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scite AI

scite AI: AI research assistant that finds, reads, and analyzes scientific literature with Smart Citation context.

Starting atFree
Visit scite AI →
💡

In Plain English

Shows you how scientific papers have been cited — whether other researchers supported, contradicted, or just mentioned a study's findings.

OverviewFeaturesPricingUse CasesIntegrationsLimitationsFAQSecurityAlternatives

Overview

scite AI is a Research Agents platform that helps researchers find, read, and verify scientific literature by grounding AI answers in over 280M peer-reviewed articles with Smart Citation context, with pricing starting at free and premium plans from $20/month. It is built for academic researchers, graduate students, clinicians, and research institutions that need citation-backed evidence rather than hallucinated summaries.

The platform is powered by a proprietary Smart Citations database that has classified over 1.6 billion citation statements across 280M+ sources, using a deep learning model to label each citation context as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning. Unlike generic LLM chatbots, every answer Scite produces links directly back to the original source passage — including the exact section of the citing paper — so researchers can verify claims before using them. Scite maintains direct content agreements with Wiley, SAGE, and 30+ other major publishers, enabling full-text search across both open-access and paywalled literature including preprints, books, patents, and datasets.

Core workflows on the platform include the Assistant (a GPT-style chat grounded in literature), reference checks (validating a manuscript's bibliography for retractions or contrasting evidence), dashboards for tracking topics and authors, and a Table Mode for structured comparative extraction across papers. Based on our analysis of 870+ AI tools in the Research Agents category, Scite is one of the few assistants that combines citation-grounded answers with deep publisher-licensed full-text access and a Model Context Protocol endpoint for integration into external AI agent workflows.

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Editorial Review

scite AI stands out among research assistants by grounding every answer in its proprietary database of 1.6B+ classified citation statements across 280M+ peer-reviewed articles. Its Smart Citations — which label each citation as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning — give researchers a level of evidence verification that general-purpose LLMs cannot match, making it especially valuable for systematic reviews, grant writing, and clinical decision support.

Key Features

Smart Citations Database+

A deep learning model has analyzed and classified over 1.6 billion citation statements across 280M+ scholarly sources, labeling each as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning. Every classification is accompanied by a confidence score and a clickable excerpt showing the exact passage and section of the citing paper.

AI Research Assistant+

A conversational interface that answers natural-language research questions using retrieval from peer-reviewed full-text, rather than generating speculative answers. Every response is grounded in real papers with direct citation links, eliminating the hallucinated references common in general-purpose LLMs.

Reference Check for Manuscripts+

Upload a manuscript or bibliography and Scite will flag retractions, errata, and papers whose central claims have been contradicted by subsequent research. This is particularly valuable for authors submitting to journals and for editors vetting incoming submissions for citation integrity.

Custom Dashboards and Table Mode+

Researchers can build dashboards to monitor citation activity around specific topics, journals, or authors, and use Table Mode to extract structured data (methods, populations, outcomes) across many papers at once. This turns qualitative literature review into a queryable comparative dataset.

MCP and Integrations Ecosystem+

Scite offers browser extensions for PubMed, Google Scholar, and publisher sites, plus plugins for Zotero, EndNote, and Microsoft Word. In 2025 it added a Model Context Protocol endpoint, allowing developers to connect its evidence graph directly to Claude, ChatGPT, or any custom AI agent.

Pricing Plans

Free Trial

$0

  • ✓Limited Assistant queries
  • ✓Basic Smart Citation lookups
  • ✓Access to Smart Citation badges via browser extension
  • ✓Exploration of 280M+ article database

Personal / Premium

~$20/month (billed annually)

  • ✓Unlimited AI Assistant queries grounded in full-text literature
  • ✓Full Smart Citations with supporting/contrasting classification
  • ✓Reference check for manuscripts and bibliographies
  • ✓Custom dashboards for topics, journals, and authors
  • ✓Browser extensions, Zotero, EndNote, and Word integrations

Team / Institutional

Custom quote

  • ✓Everything in Personal plan
  • ✓Seat management for research groups and labs
  • ✓Institution-wide single sign-on and library licensing
  • ✓Bulk reference checking and API access
  • ✓Dedicated customer success and onboarding
See Full Pricing →Free vs Paid →Is it worth it? →

Ready to get started with scite AI?

View Pricing Options →

Best Use Cases

đŸŽ¯

Conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses where researchers need to identify supporting and contradicting evidence across thousands of papers

⚡

Writing grant proposals and manuscripts that require accurate, verifiable citations grounded in peer-reviewed full-text sources

🔧

Running reference checks on draft manuscripts to detect retracted papers, weak citations, or references that have since been contradicted

🚀

Clinical and biomedical decision support, where hallucinated citations are unacceptable and citation context (supporting vs contrasting) materially affects conclusions

💡

Graduate students and PhD researchers exploring a new field quickly by using the AI Assistant to map landmark papers and opposing findings

🔄

Research teams building custom AI agents via the new MCP endpoint to add evidence-grounded literature retrieval to their own LLM workflows

Integration Ecosystem

11 integrations

scite AI works with these platforms and services:

