Research Individual from $20/mo; institutional licensing available Editor's pick

Scite

AI-powered citation analysis showing whether scientific claims are supported, contradicted, or merely mentioned across 1.2B+ citations.

Updated 2026-05-01

8.5

AI Score / 10

Scite 8.5/10 Visit

Quick answer

Yes, within limits. Scite runs a free tier with paid plans above it.

Listed pricing: Individual from $20/mo; institutional licensing available.

Pricing not re-verified Is it free? Pricing Is it worth it?

Best for

Researchers, universities, and R&D teams who need to know whether a paper's findings are supported or contradicted.

Use cases

Research

Overview

Scite takes a fundamentally different approach to research tools. Instead of just finding papers, it analyzes how papers cite each other — classifying every citation as supporting, contradicting, or merely mentioning a claim. This "Smart Citations" system lets you instantly see whether a study's findings have been validated or challenged by subsequent research, something no other tool does at this scale.

The platform indexes over 1.2 billion citation statements from 187M+ articles, giving it deep coverage across scientific disciplines. Scite's AI Assistant can answer research questions by pulling evidence from this citation network, always grounding responses in real papers with classified citation context. It's particularly valuable for literature reviews, where knowing that 15 papers support a finding and 3 contradict it is far more useful than a simple citation count.

Universities, publishers, and R&D teams have adopted Scite for research validation workflows. The browser extension lets you check citation context on any paper you encounter, and integration with reference managers like Zotero makes it easy to audit the evidence behind papers you've already collected.

Is Scite free?

Yes, within limits. Scite runs a free tier with paid plans above it.

What the free tier covers: Limited number of Smart Citation searches per month.

Listed pricing: Individual from $20/mo; institutional licensing available.

Pricing on this page has not been re-verified. The entry was last edited on 2026-05-01, and no separate pricing check has been run since. Treat the figures as a record of what was published then and confirm on the official site.

What the free tier leaves out

Read straight off the plan list below. Vendors move features between tiers, so check the current split before you pay.

Individual $20/mo Unlimited Smart Citations, AI Assistant, browser extension, reference manager integration
Institutional Custom Campus-wide access, admin dashboard, usage analytics, dedicated support

Scite pricing

Plan	Price	What's included
Free	Free	Limited Smart Citation searches, basic dashboards
Individual	$20/mo	Unlimited Smart Citations, AI Assistant, browser extension, reference manager integration
Institutional	Custom	Campus-wide access, admin dashboard, usage analytics, dedicated support

Free Free

Limited Smart Citation searches, basic dashboards

Individual $20/mo

Unlimited Smart Citations, AI Assistant, browser extension, reference manager integration

Institutional Custom

Campus-wide access, admin dashboard, usage analytics, dedicated support

One plan carries no published number: Institutional, recorded as “Custom”. Nothing is estimated in its place. The vendor's own pricing page is the only source for those figures.

Is Scite worth it?

Worth it for Researchers, universities, and R&D teams who need to know whether a paper's findings are supported or contradicted.

You can test that on the free tier before paying anything. The recorded trade-offs are listed below, and any one of them can settle the question on its own.

The 8.5/10 AI Score is an editorial read of published capability, price and shipping pace. Nobody here has hands-on hours with Scite. How we verify.

Worth it if

The strengths recorded against this entry.

Smart Citations show whether findings are supported or contradicted — unique and genuinely useful
Massive index of 1.2B+ citation statements across 187M+ articles
AI Assistant grounds answers in real citation evidence rather than general knowledge
Browser extension and Zotero integration fit into existing research workflows

Not worth it if

Any one of these blocks your use case.

No meaningful free tier — you need the $20/mo plan for real research use
Coverage skews toward STEM and biomedical literature; humanities and social sciences are thinner
Cannot upload or analyze your own documents — only works with indexed papers
Citation classification isn't perfect and occasionally miscategorizes nuanced references

What sets Scite apart

Smart Citations classify each citation as supporting, contradicting, or mentioning
Indexes 1.2B+ citation statements across 187M+ articles
Browser extension and Zotero integration for existing workflows

Key features

Smart Citations

Every citation is classified as supporting, contradicting, or mentioning. See at a glance whether a paper's claims hold up across the literature.

Citation Context

Read the exact text surrounding each citation to understand how a paper was referenced — no need to open dozens of PDFs.

AI Assistant

Ask research questions and get answers grounded in classified citation evidence from the full 187M+ article database.

How it compares

Tool	Best for	Pricing	Score
Scite	Researchers, universities, and R&D teams who need to know whether a paper's findings are supported or contradicted.	Individual from $20/mo; institutional licensing available	8.5/10
Perplexity AI vs Perplexity AI →	Knowledge workers and researchers who want cited, synthesized answers instead of a list of links to click through.	Freemium	9.4/10
NotebookLM vs NotebookLM →	Students, researchers, and professionals who need answers grounded strictly in the specific documents they upload.	Free	9.1/10
Inkling-Small vs Inkling-Small →	—	Free — open weights download; Tinker Playground access	8.8/10