An AI research assistant is a smart tool that helps researchers and students find information, create citations, summarize papers, and analyze data. It saves time and makes research easier and more accurate.
Did you know that 76% of researchers use regular AI tools to speed up their work, and 92% of students use AI for studies? Yet, many people still don’t know about AI research assistants and how useful they can be.
I have analyzed 20 different AI research assistant tools, and here are my top 13 picks for you.
- 1. Jenni AI
- 2. Elicit
- 3. HyperWrite
- 4. Iris.ai
- 5. Typeset.io
- 6. Scholarcy
- 7. Semantic Scholar
- 8. Scite
- 9. OpenRead
- 10. Paperguide AI
- 11. Consensus
- 12. Afforai
- 13. vLex
- Show less
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1. Jenni AI
Jenni AI is a smart writing assistant that helps students, researchers, and professionals write better and faster. It offers AI tools for writing, citing sources, and paraphrasing text. Whether you’re working on an essay, research paper, literature review, or blog post, Jenni provides helpful suggestions and citations in different formats like APA, MLA, and Chicago.
Here is a screenshot of the dashboard showing how we can chat with JenniAI to ask questions, and it will provide answers with proper citations.
You can upload PDFs, get summaries, and easily add citations to your work. It also includes features like an outline builder, LaTeX and Word export, and customizable paraphrasing. It also supports over 30 languages, making it useful for people around the world.
I liked that Jenni suggests sentences and paragraphs when you’re stuck. It can expand your notes into full sections, making writing easier. With features like structured outlines, reference management, and writing improvements, Jenni is a helpful tool for anyone looking to write and research more efficiently.
Jenni AI Pricing
- Free ($0/month) – 200 AI words per day
- Unlimited ($12/month) – Unlimited AI words
2. Elicit
Elicit is an AI research assistant using language models to locate seed articles, mine keywords, and subject headings, and automate researchers’ workflows. They have a collection of more than 125 million papers. Researchers mostly use Elicit for parts of literature review workflows, which return alternate questions, relevant papers, and summaries that lead to other seed articles when you enter a question.
One of its standout features, as shown in the screenshot, is its ability to generate well-structured research reports. These reports include abstracts, extraction definitions, real-time chat options, and screening recommendations, making the tool highly effective for streamlining systematic reviews. It finds relevant papers, extracts key data, and creates detailed reports to save researchers time.
Elicit shows the critical information contained in research papers in an easy-to-use table. Besides answering questions, the tool excels in brainstorming, text classification, and summarization tasks.
The only downside is the processing time. It can take up to 10 minutes to complete the research. However, the accuracy and depth of the final results make the wait worthwhile.
Elicit Pricing
- Basic (Free) – 1 report, 10 extractions/month [For casual exploration]
- Plus ($10/month) – 8 papers, 300 extractions/year [For deeper research]
- Pro ($42/month) – 1,200 extractions/year, AI explanations [For systematic reviews]
3. HyperWrite
HyperWrite is an AI research assistant tool designed to improve research and writing speeds by finishing your sentences, thereby speeding up the entire process. With HyperWrite, users can generate emails, blog posts, summaries, or rewrite large chunks of text. The tool’s newest feature is HyperChat, an AI chatbot that can answer any question you ask.
HyperWrite can assist in research by summarizing papers, generating structured reports, and improving writing clarity. Here is a screenshot of HyperWrite. After searching for recent developments and sources, it provided a helpful summary with all the necessary citations.
Created by OthersideAI, the tool helps users write more clearly and effectively with smart suggestions. Built on GPT-3, HyperWrite gives helpful feedback and improves writing style. It analyzes your writing and provides personalized recommendations. It also includes features for research, organization, analysis, and editing.
HyperWrite Pricing
- Premium ($16/month) – 250 AI messages.
- Ultra ($29/month) – Unlimited AI messages.
