Elicit AI Review: How I Cut My Research Time in Half

If you’ve ever stared at a mountain of research papers wondering how on earth you’ll make sense of them all, you’re not the only one.

That’s why I decided to try Elicit AI. It felt like having a personal research assistant who instantly finds, organizes, and summarizes papers. It saves hours of tedious work despite having to double-check the sources myself.

In this Elicit AI review, I’ll discuss the pros and cons, what it is, who it’s best for, and its key features. Then, I’ll show you how I used it to generate a research report, find papers, and chat with them.

I’ll finish the article by comparing Elicit with my top three alternatives (SciSpace, Somantic Scholar, and Paperguide). By the end, you’ll know which tool is right for you!

Verdict

Elicit AI is excellent for quickly finding, summarizing, and organizing research, while also identifying trends and gaps. However, it can miss studies, make mistakes, mostly works with English papers, and ultimately isn’t as effective as a human at deep analysis.

Pros and Cons

• Saves time by quickly sourcing and summarizing hundreds of research papers and clinical trials
• Organizes key details into tables that can be easily analyzed
• Browser extension to retrieve full-text papers
• Helps spot trends, themes, and research gaps
• Simple and research-focused interface

• May only find a small fraction of relevant studies
• Outputs can be incorrect, so human checks are needed
• Mainly works with English scholarly articles and is best for early-stage research
• Not as good as a human at complex analysis or understanding detailed findings
• Despite the simple UI design of the interface, it may be confusing for some to navigate

What is Elicit AI?

Elicit AI is an AI research assistant that helps researchers find, read, and summarize academic papers faster. It saves time by gathering and organizing research for you.

Elicit isn’t your average research assistant. It was built from the ground up specifically for scientific and academic research.

In other words, it’s not trying to help you write birthday cards or plan a vacation itinerary. Its entire purpose is to help you find and analyze research papers faster than you could on your own.

Elicit AI vs. General AI Chatbots

Unlike AI chatbots made for general purposes like ChatGPT or Perplexity, Elicit doesn’t just generate responses from its training data and hope for the best. It runs a semantic search across a database of over 138 million academic papers and 545,000 clinical trials.

Meanwhile, if you ask ChatGPT a research question, you’ll get a confident-sounding answer that turns out to be partially hallucinated. With Elicit, every result is tied to a real paper with real authors and a real DOI number.

Structured Research Workflows

The way Elicit handles research workflows is what really sets it apart. It’s not just a search engine for papers.

You can ask it a specific research question, and it’ll pull relevant studies, extract key findings, identify methodologies, sample sizes, and outcomes. Then, it’ll organize all of it into a clean table that makes comparison incredibly simple.

User-Friendliness

Despite being built for heavy research use, it’s surprisingly approachable and user-friendly. It’s not some clunky academic interface with an outdated design. It’s actually really clean and intuitive.

You type in a natural language research question, and it just works. The AI understands the intent behind your question and finds papers that are actually relevant, not just keyword matches.

Who is Elicit AI Best For?

Here’s who Elicit AI is best for:

• Academic researchers can use Elicit AI to automatically generate research reports, source papers, and explore new research areas without manually sifting through thousands of studies.
• Clinical and medical professionals can use Elicit AI to access clinical trials, compare study results, and summarize drug efficacy.
• Professional research groups can use Elicit AI to quickly screen thousands of papers and gather accurate data.
• Industry analysts (R&D and CPG) can use Elicit AI to research product safety and efficacy, back marketing claims with science, and analyze competitive landscapes.
• Policy makers and government agencies can use Elicit AI to quickly summarize scientific research and create policy briefs without advanced research skills.
• Students (undergraduate and graduate) can use Elicit AI to break down complex papers into summaries and conduct research for essays, projects, and theses more efficiently.

