I Reviewed The 9 Best AI Research Assistant Tools For Academic Research

#1 – SciSpace

Best AI research assistant for researchers and students who need AI assistance to read, analyze, and write academic papers

Pros

Cons

SciSpace is an AI research app that helps researchers and students read, understand, and write academic papers.

Here’s what makes it worth your time:

You don’t even need to sign up to start using it. Open SciSpace, type your research question and start discovering papers. That’s it.

The core of SciSpace is two simple parts:

1. Library
2. and Notebooks.

Library is your PDF workspace. Drop your research papers here and SciSpace’s AI reads them for you.

It pulls out key findings, identifies research methods, and spots limitations—the exact things you’d normally spend hours hunting for.

Want something explained?

Ask the built-in chat.

It reads your PDFs and answers questions about specific methods, results, or concepts you don’t understand.

You can choose between quick answers (for basic concepts) or deep technical explanations (for complex methods and findings).

Notebooks are where you write.

Start typing and press ‘/’ — you’ll see all your writing tools.

The AI helps when you’re stuck, suggesting relevant content as you write. Hit ‘tab’ and it predicts your next sentence. But you’re always in control—use the suggestions or ignore them.

The real breakthrough is how SciSpace handles PDFs. Upload one and you can:

These columns are genuinely useful.

They automatically organize each paper’s key information side by side, so you can quickly compare methods or findings across multiple papers.

For writing, SciSpace includes practical tools that solve real problems:

The Chrome extension lets you apply these tools to any webpage you’re reading.

Everything in SciSpace focuses on one goal:

Making research easier to understand and write about.

Try the PDF tools first. Upload a paper you’re struggling with and ask it to explain the methods section. That’s the fastest way to see if SciSpace can help with your research.

Features

Pricing

SciSpace offers two simple plans.

The Free plan gives you access to their citation generator, basic paper search, standard AI responses, and limited PDF uploads.

The Premium plan costs $30 per month if you pay monthly, or $12 per month if you pay annually.

The annual plan saves you 60% compared to monthly billing.

Premium unlocks everything: unlimited PDF uploads, high-quality AI responses, advanced columns feature, PDF-to-audio conversion, PDF-to-video conversion, all AI writing tools, and the Chrome extension.

Currently, SciSpace is offering special discounts to my readers.

Use code DHRUVIR40 to get 40% off the annual plan, bringing it down to just $7.20 per month (billed annually).

For monthly billing, use code DHRUVIR20 to get 20% off, reducing the cost to $24 per month.

My Experience With SciSpace

SciSpace’s PDF analysis saved me time. I tested it with a dense 40-page paper on machine learning algorithms.

Rather than skimming for hours, I asked specific questions: “What datasets did they use?” and “What were the key limitations?”

The answers were accurate and pulled directly from relevant sections.

The notebook’s autocomplete surprised me. It suggested relevant technical terms and helped maintain consistent terminology.

It wasn’t perfect—sometimes the suggestions were too generic—but it helped maintain momentum during writing.

The AI detector occasionally flags human-written technical passages as AI-generated, requiring manual verification.

The chat feature became my go-to for understanding complex sections.

Instead of rereading paragraphs repeatedly, I’d ask “Explain this statistical method in simpler terms” or “What are the implications of these results?”

The explanations were clear and saved considerable time.

Most importantly, I found myself using SciSpace daily, unlike many research tools that sound good but end up forgotten.

It simplified tasks that usually slow down research—understanding papers, organizing information, and maintaining consistent writing.

Use code DHRUVIR40 to get 40% off on SciSpace’s annual plan.

Use code DHRUVIR20 to get 20% off on SciSpace’s monthly plan.

#2 – Recall

Best AI research assistant for building a personalized, interconnected knowledge base

Pros

Cons

Recall transforms scattered web content into an interconnected knowledge base that grows smarter with every piece of information you save.

