials and scholarly profiles describe a large citation-intelligence database with more than 1 billion citation statements and coverage across hundreds of millions of scholarly records, including journal articles, preprints, books, patents, and datasets where indexed content is available. scite was developed in 2018, and its workflow now combines literature search, full-text citation-context analysis, an AI Assistant with inline scholarly citations, Reference Check for manuscripts, custom dashboards, and a browser extension for research sites such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and publisher pages. Reference Check is especially useful before submission because it can flag cited papers associated with retractions, editorial notices, or contrasting follow-up literature. For teams, scite is most valuable when users need repeatable evidence review across grant writing, systematic reviews, clinical research, science journalism, due diligence, or academic instruction. It is not a replacement for reading papers, but it gives researchers a faster way to identify which claims deserve closer inspection and which references may carry risk.

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Key Features

Smart Citations+

scite analyzes citation contexts and classifies them as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning so researchers can inspect how later literature treats a paper or claim.

Full-Text Search Across Open Access and Licensed Content+

scite searches beyond abstracts by using available full-text scholarly content, including open-access sources and content available through publisher relationships.

scite Assistant with Inline Citations+

The conversational AI assistant generates literature-backed answers with source links, helping users move from a research question to cited evidence more quickly.

Reference Check for Manuscript Validation+

Authors can upload a manuscript and receive an automated audit of references, including warnings for papers that may have retractions, editorial notices, or contrasting citation context.

API and Workflow Integrations+

scite provides integration options for bringing citation intelligence into research workflows, including browser-based citation context and developer-facing access where available.

Pricing Plans

Plan 1

$0 for 7 days

    Plan 2

    $20/month monthly or $12/month billed annually ($144/year)

      Plan 3

      Custom pricing

        See Full Pricing →Free vs Paid →Is it worth it? →

        Ready to get started with scite?

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        Best Use Cases

        🎯

        Use Case 1

        Researchers conducting systematic reviews can use scite's Smart Citations to identify which key findings in their domain have been supported, contrasted, or discussed by subsequent work.

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        Use Case 2

        Before submitting a paper for peer review, authors can upload their manuscript to scite's Reference Check tool to flag cited papers that may require closer inspection.

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        Use Case 3

        Grant writers can use the scite Assistant to assemble cited scholarly evidence supporting proposed hypotheses and verify that important references remain reliable.

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        Use Case 4

        Journalists and policy analysts can use scite to verify whether a study cited in a press release or policy document is supported, contrasted, or merely mentioned by later literature.

        💡

        Use Case 5

        Pharmaceutical companies and clinical research teams can use scite's dashboards and citation context to evaluate evidence around a drug compound, treatment approach, or biological target.

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        Use Case 6

        Professors can use scite to teach students how to critically evaluate sources by comparing papers that have supportive, contrasting, or mostly mentioning citation contexts.

        Limitations & What It Can't Do

        We believe in transparent reviews. Here's what scite doesn't handle well:

        • ⚠Citation classification relies on NLP and may misinterpret nuanced, conditional, or context-dependent academic language, particularly in fields with highly specialized terminology.
        • ⚠No full-text article access is guaranteed; scite shows citation contexts and metadata, while users must access full papers through subscriptions, publishers, or open-access repositories.
        • ⚠Coverage of non-English language publications, conference proceedings, and regional journals may be thinner than coverage of major English-language publishers.
        • ⚠Newly published papers may take time to be indexed and have their citation contexts classified, creating a lag for researchers tracking very recent developments.
        • ⚠Team and institutional plan limits are not fully specified publicly, making meaningful evaluation of seat minimums, API rights, manuscript checks, and organization-wide feature caps difficult without requesting a quote.

        Pros & Cons

        ✓ Pros

        • ✓Smart Citations classify citation context as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning, giving researchers more useful evidence signals than raw citation counts alone.
        • ✓AI-generated answers are designed to be grounded in scholarly literature with inline source links, which can reduce unsupported responses compared with general-purpose chatbots.
        • ✓Full-text search across open-access and licensed scholarly content can surface findings that abstract-only tools may miss.
        • ✓Reference Check helps authors identify cited papers that may have retractions, editorial notices, or contradictory follow-up literature before submission.
        • ✓Browser extension support for research sites such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and journal pages can add citation context inside existing research workflows.
        • ✓Coverage spans scholarly articles, preprints, books, patents, and datasets, making scite useful across many research-heavy disciplines.

        ✗ Cons

        • ✗Full access appears tied to a paid plan or trial, so users looking for a completely free academic search tool may find the pricing less attractive than free alternatives.
        • ✗Citation classifications are helpful but still require researcher judgment; a supporting, contrasting, or mentioning label does not replace reading the cited passage and source paper.
        • ✗The platform is strongest for literature evaluation and citation context, not for visual literature mapping or end-to-end systematic review data extraction.
        • ✗Coverage depends on publisher agreements and available full-text sources, so it may still miss content outside its licensed and open-access corpus.
        • ✗The website emphasizes scholarly literature, so it is less useful for non-academic web research, market research, or sources that are not part of the scientific publishing ecosystem.
        • ✗Team and institutional pricing, seat minimums, API terms, and organization-level usage limits require contacting scite, which can make procurement planning harder for groups.

        Frequently Asked Questions

        What is scite used for?+

        scite is used to search scholarly literature, get AI answers grounded in papers, evaluate citation context, and check references in research manuscripts.

        What are Smart Citations?+

        Smart Citations classify citation statements as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning the cited work, helping users understand citation context rather than relying only on citation counts.

        Is scite free?+

        scite offers a 7-day free trial. Full individual access is listed at $20 per month or $12 per month when billed annually ($144 per year), while team and institutional plans use custom pricing.

        Does scite search full text or only abstracts?+

        scite highlights full-text scholarly search, although coverage depends on indexed open-access content, licensed sources, and publisher relationships.

        Is scite a replacement for reading papers?+

        No. scite can surface evidence, citation context, and grounded answers, but researchers should still read the relevant papers and citation passages before making academic or professional decisions.
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        What's New in 2026

        The provided website content emphasizes current positioning around AI for research, full-text scholarly search, Table Mode, Smart Citations, Reference Check, browser-based workflows, and literature-grounded answers.

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        Quick Info

        Category

        Research

        Website

        scite.ai/
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