4. Iris.ai
What does a scientific researcher in a new field do when scanning over 30 million research papers online and over 3,000 others being published daily? You can only enhance your chance around them using the award-winning Iris.ai, a world-leading AI engine designed for scientific text research.
Here is a screenshot of Iris.ai, you can filter different documents using metadata filter (publishing data and repository)
It includes research-focused features, including smart filters, auto-generated summaries, reading list analyses, structured data, and automated extraction. It also builds a knowledge graph that connects entities and links, improving its learning process and feedback.
Iris.ai conducts advanced interdisciplinary analysis. Its powerful algorithms excel at extracting tabular data, testing similarity, resolving entity ambiguities, and learning domain-specific entity representations.
5. SciSpace
AI-powered research assistant SciSpace (formerly Typeset.io) is designed to provide simple answers and explanations to help users read, understand and learn more efficiently from research papers. The tool helps you find relevant papers by connecting you to a network of related research without needing specific keywords.
Here is a screenshot of SciSpace showing research tools like Literature Review, AI Writer, and Citation Generator. These tools help researchers summarize, cite, paraphrase, and analyze content. It also provides key insights from the top five research papers, complete with citations.
With SciSpace, you can easily access research papers, learn more efficiently, and format your reports effortlessly. It also provides direct access to numerous templates from leading publishers.
SciSpace Pricing
- Basic ($0) – Limited access, no credit card required.
- Premium ($12/month) – Unlimited AI tools, literature reviews, and exports.
- Advanced ($70/month) – Everything in Premium + Deep Review Model access.
6. Scholarcy
Scholarcy is an online AI article summarizing tool that scans articles, reports, research papers, and book chapters in seconds. The tool then automatically breaks them down into smaller sections so users can assess the relevance to their work.
Here is a screenshot of Scholarly. You can improve the summary based on your profession. There are various tools available for summarization and analysis. Additionally, you can take real-time notes while conducting research.
Suppose you’re a student, researcher, journalist, or librarian. In that case, Scholarcy will help you identify critical information such as data analyses, study participants, and main findings, thereby reducing the time to evaluate a study by 70%.
You can use Scholarcy to generate summary flashcards in Word or PDF formats in a well-structured and easily digestible form. The tool’s prominent features include table, figure, image extraction, access to source linking, and automatic reference extraction.
The app comes with Chrome and Edge browser extensions you can integrate with open-access repositories or create a collection of searchable summary cards accessible from multiple devices.
Scholarcy Pricing
- Free ($0) – 10 summaries
- Monthly ($9.99/month) – Unlimited summaries
7. Semantic Scholar
Semantic Scholar is a free AI alternative to Google Scholar that gives access to millions of academic articles relevant to different topics. While its content focuses on journals, the tool integrates AI, ML, and NLP with semantic analytic research to facilitate more accurate search results.
The screenshot shows how the tool helps in finding academic papers. It displays search results for queries with options to sort by relevance, citation count, influential papers, and recency. Users can see paper details like titles, authors, and citations.
Semantic Scholar is an easy-to-use tool since you only need to enter your query in the search box, and you’re good to go. Users can research by author, keyword, paper, or topic, but they can still filter the search by date range, field of study, and publication type.
8. Scite
Scite uses AI to help researchers locate and evaluate scientific publications using Smart Citation. The app displays the context of a citation besides showing whether it provides supporting or contrasting evidence to an article.
Here is a screenshot of Scite, which helps users analyze citations and references. It displays a question about blockchain consensus mechanisms, highlighting cited papers with citation counts, links to full texts, and options to add them to a dashboard.
Designed to enhance article discoverability and visibility through indexing with Scite, this tool is widely used by researchers worldwide. Scite gains thousands of new users each week and generates significant traffic from authors contributing new data. It also helps publishers by analyzing whether research is supported, challenged, or providing broader context.
Scite Pricing
- Personal Plan ($12/month) – Unlimited access for personal use.