You read an article about quantum computing today. Next week, you watch a video about artificial intelligence. Three months later, you’re reading about neural networks.

Your brain knows these topics connect somehow, but the connections stay fuzzy.

Recall solves this by doing what your brain tries to do naturally—it builds connections between everything you save.

When you save that quantum computing article, it automatically extracts key concepts. When you save content about AI later, it spots the overlapping ideas and links them.

Every time you click Recall’s browser extension on a webpage, three things happen:

1. It generates a concise summary of the key points.
2. It identifies the core concepts and adds them to your knowledge graph.
3. It shows you related content you’ve previously saved that you might have forgotten about.

This creates a compounding effect. Each new piece of content you save adds context to everything you saved before. Your knowledge base literally gets smarter over time.

But saving information isn’t enough if you forget it all. Recall tackles this head-on with built-in spaced repetition.

It generates questions from your saved content and prompts you to recall key points just before you’re likely to forget them.

The real test of any research tool is whether you use it six months later. Most end up abandoned because they create more work than they save.

Recall sidesteps this by handling the heavy lifting—summarizing, connecting, and reminding—-automatically.

Let me put this in perspective:

While SciSpace excels at technical paper analysis and Elicit masters literature discovery, Recall optimizes for long-term knowledge retention and unexpected insight discovery.

Features

Pricing

Recall offers a free tier that never expires. You get unlimited manual knowledge cards and 10 AI-generated summaries.

The Premium plan runs $10 monthly, or $7 per month with annual billing.

This unlocks unlimited AI summaries, advanced spaced repetition, and priority support.

My Experience With Recall

Recall changed how I process information in ways I didn’t expect.

Let me walk you through a specific example.

Last week, I was researching advances in machine learning. I saved a technical paper using Recall’s browser extension.

Nothing special so far.

But then something interesting happened. Recall surfaced an article about cognitive psychology I’d saved two months ago.

The connection wasn’t obvious at first—until I realized both pieces discussed pattern recognition from different angles.

That’s the kind of insight that usually gets lost when you’re just saving bookmarks.

The spaced repetition feature initially seemed like a nice-to-have. But after some time, I can recall key points from articles I read weeks ago without referring back to them.

That never happened with my old system of highlighted PDFs and buried bookmarks.

One unexpected benefit:

I find myself reading more carefully now. Knowing that each piece of content will be connected to my existing knowledge makes me more thoughtful about what I save and why.

If you’re primarily doing academic literature reviews, stick with tools like SciSpace or Elicit.

But if you’re trying to build lasting understanding from diverse sources, Recall offers something unique.

Use coupon code Recall10 at checkout to get a flat 10% off on any Recall paid plan. This brings the monthly plan down to $9 and the annual plan to $75.60 (instead of $84) per year.

#3 – Zendy

Best AI research assistant for affordable access to scholarly research with integrated AI-powered analysis and summarization tools

Pros

Cons

Zendy is an AI-powered research library that provides affordable access to scholarly research and literature worldwide.

I discovered Zendy when Robert Kardan, the company’s founder, commented on this article, saying:

Thanks for the post! Have you tried Zendy AI tools? It includes ZAIA, a domain-specific LLM based on licensed content.

---

Kamran Robert Kardan

Co-Founder and Managing Director at Zendy

Whenever someone introduces me to a tool that could benefit my readers, I make a point to try it out. After testing Zendy, I’m convinced it deserves a spot among the best AI tools for academic research.

While Zendy’s core function is providing access to scholarly research across disciplines, it offers several standout features worth exploring.

The recommendation engine is particularly useful. Upon logging in, you’re prompted to “update your interests” by selecting up to 5 topics.

Once you do, Zendy presents “top-rated articles” in those areas through an intuitive carousel view.

Selecting any paper opens it in Zendy’s robust PDF viewer.

The PDF viewer itself is impressively functional. You can download research papers with a single click.

