Elicit
Elicit is an AI research assistant that searches 138 million academic papers and 545,000 clinical trial records, then summarizes them, extracts data into tables and produces fully cited reports for researchers in academia and industry.
What is Elicit?
Elicit is an AI research assistant published by Elicit Research, PBC, a public benefit corporation based in Covina, California, whose stated ambition is to help researchers be 10x more evidence-based. It works over a database of 138 million academic papers, open access and paywalled, plus 545,000 clinical trial registrations from clinicaltrials.gov. Four building blocks sit on that corpus: a Research agent, semantic Search, Reports and a Systematic literature review workflow, supported by a Library of saved sources and Alerts on new publications. The Research agent gathers evidence from scientific databases, journals, public sources and documents you upload, then returns reports, tables, figures, bioinformatics analyses, calculations and slides, all cited. Elicit says a single pass can surface up to 1,000 relevant papers and analyze 20,000 data points, with every generated claim backed by a sentence-level citation. The publisher reports its own evaluations: 95% recall on search, 97% accuracy on abstract screening and 99% on full text, and 96% extraction accuracy across 994 Cochrane reviews. Systematic reviews follow PRISMA 2020 and are presented as reproducible, traceable and auditable, with up to 80% of review time saved. Access is through the web app, an API and an MCP server, and dedicated pages address pharma, academia, medtech, policy and government, consumer goods, manufacturing, and software.
What it does
- Search 138 million academic papers and 545,000 clinical trial registrations by meaning rather than by keyword
- Generate fully cited research reports, with a citation attached to each sentence-level claim
- Extract data from every paper into customizable tables, from 5 to 40 columns depending on the plan
- Automate the screening and extraction stages of a systematic review, up to 40,000 papers on Enterprise
- Summarize an unlimited number of papers and chat with their full text
- Organize sources in a reusable Library, set alerts on new work, and export to RIS, CSV, BIB, PDF or DOCX
- Connect the documented API and the MCP server to your own agents and workflows
When to use Elicit / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Elicit is the right fit.
When to use Elicit
- Researchers running systematic literature reviews who need PRISMA 2020-compatible screening and extraction that stays reproducible and auditable
- Pharma, medtech and biotech R&D teams that must screen hundreds of papers before a high-stakes decision
- Academics, PhD candidates and students exploring an unfamiliar field where the right keywords are not known yet, since search works on meaning rather than terms
- Policy and government analysts who need evidence summaries where every claim is backed by a sentence-level citation
- Research teams working on the same review, using live editing, real-time collaboration and the admin panel available on the Scale plan
When not to use Elicit
- Anyone looking for a general-purpose web search engine or chatbot: the corpus is limited to academic papers and clinical trial registrations
- Mobile-first users, as no iOS or Android application is listed on the site; access is through the web app and the API
- Free and Plus subscribers who need programmatic access, since API access starts on the Pro plan and is only unlimited on Enterprise
- Researchers expecting the tool to judge study quality on its own, as the publisher states that heuristics such as citation and journal counts are helpful but imperfect
- Teams that require a localized interface, because no multilingual interface is documented and the site is published in English only
How to use Elicit
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account with an email address, or sign in with a Google account
- Start on the free Basic plan, for which no payment card is mentioned
- Ask your research question in plain language instead of keywords, since search matches on meaning
- Let Elicit search across millions of papers and generate a structured, cited report in seconds
- Narrow the results with metadata filters and screening criteria
- Extract the findings into a table and add your own columns, 5, 20, 30 or 40 depending on the plan
- Keep the papers you want in the Library, and create Alerts to follow new work on the topic
- Export in RIS, CSV, BIB, PDF or DOCX on a paid plan, or import an existing Zotero library
- Plug in the API documented at docs.elicit.com or the MCP server from the Pro plan onwards
- Use the self-service help center at support.elicit.com, or the Talk to Sales form for a guided demonstration
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Very broad coverage: 138 million papers, open access and paywalled, plus 545,000 clinical trial registrations
- Traceability by design, with a sentence-level citation behind every generated claim
