Scite is a research platform built around one idea: it is not enough to know how often a paper has been cited, you also want to know how later work treated it. Its Smart Citations show the text around each citation and classify it as supporting, contrasting or mentioning the earlier finding. On top of that index sits an AI assistant, a search tool, collections and a reference checker.
This guide summarises what Scite says about itself on its homepage, product description and pricing text, notes where the numbers do not agree, and sets out who is likely to benefit. We were not able to capture a homepage screenshot for this article because the vendor site was not available to our browser, so there is no image here.
How we researched this: we did not run hands-on tests for this article. It is based on the vendor’s own documentation and public sources, checked on 14 November 2026. Features and prices change, so confirm details on the vendor’s site before you buy.
Key takeaways
- Scite is made by Scite LLC and is part of Research Solutions, according to its own pages.
- Its core feature is Smart Citations, which label citations as supporting, contrasting or mentioning.
- The vendor pricing text dated 19 October 2026 listed Basic at $20 per month, Pro at $50 per month, a per-seat Team plan and custom Enterprise pricing.
- Corpus numbers differ between Scite pages (for example 323M+ and 315M+ articles), so use them as rough scale only.
- Strong for checking how a claim has been treated by later research, less of a general reading or writing assistant.
What it is and who makes it
Citation context as the core idea
Scite describes itself as an AI-powered platform that helps researchers find and evaluate scientific literature. A product summary on the site says it shows how publications cite one another. Smart Citations extract the text around a citation and classify it as supporting, contrasting or mentioning, so you can see how later work evaluated a study rather than only how often it was cited.
Who makes it
The site footer names Scite LLC and a copyright year of 2026 and says Scite is part of the Research Solutions family. Research Solutions is a separate company that appears in the footer and contact details.
The scale it claims
The homepage text we retrieved cites 323M+ full-text scholarly articles in its hero section, 300M+ articles, preprints, books, patents and datasets searchable, 1.6B+ citations indexed, 44+ publishers under agreement and over 2,000,000 researchers, students and industry experts. A second product description says more than 315 million scholarly articles and more than 30 publisher partners. Because the pages disagree, treat the figures as indicative.
We read the vendor pages through a page reader on 14 November 2026. Wording about numbers is the vendor’s own.
Who it is for
Researchers checking a claim
If you want to know whether a finding has been replicated, challenged or merely mentioned, Smart Citations are the point of the product. This is useful when writing a literature review or judging whether to build on a paper.
Authors preparing a manuscript
The Reference Check tool is described as screening a manuscript’s references for retractions, editorial notices and contrasting evidence. That addresses a real risk: citing a paper that has since been retracted.
Librarians and institutions
The site mentions full-text access via your library through Holdings, and the pricing text describes Enterprise agreements for universities and libraries, with access by domain, IP or email.
Students
The pricing text says students and academic researchers can request a discount by recommending Scite to their institution. Our shortlist for research notes and reading lists shows how a tool like this might fit alongside note-taking.
Who should look elsewhere
If you mainly want to extract data from many papers into a table, or to chat with your own documents, other tools may suit better. See our comparison of Elicit, Consensus and Scite.
Core features
Smart Citations
Smart Citations are the signature feature. Each citation statement is shown in context and classified as supporting, contrasting or mentioning. The vendor says these show how later work evaluated a publication, which a raw citation count cannot.
Scite Assistant
The Assistant answers research questions using scholarly literature, with citations linked to sources. The homepage claims that every claim its AI makes links back to the specific sentence in the specific paper it came from. That is a strong promise, and as always you should open the source sentence yourself.
Scite Search
Search covers publication metadata and citation statements from full text. The homepage calls it full-text citation search.
Collections
Collections let you organise papers, monitor new citations, track supporting or contrasting evidence and receive retraction and editorial-notice alerts.
Reference Check
Reference Check screens a manuscript’s references for retractions, editorial notices and contrasting evidence. It appears in the product list, and the homepage footer links it without a description.
Browser extension and Zotero plugin
A browser extension shows citation badges on other sites, and a Zotero plugin brings citation data into Zotero.
Holdings
Holdings gives full-text access through your library, according to the homepage product list.
How to read a Smart Citation
A supporting label tells you a later paper reported results consistent with the earlier one. A contrasting label tells you the later paper reported something different or disputed the finding. A mentioning label is the largest group and simply notes the work without evaluating it. The practical habit is to open the contrasting statements first, read the sentence in context, and decide whether the disagreement is about the same question, population and method. A single contrasting citation does not disprove a study, and a pile of supporting citations does not prove it.
