Paperguide
Paperguide is an AI research platform that unifies literature search, reference management, data extraction and cited writing for researchers and evidence synthesis teams, with every claim traceable to its source sentence across 200M+ peer-reviewed papers.
What is Paperguide?
Paperguide is an AI-native platform for scientific research workflows and evidence synthesis, published by Keevs Inc. It is built as four connected blocks rather than a single feature: AI Search for discovery, a Reference Manager for organisation, a Research Agent paired with Extract Data for synthesis, and an AI Writer for drafting.
Discovery runs on a corpus of more than 200 million peer-reviewed papers aggregated from PubMed, arXiv, OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar. AI Search reads a natural-language question, re-ranks results on relevance and journal quality signals — SJR quartile, SNIP, SJR score, citation metrics — and synthesises an answer from the twenty strongest papers. The Reference Manager imports Zotero and Mendeley libraries directly, EndNote through BibTeX or RIS, and accepts papers by DOI, URL or PDF, pulling metadata and open-access PDFs automatically. A built-in reader carries highlights, annotations and notes with the paper across projects.
The systematic review module is what sets the platform apart. A systematic review lives or dies by its method: a predefined protocol, a documented search, recorded screening decisions and a matching PRISMA flow generated from the review's real counts. Two modes exist. In Dual Review, two reviewers screen independently with a conflict resolver, and the AI never decides — it prepares the cited evidence. In AI Systematic Review, the AI rules and a named verifier confirms each stage. Either way the AI surfaces the relevant statements for each criterion and cites them in place, so a reviewer reads a few sourced sentences instead of a whole paper.
Extract Data turns selected papers into a table whose columns you define with an instruction, choosing between a free-text Answer, Yes/No or a fixed option list; every value links back to the sentence it came from, and the table exports to CSV or Excel. The Research Agent handles Chat with PDF, multi-step investigation and a Literature Review Report over up to 50 papers organised by theme. An MCP server plugs the corpus into Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor, and an institutional proxy such as EZproxy unlocks paywalled articles.
Shared workspaces with Edit, Reviewer and View-only roles serve the 974,000+ researchers Paperguide claims, across medical devices, HEOR consulting, pharma and life sciences, government and academia. The stated limit: it runs in the browser, with no offline access and no mobile app.
What it does
- Ask a research question in plain language and get a synthesised, cited answer drawn from 200M+ peer-reviewed papers
- Import your Zotero or Mendeley library, or add papers one by one by DOI, URL or PDF
- Run a systematic review with a predefined protocol, independent double screening and a generated PRISMA flow diagram
- Extract data into a table whose columns you define, with every value linked back to its source sentence
- Draft a cited document from your own library using more than 1,000 citation styles
- Connect the MCP server to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor and search without leaving your assistant
- Export your work as RIS, CSV, BIB, PDF, DOCX or Excel
When to use Paperguide / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Paperguide is the right fit.
When to use Paperguide
- Researchers and PhD candidates running literature reviews who would rather have one workspace than three to five separate tools
- Evidence synthesis teams producing PRISMA systematic reviews for a journal, an HTA dossier, a clinical evaluation report or a regulatory audit
- Regulatory affairs and medical device professionals who must defend every exclusion and every extracted figure in front of a reviewer or an auditor
- HEOR consultants and pharma or life sciences teams screening large volumes of papers under deadline; one customer screened and extracted a 2,000-paper PRISMA review in under a week
- Government and public policy analysts who need synthesised, citable answers drawn from peer-reviewed literature rather than open-web summaries
When not to use Paperguide
- Anyone who needs to work offline: Paperguide runs in the browser today, so an internet connection is required
- Mobile-first users, since there is no iOS or Android application
- Organisations that require EU data residency, as all data is hosted in the United States on Microsoft Azure
- Buyers whose procurement demands GDPR, SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification, all three of which are still announced as coming soon
- Teams working on internal, non-academic corpora rather than published scientific literature
How to use Paperguide
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create a free account from Start for free — no card is requested on the Free plan
- Import your existing library from Zotero or Mendeley in a single step, or from EndNote via BibTeX or RIS
- Add papers by DOI, URL or PDF upload, or capture them from any web page with the Chrome extension
- Enter your institutional proxy URL (EZproxy) to retrieve the paywalled articles your institution licenses
- Ask a question in plain language in AI Search, then save the cited results into your library
- For a systematic review, build the protocol first: the AI proposes eligibility criteria and extraction fields, you edit them, and the order of the criteria determines the exclusion reasons
- Let search results and library items be pooled and deduplicated before screening begins, and route any paper found along the way through the same screening path so the PRISMA counts stay honest
- Assign roles stage by stage — reviewers, verifiers and conflict resolver