A collapsible left sidebar provides access to all essential information:

This includes comprehensive paper details: authors, publication information, languages, resource type, SCImago Journal Rank, H-Index, eISSN, pISSN, DOI, and covered subjects.

Citation generation is straightforward, supporting multiple formats:

Below the citation options, you’ll find the paper summarization feature.

The Tools section rounds out the features, offering note-taking capabilities and highlighted key phrases throughout the paper.

While Zendy currently lacks the full-featured academic note-taking capabilities of some competitors, it distinguishes itself through ZAIA, its AI research assistant.

ZAIA analyzes millions of research papers to provide referenced, credible answers to any research-related questions.

It also includes a PDF Analysis feature that can process uploaded research documents.

ZAIA extracts, analyzes, and summarizes each section, including the abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, and references.

Note: Documents must be under 5 MB, less than 75 pages, and have clear section structure.

Zendy excels through simplicity.

While it may not be the most visually polished or feature-rich platform in the market, it delivers its core functionality effectively without unnecessary complexity.

That focused approach is precisely why I recommend it.

Features

Pricing

Zendy Open is the free plan, giving access to 37M+ open-access articles. You get 5 monthly uses each of ZAIA queries, PDF analysis, summarization, and keyphrase highlights, plus unlimited insights.

The $9.50 monthly Zendy Tools plan ($79.80/year) keeps the open-access articles but removes all AI tool limits. Every feature – ZAIA, PDF analysis, insights, summarization, highlighting—becomes unlimited.

Zendy Plus costs $29.50 monthly ($247.80/year) and adds premium publisher content on top of unlimited AI features.

You get both the 37M+ open-access articles and paywalled research from major publishers.

For teams and institutions, custom group subscriptions are available through direct contact.

My Experience with Zendy

When Robert introduced me to Zendy, particularly ZAIA, I knew I had to try it out. Zendy immediately impressed me with its simplicity.

Instead of overwhelming you with features, it starts with a focused approach: select up to five research interests.

This onboarding leads straight to relevant article recommendations in a carousel view, creating an intuitive discovery process.

The PDF viewer emerged as a standout feature, combining simplicity with power. Everything essential—from SCImago Journal Rank to DOI—sits in a collapsible sidebar while you read.

With one-click downloads, it eliminated the tedious multistep process I’ve encountered on other platforms.

ZAIA, the AI research assistant, takes the platform beyond basic functionality. Unlike typical tools that generate generic summaries, it searches millions of papers to provide referenced answers to specific research questions.

Even with its size and page constraints, the PDF Analysis feature efficiently breaks down papers into clear, digestible sections.

For researchers seeking straightforward access to scholarly content with intelligent AI assistance, Zendy provides exactly what’s needed—no more, no less.

#4 – Elicit

Best AI research assistant for finding relevant papers even with imperfect keyword matches

Pros

Cons

Elicit is a research assistant that utilizes language models like GPT-3 to automate parts of researchers’ workflows.

Its cornerstone feature is the Literature Review.

When you ask a question, Elicit presents relevant papers and provides summaries of key information about those papers in an easy-to-use table.

Elicit can find relevant papers even if they don’t directly match the keywords used in the query (thank you, NLP).

They do it by employing semantic similarity to identify papers related to your question, even if they use different terminology.

For example, it can return papers about “fitness” when the query only mentions “aerobic exercise.”

Elicit is free to use on the web as well as a desktop app.

Features

I always strive to find tools and software that take the smallest time to master. The same goes for their ease of use.

Elicit is one of the few academic/scientific research apps that have done a great job of maintaining a clear interface with more than adequate whitespace.

Trust me, you will never get lost—even if you enter alone.

Here are its features:

Pricing

Elicit has a forever free plan with the paid plan starting at $12 per month ($10/month, if billed yearly).

My Experience With Elicit

I did use Elicit to help me with our undergraduate capstone project on “challenges of fishing industry”. I was able to find relevant and high-quality research papers to cite.