- Quantified evaluations published by the vendor, run on 994 Cochrane reviews and on the BioASQ and BioDecisionBench benchmarks
- Customer cases with figures rather than adjectives: VDI/VDE-IT reports 1,502 correct data points out of 1,511, or 99.4% extraction accuracy
- A permanent free plan that already includes unlimited search, unlimited summaries and unlimited full-text chat
- Academic pricing well below industry pricing: the entry paid tier costs 11 USD per user per month for academics against 49 USD on the industry list, on an annual commitment
- PRISMA 2020-compatible systematic reviews, reproducible and auditable, with an API and an MCP server for teams that want Elicit inside their own agents
Cons
- No security certification is quoted on the collected pages: neither SOC 2, nor ISO 27001, nor HIPAA
- The privacy policy is dated 12 September 2023 and has no explicit GDPR section, no published list of subprocessors and no mention of a data processing agreement
- The absence of training on customer data is only stated on the Enterprise plan
- The terms allow aggregated usage data to be kept and exploited after the account is closed
- Displayed prices assume an annual commitment, so the real monthly price is higher; savings of 35% to 43% are announced but the monthly rates do not appear on the pricing page
- No refund is granted when a paid subscription is canceled
- No mobile application and no documented multilingual interface, and API access is absent from the free and Plus plans
Pricing & Plans
Elicit follows a freemium model. The Basic plan is free and permanent, and no time-limited trial is offered. Paid access starts at 11 USD per user per month on the Plus plan of the Academic price list, billed on an annual commitment of 132 USD per year. On the Industry price list, the entry point is the Pro plan at 49 USD per user per month, or 588 USD per year. The same Pro plan costs 39 USD per user per month for academics, or 480 USD per year, and Scale costs 89 USD per user per month for academics, or 1,068 USD per year, against 169 USD per user per month for industry, or 2,028 USD per year. Enterprise pricing is quoted on request. All fees and charges shown are exclusive of taxes and regulatory fees. A subscription may be canceled at any time, no refund is issued for amounts already paid, and the account returns to the free plan at the end of the paid period.
- limited use of the Research Agent and of Research Reports
- unlimited search across 138 million papers
- unlimited summaries
- unlimited chat with full texts
- source display and Zotero import
- export in RIS
- CSV
- BIB
- PDF and DOCX
- 5 table columns at a time
- unlimited search across 500
- 000 clinical trials
- standard usage of the three engines
- dedicated systematic review workflow screening 5
- 000 papers
- 20 columns
- reports drawing on 135 data sources
- 10 alerts
- custom extractions
- explanations of AI answers
- multiple output templates
- figure extraction and interpretation
- live editing and real-time collaboration
- reports drawing on 200 data sources
- 30 columns
- admin panel with usage tracking and seat management
- and 9x standard usage on the Academic list or 5x on the Industry list
- tailored usage
- unlimited alerts
- no training on your data by default
- screening of 40
- 000 papers and 40 columns
- PRISMA accuracy
- SSO and SAML
- 2FA
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Elicit handles your data.
GDPR overview
The privacy policy never uses the word GDPR, and no page collected on the site claims compliance in so many words. It does address European Economic Area residents directly, naming James Brady as the data controller and dpo@elicit.com as the contact for questions about processing. No representative under Article 27 is designated. On international transfers, the policy warns that data may reach countries that may not have data protection or other laws as comprehensive as those in your own country, with servers located in the United States. The named rights are US-specific: California's Shine The Light, and deletion of data belonging to users under 18 on request to operations@elicit.com. Security is described as appropriate technical and organizational measures, with no certification quoted anywhere: no SOC 2, no ISO 27001, no HIPAA. The policy was last updated on 12 September 2023.
Who owns the data?
The terms of service state that, as between you and Elicit, you own and retain all rights, title and interest in Your Content, apart from the licenses you grant. By using the service you give Elicit a license to collect, use and share that content in line with the terms and the privacy policy, and Elicit may, without being obliged to, review, edit, delete or filter it. Aggregated telemetry and behavioral data follow a different rule: Elicit keeps and uses them to improve and market the service even after termination, provided they no longer identify you. For EEA residents the named data controller is James Brady, reachable at dpo@elicit.com.