- For extraction, define each column with a title and an instruction, choose its output type, run it on the selected papers, then export the table to CSV or Excel; RIS, BIB, PDF and DOCX are available at other stages
- Connect the MCP server if you work inside an assistant: Settings > Connectors > Add custom connector in Claude, paste the server URL leaving client ID and secret empty, then sign in with your Paperguide account
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Sentence-level traceability on every claim, every answer and every extracted value
- A genuinely tooled systematic review: predefined protocol, independent double screening, conflict resolver and a PRISMA diagram built from the review's real counts
- The final decision stays human and recorded; in Dual Review mode the AI never rules, it only prepares the cited evidence
- A broad, open corpus — PubMed, arXiv, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar — with source quality signals (SJR, SNIP, citations) visible before you cite
- Replaces several tools with a single workspace; customers report going from five tools to one, and three separate tools becoming one workspace
- Low-risk entry: a permanent free plan with 2,000 AI credits a month, MCP included and 10 API requests, then 9 USD per seat and per month on annual commitment, with a 30-day money-back guarantee on the first month
- Ownership of your content and of the AI outputs is stated without ambiguity in the terms, and the site interface is available in seven languages
Cons
- No certification held: GDPR, SOC 2 and ISO 27001 are all announced as coming soon
- A generic online-store privacy policy that talks about orders, shipping addresses and credit cards, poorly aligned with a research SaaS
- No published DPA, no subprocessor list, no Article 27 EU representative and no named DPO, with a single address — hello@paperguide.ai — for support, legal and GDPR alike
- Hosting in the United States only (Microsoft Azure), with transfers outside the EU explicitly announced to Canada and the United States
- The no-training clause is limited to public or generalized AI models, and the reservation that wording leaves is never explained
- Prices are displayed on annual commitment by default and the monthly rates are not rendered without JavaScript, while plans described as unlimited are subject to a fair-use policy with rate limiting
- No offline access and no mobile app, and several headline features are still marked coming soon (image and table extraction, PRISMA dual reviewer screening on Evidence)
Pricing & Plans
Paperguide operates on a freemium model. A permanent Free plan is available at no cost, alongside four paid tiers, one of which is quoted on request. The lowest paid entry point is 9.00 USD per seat and per month on the Plus plan, billed annually at 108 USD; the pricing page displays annual commitment rates by default and the corresponding monthly rates are not rendered in static HTML. Purchases are covered by a 100% money-back guarantee within 30 days of the initial purchase, applicable to the first month of the subscription only. A subscription may be cancelled at any time, with access retained until the end of the current billing cycle. AI credits act as the common currency across Research Agents, Research Reports, AI Writer and Systematic Reviews, and the MCP server draws on those same credits without a separate connector or API charge. A fair-use policy applies rate limiting to the plans described as unlimited.
- 2
- 000 AI credits a month
- Research Agent
- limited Reference Manager
- limited AI searches
- AI Writer
- up to 5 columns and 10 papers per extraction table
- Literature Review Report
- 12
- 500 AI credits a month
- systematic reviews up to 1
- 000 papers
- unlimited Reference Manager
- up to 50 columns and 100 papers per extraction table
- unlimited AI searches
- collaboration
- 50
- 000 AI credits a month
- systematic reviews up to 5
- 000 papers
- image and table extraction announced as coming soon
- everything else as in Plus
- and 500 Search API requests a month
- 150
- 000 AI credits a month
- systematic reviews up to 5
- 000 papers
- PRISMA-grade dual reviewer screening announced as coming soon
- a dedicated support channel and 1
- 500 Search API requests a month
- custom AI credits
- systematic reviews up to 20
- 000 papers
- custom columns and papers per extraction table
- and custom Search API requests
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Paperguide handles your data.
GDPR overview
Paperguide claims no GDPR compliance today. The home page lists GDPR, SOC 2 and ISO 27001 as coming soon, which is a roadmap statement rather than an attestation. The privacy policy does grant European residents the right to access the personal information held about them and to ask that it be corrected, updated or deleted, exercised by email, and it points to contract performance and legitimate interests as legal bases. It also states plainly that information will be transferred outside Europe, including to Canada and the United States, and that the site does not alter its data collection practices when it receives a Do Not Track signal. What is missing is substantial: no published DPA, no subprocessor list, no Article 27 EU representative, no named DPO, and no address or entity in the European Union. The only contact point is hello@paperguide.ai.
Who owns the data?
Paperguide's terms are unusually direct on ownership. Section 2A.1 states that you retain full ownership of every document, file, prompt and dataset you upload, and that Paperguide claims no ownership rights in that User Content. Section 2A.4 extends the same rule to machine output: AI-generated summaries, analyses and citations created from your content belong to you, and the publisher claims no right to reuse or redistribute them. What Paperguide takes instead is a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable licence under section 2A.2, granted solely to operate the service. One carve-out is worth knowing: product feedback and suggestions you send fall outside this regime under section 9 and can be used without compensation.