As of now, I use Elicit whenever I need facts or statistics that I need to add to my blog posts.

Because it supports NLP and semantic search, you get a lot of opinions and statistics to choose from.

The best and the most simple way I like to use Elicit is by asking a statistical/factual question.

Here’s an example:

Thanks to the abstract summary, I can save time in finding what I am looking for.

The “network signal” resembling sign that you see on a research paper is the SCImago Journal Rank score of that paper.

It helps to filter out the best from the rest and refer to only what’s the most reliable.

And for every question you put in, Elicit will also provide you with the summary of the top 4 papers on the left sidebar.

And besides the abstract summary, Elicit also provides information on the following:

When you open a certain paper, you will see more details about it and the ability to ask follow-up questions about the research paper.

Although the follow-up question feature requires a lot of improvement, all these features together make Elicit an efficient tool to use.

Not to mention the fact that you can also upload your own PDFs and make sense of them in seconds.

#5 – Paperguide

Best AI research assistant for auto-analyzing PDFs and having AI conversations about research

Pros

Cons

Paperguide is an AI-powered research assistant that combines reference management, document analysis, and writing support.

It all starts with you uploading a document or a file. Paperguide enables you to upload up to 3 documents simultaneously.

You can upload it in the following formats:

For instance, I upload a short YouTube video explaining how to preserve eye health.

Within seconds, Paperguide provides me with a video viewer that consists of the video and transcript.

On the right, Paperguide gives me some relevant questions to ask about this video. I also get an option to ask a custom question.

I can have back-and-forth conversations with the chat assistant until I understand what the video or a research paper is trying to say. Great way to make learning fun and retentive.

SIDENOTE: You can even share your chats with others with a quick shareable link.

Moving on, we have an AI Search feature.

It allows you to get literature reviews and answers to any academic query that you might have.

Ask a question and get answers backed by the data from the top research papers.

You can even choose to include your saved references.

Speaking of which, Paperguide’s Reference Manager is phenomenal. Somehow, they managed to make it minimal along with super functional.

It enables you to upload research papers directly via a URL, file upload, online paper search, and even via manual upload. There is also an option to upload a paper by adding BibTex or RIS.

The search papers online feature is particularly powerful.

Enter any keyword, question, or name of the paper you are looking for, and Paperguide searches for it across the web.

Once you add a paper to Paperguide’s reference manager, click on it to unfold details like Bibliography, AI Summary, Notes, Doc, and Info.

Inside Doc, click on View PDF and you will land on Paperguide’s note-taking interface. You can annotate, highlight, draw, and take notes all with the integration of the AI chat feature.

Super powerful!

Overall, Paperguide is one of the best AI academic research assistants out there. And when it comes to simplicity, it is simply unrivaled.

Features

Pricing

Paperguide’s pricing is refreshingly simple.

Three tiers:

1. Free
2. Starter ($12/month) or ($9 per month on yearly billing)
3. and Advanced ($20/month) or ($16 per month on yearly billing).

The Free plan is surprisingly robust. 10 AI generations daily, 500 MB storage, and access to core features like the AI Research Assistant.

Starter unlocks the floodgates with unlimited AI generations and 10 GB storage. It’s where serious researchers will likely land.

Advanced at $20 per month is for data hoarders, offering unlimited storage.

All plans include the usual suspects: reference management, AI summaries, and chat features. An AI Writer is coming soon to all tiers, which could be a game-changer.

My Experience With Paperguide

I’ve been testing and using Paperguide for a while now.

The first thing you notice is how Paperguide handles documents. You can throw PDFs, Word files, and even URLs at it.

It doesn’t just store them – it devours them, processes them, and spits out insights.

But here’s where it gets interesting: you can talk to your documents. Yes, talk. It’s as if every paper you upload suddenly becomes sentient.