- Organization Plan (Custom) – Plans for companies and universities
9. OpenRead
OpenRead provides an intuitive and comprehensive platform for organizing, exploring, and analyzing research documents, journals, and papers. It’s AI-powered Q&A system quickly answers questions about papers, helping researchers save time.
As you can see in the screenshot, OpenRead provides summaries with citations to their sources. You can choose between the web or paper option to get answers and references related to your query.
OpenRead uses AI to extract tables, figures, formulas, and key details from research papers, saving users from tedious reading. It also features an efficient note-taking and backlinking system, along with thousands of pre-built journal templates to simplify publishing.
OpenRead Pricing
- Free ($0) – 5 users/month for key tools, unlimited PDF uploads.
- Basic ($5/month) – 100-300 users/month, ideal for students.
- Premium ($20/month) – Unlimited access, best for professionals.
10. Paperguide
Paperguide is an AI tool that helps students and researchers find, read, and manage research papers with ease. It allows users to search for academic papers, chat with PDFs for quick answers, and summarize long documents instantly. The platform also features a reference manager for easy organization and citation of sources.
Here is a screenshot of Paperguide AI, a research tool that summarizes key insights from thousands of papers. This example highlights challenges in securing IoT devices, making complex topics easier to understand. This helps researchers save time by delivering structured and relevant information.
Paperguide also works as a smart writing assistant, helping users write and edit research papers faster. It provides AI-powered autocomplete, citation suggestions, and grammar checks to improve writing quality. Users can also check for plagiarism and paraphrase content to make their work clearer and more original.
With features like team collaboration, note-taking, and a user-friendly interface, Paperguide simplifies research and writing. Whether you’re working on a thesis, essay, or literature review, it helps you save time and stay focused on your ideas.
Paperguide Pricing
- Free ($0) – 10 AI generations/day.
- Starter ($9/month) – Unlimited AI, 10GB storage.
- Advanced ($16/month) – Unlimited AI, Unlimited storage, plagiarism checks.
11. Consensus
Consensus is an AI-powered search engine designed to help users quickly find and understand scientific research. It scans over 200 million research papers and generates AI-powered summaries with links to credible academic sources. Unlike regular search engines or chatbots, Consensus focuses on evidence-based information, making it a valuable tool for students, researchers, and professionals seeking reliable scientific insights.
Here is a screenshot of Consensus, a research tool that summarizes key insights from academic papers. As shown, it provides clear answers to questions, like how BCIs improve accessibility, making research faster and easier.
Consensus makes academic research easier to access and understand with features like the Consensus Meter, which shows how much studies agree on a topic, and Pro Analysis, which provides detailed research summaries. Users can filter results by study type, sample size, and methodology to find relevant information quickly.
It also integrates with reference management tools, helping users save and organize research efficiently. Consensus is useful for researchers, clinicians, and writers in supporting fields like medicine, psychology, and social sciences. It’s AI insights highlight research trends, saving time on manual analysis. With a focus on transparency, it provides direct citations so users can verify sources easily.
Consensus Pricing
- Free ($0) – 10 Pro Analyses, unlimited searches.
- Premium ($8.99/month) – Unlimited Pro Analyses.
- Teams ($9.99/seat/month) – All Premium features.
- Enterprise (Custom) – Custom offering for universities and large organizations
12. Afforai
Afforai is an AI-powered research and writing tool that helps researchers, students, and professionals manage references, take notes, review literature, and write papers efficiently. It combines a document writer, reference manager, and AI research assistant to streamline academic work. With an intuitive interface, users can easily insert citations, generate bibliographies, and collaborate in real time.
As shown in this screenshot, it helps users structure their research questions, generate responses, and manage references, making academic writing more organized and efficient. You can chat with a research assistant and get answers with references.