Elicit AI Key Features

Here are Elicit AI’s key features:

• Natural-language search across 138M+ papers and 500k+ clinical trials; finds relevance even without perfect keywords.
• Structured summarization of papers (titles, abstracts, methods, results, and references), linking their claims to the exact source.
• Flexible data extraction that pulls details from many papers simultaneously into a clean table.
• Analyze up to 1,000 papers at once and extract up to 20,000 data points in a single go.
• Review hundreds of studies, customize the columns, and pull out key information.
• Multiple export options, including PDF, CSV, BIB, and RIS for comprehensive data analysis.
• Integration with reference managers like Zotero to fit into existing academic workflows.
• Short summaries of researched papers are displayed next to them in a table.
• Chat with selected papers to clarify details without rereading the whole article.
• Get alerts to stay on top of the newest research discoveries.

How to Use Elicit AI

Here’s how I used Elicit AI to generate a research report, find papers, and chat with them:

1. Sign Up for Elicit AI
2. Generate a Research Report
3. View the Sources & Data Points
4. View the Citations
5. Find Papers
6. View the Summaries & DOI Numbers
7. Add Columns
8. Chat with Papers
9. Check the Accuracy

Step 1: Sign Up for Elicit AI

I started by going to elicit.com and going to “Sign Up” on the top right.

Step 2: Generate a Research Report

Once my account was created, I was taken to an empty window where I could ask a research question to automatically generate a structured research report.

There were also some other tools:

• Systematic Review (Pro)
• Find Papers
• Paper Chat
• Extract Data (Pro)
• Competitive Landscape Agent
• General Research Agent

I started by giving the Research Report tool the following question: “How does the effectiveness of online cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) compare to face-to-face CBT in treating depression?”

Note that at the bottom, you can switch the source between “Research Papers” and “Clinical Trials.” Also, use the report generations wisely. You only get two automated reports per month on the free Basic plan.

Step 3: View the Sources & Data Points

Immediately, Elicit got to work.

Within seconds, I had an entire research report with an abstract, methods, results, and references. On the right, I could view the sources and data points and export the report in different file types, like PDF.

Step 4: View the Citations

Throughout the text were clickable citations with quotes supporting the report’s claims. This made it easy to verify where each claim came from without digging through dozens of tabs.

Step 5: Find Papers

Back in my tools on the homepage, I wanted to go deeper with “Find Papers” to build my own evidence. I selected “Find Papers” and gave it the same question I gave the “Research Report.”

Step 6: View the Summaries & DOI Numbers

Seconds later, Elicit gathered 10 sources, each with a one-sentence summary in a table format.

The summaries were a lifesaver, allowing me to quickly see which studies were actually relevant before opening anything. Each paper also had a DOI number for easy access to the full text, making it simple to read the original study if I wanted more details.

Step 7: Add Columns

I could even add columns to track specific details, like sample size or key findings. Note that there are limits on how many columns you can add, depending on the plan, the free plan being two.

I was impressed to see that after adding the columns, Elicit automatically populated them for each paper. I just had to give the column a name and optional instructions. This made it easy to compare studies side by side and spot patterns or gaps in the research without leaving the platform.

Step 8: Chat with Papers

The “Paper Chat” tool was embedded in the sidebar for easy access. I made sure it was selected and asked it a comparative question to test its speed and accuracy: “Which of these papers had the largest sample size, and did they find a significant difference?”

Step 9: Check the Accuracy

About one minute later, Paper Chat gave me an answer. I sourced the paper, and it was accurate.

Overall, Elicit AI felt like a quick and efficient research helper that sourced, summarized, and organized research papers for me. It saved me a significant amount of time while still letting me confirm the sources myself.

Top 3 Elicit AI Alternatives

Here are the best Elicit AI alternatives:

SciSpace

The first Elicit AI alternative I’d recommend is SciSpace. It’s a research workspace that helps you find papers, generate literature reviews, draft content, create citations, and even chatectly with PDFs.

Both platforms focus on making academic research faster with citation-backed answers, paper summaries, and tools for extracting key insights from studies.