I uploaded a dense paper on quantum computing. Normally, I’d spend hours decoding it. With Paperguide, I just asked, “What’s the key takeaway here?” and boom – clarity.

The AI search feature is a game-changer. You ask a question, and it doesn’t just find papers – it synthesizes answers from them.

The reference manager is surprisingly good.

Most reference managers feel like they were designed by people who hate researchers. This one feels like it was designed by someone who actually writes papers.

So yeah, Paperguide is pretty good at managing references and discovering relevant research.

Use coupon code DHRUVIR10 at checkout to get a 10% discount on your first payment for the Paperguide’s paid plan.

#6 – Julius AI

Best AI research assistant for turning complex data analysis into natural conversations

Pros

Cons

Julius AI is a groundbreaking tool that brings the power of advanced data analysis and visualization to everyone, regardless of technical expertise.

It lets you interact with your data files using simple natural language, just like you would chat with an AI assistant.

With Julius AI, you can upload any type of data file—Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, CSVs, you name it—and then ask it to perform complex operations like regression modeling, projections, statistical analysis, and more.

Julius AI is also an incredibly versatile visualization tool. You can create any type of chart or graph, from basic bar plots to intricate 3D visualizations and geographic maps.

The real game-changer, though, is Julius AI’s ability to generate interactive and animated visualizations that bring your data to life.

As a researcher, it can even allow you to upload multiple research papers and summarize them.

Features

Pricing

Julius AI has a free plan where you can send 15 messages/month.

Below are its paid plan options:

My Experience With Julius AI

Julius AI is incredibly versatile—it’s like having a genius AI assistant that can handle any data-related task you throw at it.

From insightful visualizations to coding assistance to multimedia editing, the sheer breadth of capabilities is mind-blowing.

What I love most is how accessible it makes complex stuff like summarizing a lot of academic papers at once and providing clear insights.

The conversational interface is super intuitive too. If you can use ChatGPT, you’ll be right at home chatting with Julius.

That said, the inability to permanently save file uploads is a bit limiting for larger, ongoing projects.

And like any AI tool, you have to be wary of potential biases or hallucinations from the underlying language models.

If seamless data analysis minus the technical overhead appeals to you, I’d definitely recommend giving Julius AI a shot, even on the free tier.

It’s that impressive.

Use coupon code DHRUVIR at checkout to get a 10% discount on your first payment for any Julius AI’s paid plans.

Read our Julius AI review.

#7 – Perplexity AI

Best AI research assistant for real-time research with GPT-4 powered insights

Pros

Cons

Perplexity is my go-to tool for initial research. In fact, I used Perplexity to help me research for this blog post.

It is an AI-powered search engine that enables you to unlock the real power of Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Meaning, like ChatGPT, you can ask any question to Perplexity, and it will come up with a variety of responses from different sources.

Perplexity does a great job of gathering a lot of facts and/or opinions to help you make a sound decision.

With Perplexity, you can pull relevant results from:

Besides being like plug and play, Perplexity AI is available on the web, as a Chrome extension, and as an app for Android and iOS, making it easy to access.

Features

Besides a lot of other things, Perplexity’s speed is something worth considering. I have found it to be a lot faster than ChatGPT in giving results.

On top of that, here are its features:

Pricing

You can use Perplexity for free. With the free plan, you get access to unlimited searches from all places (Google, YouTube, Reddit…), and GPT-4-powered 5 copilot searches every four hours.

The pro plan costs $20/month, enabling you to access SOTA (state-of-the-art) LLMs for all answers. Additionally, you get 600 copilot searches per day and priority access to all future updates.

You can even visualize up to 50 answers/day inside Perplexity Playground AI, with image models such as DALL-E, SDXL, etc.

My Experience With Perplexity AI

Launched in August 2022, I got my hands on Perplexity when I started searching for an online tool that could help me with my capstone project.

