What it is and who it's for
Elicit is an AI research assistant: it finds papers, filters out the irrelevant ones, extracts key data into structured tables and assembles reports — in short, it reads the papers for you. It's for scientists, analysts, R&D teams and anyone doing evidence-based reviews who is tired of juggling search, screening and extraction across a dozen tabs and an Excel file. What stands out is that it puts the whole literature-review workflow (search → screen → extract → report) in one place on top of a base of 138M+ works.
Key features
- Semantic search across 138M+ papers (via Semantic Scholar) rather than keyword matching.
- Data extraction from many papers into a single table (methods, sample, results).
- Screening and systematic reviews with support for the PRISMA process.
- Automatic reports and summaries linked back to the primary sources.
- Monitoring of new publications on your topic (alerts).
- Upload your own PDFs for analysis.
Get started in 5 minutes
- Open elicit.com and sign up (there's a free tier with limits).
- Ask your research question in plain words — you'll get a list of relevant papers.
- Add data columns to extract (e.g. "sample size", "conclusion") and Elicit fills the table with links.
When to use it, when not to
- ✅ Use it if you're doing a literature or systematic review and need data extracted into tables.
- ✅ Use it if the link between the synthesis and the specific papers matters, along with PRISMA discipline.
- ❌ Skip it → Consensus is better if you want a quick "yes/no/maybe" verdict on the weight of evidence rather than a full review.
- ❌ Skip it → NotebookLM is better if you're working with your own set of sources/PDFs and want free audio overviews.
Honest pricing
A limited free tier; paid plans (Pro/Team) add more extractions, systematic reviews, team collaboration and alerts. Exact numbers are on the provider's site and keep changing.
Gotchas
- AI extraction isn't error-free — check key numbers in the tables against the papers themselves.
- Coverage depends on the Semantic Scholar index; niche, brand-new or unindexed work can fall through.
- Summaries can be imprecise — for anything consequential, read the primary source.
- Full systematic reviews are on the paid plans.
🤖 Prompt accelerator
"I'm doing a literature review in Elicit on
. Help me phrase a precise research question and inclusion/exclusion criteria (PICO), list the columns to extract from papers (sample, method, effect, limitations), and give a checklist of what must be verified against the primary sources before citing. I need the output as a <comparison table / short synthesis>."