Reuse rights
At sign-up Elicit collects an email address and a password, or your name, email address and profile photo when you connect through a social account such as Google. Usage data is gathered automatically: IP address, browser, operating system, language, referrers, country and location. The stated purposes are creating and signing in to accounts, storing and editing forecasts and research tasks, requesting feedback, site security, enforcing the terms, answering legal requests, and analyzing usage to improve the product. Sharing is limited to three cases: complying with the law, protecting rights or vital interests, and acting on your consent. Servers are located in the United States. Only the Enterprise plan carries the statement that there is no training on your data by default. Beyond the ownership of Your Content, no separate license covering the reports and tables you generate appears in the collected terms.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Elicit states plainly that its servers are located in the United States, which places the service under US jurisdiction. The privacy policy adds that information may be transferred, stored and processed in countries other than your own, and warns European Economic Area residents that those countries may not have data protection or other laws as comprehensive as the ones they are used to. No hosting provider is named, no cloud region is specified, no list of subprocessors is published, and no data processing agreement is mentioned on the collected pages. A network check shows the web front end served behind Cloudflare, autonomous system AS13335 with the anycast address 104.26.9.204, which is an observation about the network path rather than a statement made by the site itself. For EEA residents, the policy names James Brady as data controller, contactable at dpo@elicit.com. In short: one declared hosting country, United States jurisdiction, and no published detail below that level.
Where Elicit works
Country-level availability.
Not available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Elicit.
- The homepage claims over 5 million researchers while the site's own meta description still says 2 million researchers and 125 million papers: the figures are not synchronized, so treat any single number with care
- The prices on display are annual-commitment prices; the higher monthly rate does not appear on the pricing page, so budget on the yearly figure rather than assuming the monthly one
- Two price lists coexist: the same Pro plan costs 39 or 49 USD per user per month depending on whether you are treated as academic or industry, so check which list applies to you before committing
- The guarantee that there is no training on your data by default appears only on the Enterprise plan, so users on lower tiers should not assume it applies to them
- The terms allow Elicit to keep and use aggregated usage data after you close your account, and no refund follows the cancellation of a paid subscription
- The privacy policy has not been revised since 12 September 2023, and elicit.org now redirects to elicit.com, so the historical domain is no longer the product domain
- The 95% to 99% accuracy rates come from evaluations published by the vendor itself, and the publisher admits its quality heuristics are imperfect: a cited answer still needs a human to open the source and check it
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Getting started is easy. Elicit is a web application with nothing to install, and you sign up with an email address or a Google account. The free Basic plan requires no technical configuration at all. Going further is a question of research method rather than engineering: extraction tables, screening criteria and the systematic review workflow demand rigor in how you frame questions, not code. The optional technical route is the documented API and the MCP server, available from the Pro plan. Custom deployments, SSO and SAML, and single-tenant hosting belong to Enterprise and become an IT project.
Deployment
Integrations
Behind Elicit
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What sources does Elicit search?
Who is Elicit designed for?
Is Elicit free?
How are sources ranked?
Is there an API?
Is my data used to train models, and where is it stored?
Should you pick Elicit?
Elicit is an evidence-synthesis tool rather than a general-purpose chatbot: it works over 138 million papers and 545,000 clinical trials, and every claim it writes carries a citation at sentence level. Its strengths are that coverage, the traceability, the accuracy evaluations the publisher has made public, and systematic reviews aligned with PRISMA 2020. The reservations concern the paperwork more than the product: legal documentation last updated in September 2023, no security certification quoted anywhere on the site, and the promise of no training on customer data attached to the Enterprise plan alone. On cost, the free plan is genuinely usable, the academic list starts at 11 USD per user per month on an annual commitment, and the industry list is markedly more expensive. With a claimed audience of 5 million researchers, it earns a trial from anyone whose work depends on reading a literature faster than a human can.
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