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Semantic Scholar

Free AI search across 220M+ scientific papers

5
AI Research Free plan Paid from Completely free Web App, API
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Semantic Scholar is the Allen Institute for AI’s free research engine: semantic search across more than 220 million publications, one-sentence TLDR summaries, citation intent analysis and paper recommendations tuned to your library.

Everything is free – the website, the Semantic Reader augmented-reading mode, and a developer API that many research tools build on. If you want the essentials of AI-assisted literature work without a subscription, start here.

Key Features

  • Semantic search across 220M+ papers
  • TLDR one-sentence summaries
  • Citation intent and influence metrics
  • Personalised paper recommendations
  • Free developer API
  • Semantic Reader augmented PDFs

Pros

  • Completely free, no paywalled features
  • Huge index with strong semantic ranking
  • Free API for building your own tools

Cons

  • No AI writing or paraphrasing features
  • Summaries are shorter than ChatGPT-style answers

Our Verdict

The best free starting point for any literature search - pair it with SciSpace or Consensus when you need writing or synthesis.

Free

$0 / forever
  • Everything included - no paid tier
  • 220M+ papers
  • Free developer API
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