Zendy Review: When Good Enough Is Better Than Perfect

What is Zendy?

Zendy is an AI-powered research library that gives you access to over 40 million scholarly articles, journals, and e-books for less than the cost of a single paywalled article.

It combines massive content access (over 40.7 million research publications and 1.1 million e-books) with AI tools specifically designed to make research more efficient.

Zendy’s flagship feature is ZAIA (Zendy AI Assistant), a domain-specific large language model developed by their data science team.

Unlike general-purpose AI models, ZAIA is specifically trained on academic research data. It can analyze millions of papers to provide referenced, credible answers to research questions.

Zendy also includes AI-powered summarization tools that automatically extract key sections from research papers (abstract, methods, results, discussions), highlight important phrases, and help you organize your reading lists for easier retrieval.

Getting started with Zendy

Zendy’s signup process takes less time than making a cup of coffee.

Visit Zendy’s homepage and click the “Sign up” button. You can create an account using your email, or if you prefer fewer passwords in your life, connect via Google, Apple, or Facebook.

What happens next reveals something about how Zendy thinks about personalization.

You’re directed to their dashboard and prompted to select up to five interest areas. This simple step creates a surprisingly effective filter for what follows.

Once you’ve made your selections, Zendy immediately populates your view with “top-rated articles” that match your interests.

I haven’t been able to determine how frequently this curated list refreshes.

But it’s worth noting that you can update your interests anytime, which presumably refreshes your recommendations.

That’s it.

You’re now equipped to start exploring Zendy’s full capabilities.

Ease of use

Zendy’s interface is ugly.

I don’t say this to be mean, but because it’s true, and the truth is interesting: the ugliness doesn’t matter.

The purpose of an academic research tool isn’t to look pretty, but to help you find and process information efficiently.

And here, Zendy excels.

While competitors like Elicit and SciSpace have invested in polished interfaces, Zendy focused on function.

The result is a minimalist, whitespace-heavy design that puts the essentials front and center.

The left sidebar contains exactly what you need: Home, Lists, Bookmarks, ZAIA, and their blog.

Nothing more.

This makes the learning curve practically zero.

I’ve tested many AI research tools for academics. Zendy might have the least attractive interface among them, but it’s the easiest to start using productively.

ZAIA AI Research Assistant

ZAIA is Zendy’s AI assistant.

It does two things: conversation and PDF analysis.

Let’s look at each.

Conversation

ZAIA’s conversation interface is almost aggressively minimal. You type a question, and it answers with references to academic papers.

I tested it with a research question about vertical farming:

“How has the development of vertical farming technology evolved over the past decade, and what are the most promising innovations addressing its energy efficiency challenges?”

ZAIA responded quickly with a thorough answer that cited two research papers.

Hovering over the references showed details in the sidebar. Clicking took me directly to the papers.

This is both good and bad. Good because it works. Bad because it’s limited to just two references, regardless of the complexity of the question.

The pattern held when I tested a non-research question:

“If you could design your ideal living space without any financial constraints, what three features would you prioritize and why?”

ZAIA answered well, but again with the same two-reference limit.

All conversations are saved unless you delete them.

PDF Analysis

ZAIA supposedly can analyze PDFs or URLs to extract and summarize sections like abstract, methods, results, and references.

There are constraints: files must be under 5 MB, shorter than 120 pages, and well-structured.

But here’s where things break down.

Despite multiple attempts with various documents—from simple PDFs to academic papers to article URLs—the feature consistently failed.

Every upload resulted in the same error: “The PDF cannot be analysed. The content is either too short, or does not contain sections.”

This highlights an important truth about software products: a feature that doesn’t work is worse than no feature at all. It creates expectations that lead to disappointment.

If PDF analysis is crucial for your workflow, look elsewhere. Tools like SciSpace or Elicit will serve you better.

If you want to ask ZAIA questions about a specific paper, you can do that by bookmarking that research paper.

Then, head towards the Bookmarks section to find that paper and click “Ask ZAIA”.

A conversation chat popup will appear where you can start interacting with the paper using AI.

In some papers, ZAIA will automatically generate a bunch of relevant questions for you to ask related to that paper.

Useful, if you ask me.

PDF viewer

Zendy’s PDF viewer is straightforward. You open any research paper and get this:

The left sidebar contains all the metadata you’d expect—author names, publication year, H-Index, DOI, etc.

You can collapse it when you need more reading space.

Citation is handled well. Click “Cite” and choose your format: Harvard, Vancouver, APA 6th edition, or MLA 7th edition.

The sidebar also includes an AI-generated paper summary with five sections: Insights, Introduction, Results, Discussions and Conclusion. This is surprisingly useful when you’re scanning dozens of papers.

NOTE: This AI-generated section is apparantly only displayed in some papers.

Under “Tools,” you’ll find Notes for jotting down thoughts and Key Phrases, which automatically highlight important terms in the paper.

But here’s the problem:

Zendy’s PDF viewer lacks the most essential research features. You can’t highlight text, make annotations, or collaborate with others.

This omission is puzzling.

A research tool without highlighting is like a word processor that won’t let you delete.

It forces you to use a separate tool alongside Zendy, breaking your workflow at precisely the moment when concentration matters most.

Custom lists and bookmarks

Zendy’s list feature is minimal.

You create folders, you organize papers.

That’s it.

The Bookmarks page divides into “Read History” and “Favourites.”

Again, nothing complex.

What’s interesting is what’s missing. Most tools would add tags, color coding, or sharing options.

Zendy doesn’t. They’ve optimized for what researchers actually need versus what marketing thinks they want.

We covered Smart research recommendations earlier when discussing Zendy’s onboarding. The feature remains exactly as described—useful without being intrusive.

How much does Zendy cost?

Zendy’s pricing model is one of those cases where the value equation isn’t hard to calculate.

They offer three tiers:

1. Zendy Open — Free access to 37 M+ open-access articles with limited AI usage (5 ZAIA queries, 5 PDF analyses, unlimited insights, 5 summarizations, and 5 keyphrase highlights per month).
   
2. Zendy Tools — $9.50/month or $79.80/year for the same open-access content but with unlimited usage of all AI features.
   
3. Zendy Plus — $29.50/month or $247.80/year for everything in Tools, plus access to paywalled research from top publishers.

Students get a 50% discount with a verified .edu or .ac email address. There are also institutional plans if you contact them directly.

Alternatives to Zendy

Research tools are worthless unless they give you more insights per hour. Here are three that actually do:

1. SciSpace

SciSpace focuses on making papers readable instead of just accessible. It automatically extracts methods, findings, and limitations—exactly what researchers spend hours hunting for manually. The interface is clean and task-focused.

2. Elicit

Elicit helps you find relevant papers even when they don’t match your keywords. This matters because breakthrough ideas often hide behind unfamiliar terminology. Elicit searches 125 million academic papers and uses full text when available, creating a specialized tool rather than a general one.

3. Scite

Scite reveals what research papers say about each other through Smart Citations that provide context about cited claims. This visualizes the scientific conversation rather than treating papers as isolated documents. It integrates with reference managers like Zotero and Mendeley, letting you build on your existing workflow rather than replacing it.

So these were the three alternatives worth considering. Each solves a specific research problem that Zendy doesn’t quite nail.