Afforai supports various file formats like PDFs, DOCX, and PPTX, allowing users to store, annotate, and highlight key information in their research materials. It’s AI-powered search can analyze multiple papers at once, summarize findings, and verify sources using three modes: Document Retrieval, Semantic Scholar, and Google Search.
The built-in AI assistant helps with translations, grammar correction, and tone adjustments to improve writing quality. Afforai also ensures data security and integrates seamlessly with academic tools like Zotero and Mendeley, making it easy to import existing libraries.
With support for advanced AI models like GPT-4 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet, it boosts research productivity while maintaining accuracy. Trusted by researchers worldwide, Afforai is a user-friendly solution for simplifying research and writing.
Afforai Pricing
- Free – 20 AI queries/day, 500MB storage, AI tools, and standard AI models.
- Student ($3.99/month) – Unlimited AI queries, 5GB storage, advanced AI models (university email required).
- Professional ($7.99/month) – Unlimited AI queries, 10GB storage, API access, and advanced AI models.
- Unlimited ($16.99/month) – Unlimited AI queries, storage, and all premium features.
13. vLex
vLex is an intelligent AI-powered platform targeting legal professionals by giving them access to a wide range of legal and regulatory information on a single platform.
Here is a screenshot of Vincent AI, a research tool focused on legal topics. As shown, it helps legal professionals find relevant laws, cases, and statutes, making legal research faster and more efficient.
The tool uses advanced technology such as data analytics to help individuals, small and large law firms, investigators, librarians, in-house counsels, and government departments access the most relevant and accurate information.
vLex Pricing
- Professional ($399/month) – 1 user, Vincent AI access.
- Small Firm ($230-$270/user/month) – 2-10 users, all Professional features.
- Enterprise (Custom Pricing) – >10 Users
How AI Research Assistants Work?
AI research assistants use artificial intelligence to help researchers find, analyze, and summarize information quickly. They collect data from various sources, such as academic papers, books, and websites, using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand and extract relevant details.
Unlike traditional search engines, AI assistants use semantic search, meaning they focus on the context and meaning of words rather than just matching keywords. This allows them to provide more accurate and insightful results.
These assistants can also generate summaries of long documents, organize research materials, and even draft reports or articles. Some AI-powered tools can perform data analysis, create visualizations, and manage citations in formats like APA or MLA.
These assistants adapt to user preferences by remembering past queries, recommending related topics, and adjusting responses based on expertise levels. They can integrate with tools like research management software, cloud storage, and coding platforms to automate workflows.
Over time, AI research assistants improve through continuous learning, making them more accurate and efficient in helping users with complex research tasks.
5 Benefits of Using AI Research Assistant
AI research assistants are transforming the way researchers, students, and professionals approach their work. Here are some key benefits:
1. Time Efficiency: AI helps researchers find information quickly by scanning large amounts of data in a short time, making research much faster. It can also handle routine tasks like data entry, managing citations, and reviewing literature, allowing researchers to focus on more important and complex work.
2. Enhanced Accuracy and Productivity: AI reduces human errors by processing information accurately, minimizing mistakes that often occur in manual research. It also ensures consistent quality in data analysis and reporting, helping improve overall productivity.
3. Insightful Summarization: AI can summarize long articles and papers into brief, easy-to-understand formats, helping users quickly grasp key points. It also highlights important insights and trends in large datasets, making decision-making more informed.
4. Cost-Effective: AI automates research tasks, helping organizations save on labor costs by reducing the need for additional staff. Many AI tools are also free or affordable, making advanced research capabilities accessible to more people.
5. Advanced Analytical Capabilities: AI can quickly analyze complex data, identifying patterns and correlations that might be difficult for humans to detect. It can also predict trends based on past data, offering valuable insights for future research and business strategies.
Final Words
AI research assistants are changing the way students, scholars, and professionals do research. These AI research tools automate repetitive tasks, generate high-quality content, and boost productivity, helping users save valuable time. Our list of AI tools above is only the tip of the iceberg.