Citation alerts
Collections can send alerts when new citations arrive, including supporting or contrasting ones, and when a paper in the collection receives a retraction or editorial notice. For a long project, that turns a one-off literature search into something you can monitor.
Product map
The table lists the products described on the vendor’s product summary and homepage.
| Product | What the vendor says it does |
|---|---|
| Scite Assistant | Answers research questions using scholarly literature, with citations linked to sources |
| Scite Search | Searches publication metadata and citation statements from full text |
| Collections | Organises papers, monitors new citations and sends retraction and editorial-notice alerts |
| Smart Citations and Reports | Show citation context and whether each citation supports, contrasts with or mentions the work |
| Reference Check | Screens a manuscript’s references for retractions, editorial notices and contrasting evidence |
| MCP | Connects ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and other MCP-compatible tools; needs a paid plan, trial or Enterprise licence |
| API | Programmatic access to metadata, search, Smart Citation data, collections and more; listed on Pro and above |
Newer or advanced features and integrations
MCP connectors
Scite MCP connects ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and other MCP-compatible tools to the literature and Smart Citations. The homepage says Scite runs inside Claude, ChatGPT and other MCP-compatible assistants. MCP requires a paid plan, an active free trial or an organisation Enterprise licence, and free accounts do not include it.
API
The Scite API provides programmatic access to publication metadata, literature search, Smart Citation data, collections, reference checking, the Assistant, research metrics and evidence datasets. API access is listed on Pro and above.
Broader datasets
The vendor says its data also includes patents, clinical trials, grants, drugs, devices, adverse events and regulatory and safety information, with availability varying by product, plan, licence and source-access rights.
Regulatory datasets on Enterprise
The Enterprise description lists regulatory and safety datasets named FAERS, MAUDE, FDA 510(k) and MHRA, plus SAML single sign-on and a dedicated customer success manager.
Rankings
A Rankings link appears on the site under an “ai-reads” address. We found no description, so we cannot say what it does.
Pricing and plans
The vendor pricing text we read was dated 19 October 2026, with all prices in US dollars, and we read it on 14 November 2026. Promotions and discounts may change checkout prices, so confirm on the vendor pricing page.
| Plan | Price | Included |
|---|---|---|
| Basic (individual researchers) | $20 per month, or $144 per year (about $12 per month) | 250 MCP credits per month; no API access; unlimited Assistant queries; full-text search; Smart Citation Reports; citation alerts; Claude and ChatGPT connectors; collections of up to 1,000 papers |
| Pro (deep research) | $50 per month, or $480 per year (about $40 per month) | Everything in Basic; 2,500 MCP credits per month; collections of up to 10,000 papers, patents, clinical trials, grants; API access |
| Team (labs of 2 to 20 people) | $50 per seat per month, or $480 per seat per year | Pro per seat; private and shared collections; team usage analytics; one consolidated bill; billed from day one with no trial |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited users; pooled usage; API; regulatory and safety datasets; SAML single sign-on; access by domain, IP or email; dedicated customer success manager |
New individual subscribers may get a seven-day free trial, and an individual plan can be cancelled before the trial ends to avoid the first charge. Teams above 20 people need Enterprise. Our guide to reading an AI tool pricing page lists the checks worth making on credit-based plans.
Strengths
A distinct way to judge evidence
Most AI research tools summarise. Scite classifies how citations treat a claim, which gives you something a summary does not: a view of whether the field agrees.
Alerts for retractions and notices
Collections and Reference Check emphasise retractions and editorial notices. For anyone who publishes, that is a concrete risk reduction.
Fits into existing tools
The browser extension, Zotero plugin and MCP connectors place Scite data inside the places researchers already work.
Clear plan structure
Individual, team, academic institution and enterprise paths are laid out, with usage described in credits and collection sizes.
Direct source links
The vendor says AI claims link to the specific sentence in the specific paper. Even if you treat that as a design goal, the intention is verifiable by design.
Useful for sceptical reading
Because the product is built around how later work treated a claim, it encourages the habit of asking whether a result has been challenged. That habit is worth building whichever tool you use.
Weaknesses and limits
Numbers that do not match
Corpus counts and publisher counts differ between pages. That is a small thing, but it makes it harder to judge coverage of your field.
No free tier on the pricing text
The pricing text we read lists paid plans and says free accounts do not get MCP access. We did not see a free plan described, though the pricing text may not cover everything. Confirm whether a limited free option exists.
Credit-based MCP usage
Basic includes 250 MCP credits per month and Pro 2,500. We could not confirm how many credits typical queries consume, so heavy users should ask.
Narrower than a general assistant
The tool is built for literature and citation context, not for drafting or analysing your own data.