Reuse rights
Because ownership of both your uploads and the AI outputs stays with you, you can reuse, publish, export and redistribute what you extract or draft without asking permission. On the publisher's side, section 2A.3 says Paperguide treats User Content as confidential: it does not sell your data, does not share it with third parties for commercial purposes, and does not use it to train public or generalized AI models. Read literally, that last phrase is a commitment about a category of models rather than a blanket no-training pledge, and the reservation it leaves is never spelled out. Section 2A.5 allows aggregated, anonymised usage data — data that identifies neither you nor your content — to be used for service improvement and reliability. The licence granted in section 2A.2 explicitly excludes resale, disclosure and marketing use. On the public website the picture is looser: the privacy policy mentions Google Analytics and targeted advertising through Facebook, Google and Bing, and reads like a generic online store policy rather than one written for a research platform.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Paperguide states in its pricing FAQ that all Paperguide data is stored in a US location, on Microsoft Azure servers, protected by encryption and secure servers, and that data is neither shared nor sold. The references FAQ adds that research data is encrypted and stored securely, with regular backups. No EU region is offered and there is no data residency option, so a European institution has no way to keep its data inside the Union. The privacy policy confirms the direction of travel, announcing that information will be transferred outside Europe, including to Canada and the United States. One technical caveat is worth stating plainly: the site's DNS resolves to 76.76.21.21, an anycast node on AS16509 (Amazon.com Inc.). That describes where the marketing site is served, not necessarily where application data lives, and it should not be read as contradicting the Azure statement. Beyond the jurisdiction and the provider name, no further hosting detail is published.
Where Paperguide works
Country-level availability.
Not available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Paperguide.
- GDPR, SOC 2 and ISO 27001 are announced as coming soon: do not treat them as acquired when you assemble a procurement or ethics file
- The privacy policy is generic and speaks of orders, shipping and credit cards; it does not describe how a research platform actually processes your data
- The no-training clause targets public or generalized AI models only, and the wording leaves a reservation that is never explained
- All data is hosted in the United States, transfers outside the EU to Canada and the United States are announced, and no DPA, subprocessor list or Article 27 EU representative is published — with a single channel handling support, legal and GDPR requests
- Prices are shown on annual commitment by default: the real monthly cost is higher and is not visible without JavaScript, and plans described as unlimited are subject to fair-use rate limiting
- Several features advertised on the plan pages are marked coming soon; check what actually ships before buying for a specific need
- Cited sentences are easy to accept at face value, and reading a few sourced statements instead of the full paper can quietly erode the critical reading a review depends on: a systematic review remains a human responsibility, and auditability rests on your team's discipline rather than on the software
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low for everyday use. Paperguide is a web tool with nothing to install: a free account takes a few clicks and a Zotero or Mendeley library imports in one step. Two optional pieces raise the bar. The Chrome extension must be installed for web capture and institutional library access, and the institutional proxy (EZproxy) needs a URL entered, usually an administrator or librarian task. Connecting the MCP server is a stated three-step operation. No development skills are needed for normal use; only the Search API assumes technical ability. On a systematic review, the load is methodological rather than technical.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Paperguide
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Paperguide.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free plan?
Can I cancel at any time, and is there a refund?
Where is my data hosted?
Is my content used to train AI models?
Can I import my library from Zotero, Mendeley or EndNote?
How do I reach paywalled articles?
Does the AI make screening decisions for me in a systematic review?
Can I plug Paperguide into Claude or ChatGPT?
Is Paperguide GDPR compliant?
Is there offline access or a mobile app?
Should you pick Paperguide?
Paperguide is a solid, deliberately specialised tool. It sits on open, well-regarded corpora — PubMed, arXiv, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar — and, unlike most AI research assistants, it treats the systematic review as a method rather than a feature: a predefined protocol, a documented search, recorded screening decisions and a PRISMA diagram built from the review's real counts.
Its real differentiator is not the size of the index but the discipline around it. Every claim, every answer and every extracted value points back to the sentence it came from, and the final call stays human and recorded — in Dual Review mode the AI never decides, it only prepares the cited evidence. For anyone who will have to defend an exclusion to a reviewer or an auditor, that is the difference between a shortcut and a usable method.
The entry point carries little risk. The free plan is permanent, Zotero and Mendeley libraries import in a single step, and the first paid tier costs 9 USD per seat and per month on annual commitment, with a 30-day money-back guarantee covering the first month.
The reservation is compliance maturity. Nothing is certified: GDPR, SOC 2 and ISO 27001 are all announced as coming soon. The privacy policy reads like a generic online store, with orders, shipping and credit cards, and does not describe how a research platform actually handles data. Hosting is United States only, transfers outside Europe are explicit, and a single address handles support, legal and GDPR requests alike.
The verdict is therefore split. For academic research and evidence synthesis, Paperguide is convincing and, at this price, easy to try. For a regulated European setting, treat the compliance file as unfinished business to investigate before adoption rather than a box already ticked.
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