Consensus
AI search engine for scientific research that synthesizes findings from academic papers, with citations.
Consensus is an AI search engine for scientific and academic research: it retrieves relevant papers, then its AI synthesizes the findings with citations to each source. The free plan offers basic paper search and 10 Pro messages a month; Pro is $12 a month billed annually or $20 billed monthly.
About Consensus
For every query, Consensus retrieves the most relevant academic papers, then its AI analyzes the top results and writes a synthesis; every response includes citations. The corpus is primarily peer-reviewed journal articles, with some conference papers and preprints, drawn from Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex and Consensus's own crawl of the scholarly web. The vendor says it covers the entirety of PubMed, and its help center says it never searches blogs, news sites or general-knowledge pages.
Deep Search runs literature reviews by expanding key terms, identifying conflicting arguments and exploring the citation graph. Medical mode narrows results to about 50,000 clinical guidelines and 8M articles from the top 1,000 medical journals. Timeframes, populations and study designs can be written into the prompt as filters, and for yes-or-no questions the Consensus Meter shows how much the evidence agrees or disagrees.
The pricing page opens on annual billing. Free covers basic paper search without AI analysis, plus 10 Pro messages and up to 3 Deep reviews a month. Pro adds unlimited Pro messages, 15 Deep reviews and 500 API & MCP uses a month for $12 a month billed annually ($144 a year) or $20 billed monthly. Deep raises that to 200 Deep reviews and 2,000 API & MCP uses a month for $45 a month billed annually ($540 a year) or $65 billed monthly.
Teams of up to 200 seats pay $20 per seat a month billed annually or $30 billed monthly, with centralized billing; Enterprise is custom-priced and adds SAML SSO with Okta, Azure AD, OpenAthens and Google Workspace. Students and faculty with a school email, and US healthcare professionals with an NPI number, can get up to 40% off. Consensus was founded in 2021 by Christian Salem and Eric Olson and is based in San Francisco.
Sources: consensus.app, /pricing, /pricing/team, /home/about-us, /home/blog/welcome-to-consensus and /home/blog/category/help-center, read 2026-10-26
Consensus pros and cons
Pros
- Answers are grounded in retrieved papers: Consensus says it only uses AI after searching the scientific literature.
- Medical mode restricts results to clinical guidelines and articles from top medical journals.
- Paid plans include API and MCP access, with 500 uses a month on Pro and 2,000 on Deep.
- Consensus says it never uses user data to train systems and never shares data with third parties.
Cons
- Free search runs without AI analysis apart from 10 Pro messages and up to 3 Deep reviews a month.
- Consensus acknowledges that a model can sometimes misinterpret a paper and summarize it incorrectly.
- It does not search blogs, news sites or general-knowledge pages.
Tagged
- Web-based
- Free
- Freemium
Consensus alternatives
The closest alternatives to Consensus.
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</a>Frequently asked questions
- What is Consensus?
- Consensus is an AI search engine for scientific research that synthesizes findings from academic papers, with citations.
- Is Consensus free?
- Consensus offers a free tier and paid plans with higher limits or premium features.
- What platforms does Consensus support?
- Consensus's own site lists it for Web.
- What are the alternatives to Consensus?
- The closest alternatives to Consensus are Scite, Elicit.
- What are the downsides of Consensus?
- Free search runs without AI analysis apart from 10 Pro messages and up to 3 Deep reviews a month. Consensus acknowledges that a model can sometimes misinterpret a paper and summarize it incorrectly. It does not search blogs, news sites or general-knowledge pages.
- Is Consensus free?
- Yes: the free plan keeps basic paper search free, without AI analysis, and includes 10 Pro messages and up to 3 Deep reviews a month. Pro removes the cap on Pro messages and includes 15 Deep reviews a month.
- How much does Consensus Pro cost?
- Pro is $20 a month billed monthly, or $12 a month billed annually ($144 a year). Deep is $65 billed monthly or $45 a month billed annually ($540 a year). Students, faculty and US healthcare professionals can get up to 40% off.
- Does Consensus have a mobile app?
- Not a native one. Its help center says a native mobile app will come in the future and explains how to add the Consensus web app to your home screen, using Safari on iOS or Chrome on Android.
- What does Consensus search?
- Its corpus is primarily peer-reviewed journal articles, along with some conference papers and preprints, drawn from Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex and its own crawl of the scholarly web. The help center says it never searches blogs, news sites or general-knowledge pages.
- What is the Consensus Meter?
- For yes-or-no research questions, the Consensus Meter shows how much the evidence agrees or disagrees. A help article says it classifies results as yes, no or possibly and runs over the first 20 results, and Consensus says it uses fine-tuned open-source models.