Classification is still a model output
Labelling a citation as supporting or contrasting involves judgement. Our guide to checking AI output applies, and the general topic of AI hallucinations explains why a link to a sentence still needs reading.
Coverage depends on licensing
The vendor says data availability varies by product, plan, licence and source-access rights. Full-text citation statements require full-text access, so coverage for a given publisher or year may be thinner than the headline counts suggest. Ask before you assume that your journals are included.
Few independent figures on accuracy
The pages we read did not publish precision or recall figures for the supporting, contrasting and mentioning classification, and we found no independent evaluation in this research. We therefore make no claim about how often the labels are right.
Privacy, data handling and security
The pages we captured contain few concrete data claims. The footer offers a “Do not sell or share my personal information” link and links to a Privacy Policy, Terms of Service and an Accessibility Statement. Enterprise lists enhanced security and SAML single sign-on, but the text we read did not describe encryption, retention periods or model-training policies for queries.
- Read the privacy policy before uploading unpublished manuscripts to Reference Check.
- Ask whether queries to the Assistant or MCP connectors are used to train models.
- Confirm data handling for your institution if you use Holdings or an Enterprise licence.
Our summary of AI privacy rules for businesses may help frame the questions.
How it compares
The table lists points documented on each vendor’s pages that we read on 14 November 2026.
| Tool | Main job | Documented points |
|---|---|---|
| Scite | Citation context and checking references | Smart Citations; Reference Check; collections with retraction alerts; MCP and API |
| Elicit | Screening and extraction across papers | Systematic Review workflow; extraction tables; about 138M papers claimed |
| Consensus | Cited answers from a research corpus | 400M+ sources claimed; Free, Pro and Deep plans; Citation graph tool |
| NotebookLM (now Gemini Notebook) | Answers grounded in your own sources | Source limits by plan; Audio and Video Overviews; flashcards and quizzes |
You might use Scite alongside, not instead of, a discovery tool. For general web research, see Perplexity versus Google for research.
Getting started
- Look up a paper you know well and read how later work cites it, to learn what supporting and contrasting labels look like.
- Try the Assistant with a question you can check, and open the cited sentences.
- Build a small collection and set up alerts if you track a topic.
- Run a draft reference list through Reference Check if you are writing a manuscript and the tool is available on your plan.
- Check the vendor pricing page, then decide between monthly and yearly billing.
Before you pay, compare the monthly and yearly cost against how often you will really use the tool. The yearly Basic price works out at about $12 per month according to the pricing text, which is far below the monthly rate, so a short trial month followed by an annual switch is one sensible approach if the trial is available to you.
Frequently asked questions
What does Scite do?
It shows how later work cited a paper by classifying citation statements as supporting, contrasting or mentioning, and offers an AI assistant, search, collections and reference checking.
Who owns Scite?
The site names Scite LLC and says Scite is part of Research Solutions.
How much does Scite cost?
The vendor pricing text dated 19 October 2026 listed Basic at $20 per month or $144 per year, Pro at $50 per month or $480 per year, Team at $50 per seat per month, and custom Enterprise pricing.
Is there a free trial?
New individual subscribers may get a seven-day free trial according to the pricing text. Team plans are billed from day one with no trial.
Can I use Scite inside ChatGPT or Claude?
The vendor says Scite MCP connects ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and other MCP-compatible tools. MCP needs a paid plan, an active free trial or an Enterprise licence.
How big is the Scite database?
Pages state different numbers, for example 323M+ and more than 315 million articles. Use them as indicative only.
Is there a student discount?
Students and academic researchers can request one by recommending Scite to their institution and emailing the addresses listed on the pricing text.
Does Scite replace Google Scholar or a database?
The vendor positions it as a way to find and evaluate literature with citation context, with its own search. Whether it covers every journal you need is something to test with papers you already know.
Is the Scite Assistant reliable?
The vendor says every claim links back to a specific sentence in a specific paper. Use that link to verify the claim, and see our guide to checking AI output for the method.
Conclusion
Scite is a specialist tool for judging how research has been received. Its strengths are Smart Citations, retraction and notice alerts, and integrations with the tools researchers already use. Its weaknesses are mostly practical: inconsistent corpus figures, credit-based MCP usage and a pricing page we could only read as text.
Best for: authors, reviewers and researchers who need to check whether findings hold up. Think twice if: you want a general writing or data assistant. Confirm the live prices and verify every classification yourself.
Sources
- Scite homepage, read through a page reader, accessed 14 November 2026
- Scite pricing and access text, dated 19 October 2026, accessed 14 November 2026
- Scite product description, accessed 14 November 2026