🔐 Auth & Identity
saml
🌐 Browsers
chromefirefoxedge
🔗 Other
zoteroendnotemicrosoft-wordpubmedgoogle-scholarapimcp
View full Integration Matrix →

Limitations & What It Can't Do

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

  • ⚠Citation classification is probabilistic — confidence scores are shown but occasional mislabels of supporting vs contrasting context do occur
  • ⚠Coverage is strongest in biomedical and STEM literature; humanities, social sciences, and non-English journals are less densely indexed
  • ⚠The free tier is limited in Assistant queries and advanced features, requiring a paid plan for sustained daily research use
  • ⚠Institutional and team pricing is not published, requiring a sales conversation that may not suit individual researchers or small labs
  • ⚠Full-PDF downloads of paywalled articles still depend on a user's institutional subscription, even though Scite can read and cite the content

Pros & Cons

✓ Pros

  • ✓Backed by 1.6B+ classified citation statements across 280M+ sources, far deeper than general LLM chatbots
  • ✓Every answer is grounded in real papers with direct links to the exact citing passage and section — no hallucinated references
  • ✓Smart Citations uniquely label whether a claim has been supported or contradicted by later research, ideal for evidence synthesis
  • ✓Full-text access to both open-access and paywalled content via direct agreements with Wiley, SAGE, and 30+ publishers
  • ✓Trusted by researchers at top universities and enterprise institutions worldwide, with integrations into Zotero, EndNote, and browser extensions
  • ✓New MCP endpoint lets you plug Scite's evidence graph into Claude, ChatGPT, or custom AI agents

✗ Cons

  • ✗Free tier is limited — serious research workflows require a paid subscription around $20/month or higher
  • ✗Coverage skews toward STEM and biomedical literature; humanities and niche regional journals have thinner Smart Citation data
  • ✗The citation-classification model is probabilistic and can occasionally mislabel supporting vs contrasting context
  • ✗Institutional pricing is quote-based and not transparent on the website, which slows procurement for smaller labs
  • ✗Interface depth (dashboards, reference checks, Table Mode) has a learning curve for first-time users

Frequently Asked Questions

How is scite AI different from ChatGPT or Claude for research?+

Unlike general-purpose LLMs, scite AI grounds every answer in peer-reviewed literature from its database of 280M+ articles and 1.6B+ classified citations. Every claim in a response includes a direct link to the original paper and the exact passage where the citation appears, so you can verify evidence rather than trust a generated summary. It also classifies citations as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning — something no general chatbot does. This makes it suitable for systematic reviews, grant writing, and clinical decision support where hallucinated references would be unacceptable.

Does scite AI include paywalled journal content?+

Yes. Scite has direct content agreements with Wiley, SAGE, and 30+ additional publishers, giving it full-text search rights across both open-access and paywalled literature. This is a significant advantage over tools that only index abstracts or open-access repositories. Coverage also spans preprints, books, patents, and datasets, bringing the total corpus to 280M+ documents. Whether you can download the full PDF of a paywalled article still depends on your institutional subscription, but Scite's AI can read and cite the content within its responses.

What are Smart Citations and how are they classified?+

Smart Citations are scite's proprietary system for analyzing how one paper cites another. A deep learning model reads the surrounding citation context and classifies it as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning, along with the section of the paper it appeared in (Introduction, Results, etc.). The database now contains over 1.6 billion classified citation statements. Each classification comes with a confidence score shown in the interface, and users can click through to see the exact excerpt for verification.

How much does scite AI cost?+

Scite operates on a freemium model. A free trial lets new users explore the Assistant and basic Smart Citation lookups, while individual subscriptions start around $20/month (with discounted annual billing) and unlock the AI Assistant, reference checks, and dashboards. Team and institutional plans are priced on request and often bundled through university library licenses — many researchers get access for free through their affiliation. Students and academics often qualify for reduced pricing.

Can scite AI integrate with my existing tools?+

Yes. Scite offers browser extensions (Chrome, Firefox, Edge) that overlay Smart Citation badges on PubMed, Google Scholar, and publisher sites, plus plugins for Zotero and EndNote for reference management. It also integrates with Microsoft Word for in-document citation checking. In 2025, Scite launched an MCP (Model Context Protocol) endpoint so you can plug its literature grounding directly into Claude, ChatGPT, or custom AI agents — letting you add evidence-backed answers to any agentic workflow.

🔒 Security & Compliance

đŸ›Ąī¸ SOC2 Compliant
✅
SOC2
Yes
✅
GDPR
Yes
—
HIPAA
Unknown
✅
SSO
Yes
❌
Self-Hosted
No
❌
On-Prem
No
✅
RBAC
Yes
✅
Audit Log
Yes
✅
API Key Auth
Yes
❌
Open Source
No
✅
Encryption at Rest
Yes
✅
Encryption in Transit
Yes
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What's New in 2026

Scite added a Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoint in 2025, letting developers connect its 280M-article evidence graph and 1.6B+ Smart Citations directly to Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI agents. The platform also expanded direct publisher agreements to 30+ partners including Wiley and SAGE, and continues to grow its Table Mode for structured cross-paper data extraction.

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Quick Info

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Website

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