However, SciSpace stands out with its broader writing and productivity toolkit: an AI writer, paraphraser, citation generator, presentation tools, diagram generator, and even specialized agents like a biomedical agent. Meanwhile, Elicit AI is more narrowly focused on organizing and summarizing research and clinical trials into analyzable tables.

Choose Elicit AI to organize literature reviews and extract research data. Otherwise, choose SciSpace for one tool that finds papers, helps you write, and chats with PDFs.

Read my SciSpace Review or visit SciSpace!

Somantic Scholar

The next Elicit AI alternative I’d recommend is Semantic Scholar. It’s a free AI research tool that searches over 232 million scientific papers to discover relevant studies quickly.

On the one hand, Semantic Scholar stands out as a powerful search engine with broad coverage, a developer API, and tools like Semantic Reader for better reading. Meanwhile, Elicit AI focuses more on generating structured research reports, data extraction, and evidence tables.

Choose Elicit AI for quick research reports and comparing studies. Otherwise, choose Semantic Scholar for free access to millions of papers and tools to make reading more accessible.

Paperguide

The final Elicit AI alternative I’d recommend is Paperguide. Paperguide is an all-in-one AI research assistant that helps you find papers, conduct literature reviews, extract key data, manage references, and generate entire documents with citations.

Compared to Elicit, Paperguide stands out with deeper AI capabilities. You can chat with PDFs, draft documents, get AI insights on paper quality, and access a large 200+ million paper database. It also offers integrated reference management.

Meanwhile, Elicit AI is more straightforward. Its tools focus more specifically on research and excel at finding and summarizing papers quickly. It’s particularly useful for early-stage research.

Choose Paperguide for detailed research, automatic document writing, and managing references. Otherwise, choose Elicit AI for fast paper summaries and organized research reports.

Read my Paperguide Review or visit Paperguide!

Elicit AI Review: The Right Tool For You?

Overall, Elicit AI made my research process faster, more organized, and easier to verify. It’s perfect for quickly generating structured research reports, summarizing papers, and spotting trends.

While it’s not as effective as humans for deep research, it saved me hours compared to doing literature reviews by hand.

If Elicit doesn’t suit your needs, I’ve compiled the best alternatives I’ve tried myself:

• SciSpace is best for researchers who want an all-in-one workspace with AI writing, paraphrasing, and PDF chat.
• Semantic Scholar is best for students and researchers looking for free access to millions of scientific papers with powerful search and reading tools.
• Paperguide is best for academics and professionals who need comprehensive research support like full document drafting, PDF chat, AI insights, and reference management.

Thanks for reading my Elicit AI review! I hope you found it helpful.

Elicit AI offers a free Basic plan for casual exploration, or you can try Elicit Pro for free for 14-days. Try it for yourself and see how you like it!

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Elicit AI free or paid?

Elicit AI offers a free Basic plan with unlimited literature search, paper summaries, and chat capabilities. Paid subscriptions offer advanced features

Is Elicit AI legit?

Yes, Elicit AI is a legitimate AI research assistant that helps students and professionals quickly find, summarize, and organize academic research papers.

What is the use of Elicit AI?

Elicit AI is a research tool that finds, summarizes, and organizes academic papers for you. You ask a question, and it pulls key papers, makes tables, and highlights the key findings to save you a significant amount of time.

Is Elicit better than Perplexity?

Elicit is better for academic research and analyzing scientific papers. Meanwhile, Perplexity is better for general questions and broader searches. Elicit goes deep, while Perplexity is more versatile.

Is Elicit AI trustworthy?

Elicit AI is a reliable tool for research. It embeds accurate, clickable citations within the reports it generates. However, it’s meant to assist research, and it can miss some papers or make errors sometimes.

What are the limitations of Elicit AI?

Elicit AI is a great tool for speeding up literature reviews. However, it can make mistakes, miss some studies, and struggle with complex data. It works best as a helper, not a replacement for full database searches or expert analysis.