Since December 2022, I have been using it to help me with—extracting crucial ideas from YouTube videos, extracting honest opinions from Reddit, and plenty more.

For research and brain dumps, one of the best things you can do with Perplexity is to plug in any question you have, choose academic as your focus, and hit enter.

Thanks to Perplexity, you don’t ever have to do a manual search for these published papers on Google Scholar, JSTOR, and whatnot.

Now let’s say you are doing research on “best dog food brands in the United States” and you want to generate a decent list of brands that live up to the mark.

In this case, you can turn on Perplexity’s copilot and then ask a question like, “Help me come with a list of the best dog food brands in the United States.”

It will start by searching the web (or any focus source you have chosen) and consider all the relevant sources:

And come up with, in this case, a list of what you were looking for:

To check the answer sources, scroll beneath the answer and you will these symbols:

This symbol reveals all the sources it took the answers from. This is helpful for you to double-check the authenticity of the sources.

And as discussed earlier, at the very end, you can see all the related questions you might have, in this case, about, dog brands in the US.

I see myself using Perplexity for all the initial searches, for most if not all queries, generally speaking.

For me, it’s like Perplexity > Google (through Perplexity source) > To the targeted article a YouTube video, or an academic paper.

In this way, the answers I want are not only filtered but also of better quality.

Read our Perplexity AI review.

#8 – Semantic Scholar

Best AI research assistant for AI-powered paper recommendations and influence tracking

Pros

Cons

Semantic Scholar is a simplistic yet powerful AI-driven search engine to analyze research papers, extract crucial information, and generate relevant recommendations.

It offers access to a vast database containing over 207 million papers from all fields of science.

It’s very easy to use, and you can utilize its search functionality to find relevant research papers.

The search can be filtered using parameters such as journals and conferences, authors, publication types, and date ranges.

Even better? Semantic Scholar is open source and free to use.

Whether you are a student, academic researcher, or professional in any field, Semantic Scholar can be a valuable asset for your research endeavors.

Features

Pricing

Semantic Scholar is free to use.

Conclusion

I don’t use Semantic Scholar because Elicit already does a commendable job of finding papers and providing me with a summary.

But, Semantic Scholar can complement Elicit.

Because while Elicit is great at providing you with concise abstracts, Semantic Scholar’s AI-equipped recommendation engine is powerful.

In fact, they have a separate feature where you can set up recommendations based on the existing papers you select.

All you need to do is enter your topic keyword:

Select three papers:

And done! You have now set up your library of influential papers, where Semantic Scholar will provide you with recommendations.

#9 – Consensus

Best AI research assistant for getting verified scientific answers from peer-reviewed sources

Pros

Cons

Consensus is an AI-powered beautiful search engine to assist researchers, students, doctors, professionals, and evidence-conscious consumers in conducting effective research.

Consensus is specifically designed to help you find insights in research papers.

It allows you to ask research questions and provides relevant results based on peer-reviewed scientific literature.

One of the best things about Consensus is its vast database of over 200 million scientific papers.

You can search through this extensive collection without needing to rely on specific keyword matches, making it easier to access relevant information.

With a free plan offering unlimited searches, there is no reason not to try Consensus.

Features

Pricing

Consensus offers two different plans for its users: Free and Premium.

With the free plan, you get unlimited searches and access to research quality indicators, such as Study Types and Journal Metrics. You can also enjoy three summaries and three Consensus Meters per month.

Premium plan costs $9.99 per month. With Premium, you get everything included in the Free plan, plus some great extras. You’ll have access to unlimited GPT-4 Summaries and Consensus Meters, which can be useful for your research needs.

SIDENOTE: If you happen to be a student, you can claim a 40% student discount on the paid plan.

Conclusion

Consensus is interesting and if you’re into scientific research, it can be very useful and time-saving.

While Consensus does not allow you to ask follow-up questions like Elicit, its synthesize feature (summary) and consensus meter are pretty cool.