โ€” Research Tool

Elicit

Last updated 2026-07-18 ยท Reviewed by ToolForge Editorial

The AI workspace that reads 100 papers so you don't have to โ€” and drops the answers into a table.

โ˜… 4.5/5 ยท 400K+ researchers ยท Since 2020 ยท Free tier (limited)

Automated literature review, actually

Elicit is built by the nonprofit Ought to automate the tedious core of research: finding relevant papers and extracting what they found. You ask a question, Elicit pulls studies from Semantic Scholar, and populates a spreadsheet with abstracts, populations, interventions, and outcomes โ€” each cell linked to its source. It won't replace reading, but it makes the first pass take minutes instead of days.

Who it's for: Systematic reviewers, grad students scoping a thesis, meta-analysts, and anyone who needs to summarize what a body of literature says.

Key features

๐Ÿ“Š Extraction Tables

Ask for a column โ€” 'sample size', 'effect size' โ€” and Elicit fills it across dozens of papers with citations.

๐Ÿ”Ž Smart Search

Plain-English queries return the most relevant studies, not just keyword matches.

๐Ÿงฌ PDF Import

Upload your own corpus and Elicit will read and structure it the same way.

๐Ÿค Workflows

Chain steps โ€” find, extract, summarize, then draft โ€” into one repeatable pipeline.

The honest take

โœ“ What works

  • Turns days of screening into an afternoon
  • Extractions are always linked to source text
  • Free tier handles small reviews
  • Backed by a research nonprofit, not just a startup

โœ— What doesn't

  • Extractions still need human verification for publication-grade work
  • Deep features require the $10/mo plan
  • Can miss niche or pre-print-only topics

Verdict

Elicit is the fastest way to get a็ป“ๆž„ๅŒ– overview of any research area in 2026. Pair it with Scite (for citation context) and you have a literature-review stack that used to cost a research assistant's salary.

๐Ÿ’ก Transparency: This review contains affiliate links. If you sign up through our link, we may earn a commission at no cost to you. We only recommend tools we use ourselves. Full disclosure.

Try Elicit today

$10/mo Plus ยท Free tier (limited)

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