Elicit
by Elicit Research
AI research assistant that automates literature and systematic reviews
Last reviewed 2026-06-19
Elicit is an AI research assistant for academic and scientific literature, focused on automating literature reviews and systematic reviews. It searches over 125 million papers, ranks them by semantic relevance, extracts structured data into tables with sentence-level citations, summarizes, and chats with full-text PDFs. It has moved toward agentic workflows: Automated Reports (research briefs based on a systematic-review-inspired process), a dedicated Systematic Review Workflow that can screen up to 5,000 papers, and Research Agents for landscape and topic exploration. Elicit grew out of the nonprofit research lab Ought (founded 2017 by Andreas Stuhlmuller, with Jungwon Byun joining in 2019) and spun out as a public benefit corporation in 2023 with a reported $9M seed. It targets researchers, grad students, and enterprise R&D in academia, pharma, and life sciences. Its core search-and-summarize loop is assistant-level; its report and review workflows are multi-step and user-initiated, with the researcher reviewing and validating outputs.
What it can do
Search and rank papers semantically
AssistantSearches 125M+ papers across databases including PubMed and ClinicalTrials.gov and ranks by relevance.
sourceExtract structured data into tables
AssistantPulls custom columns and data points from PDFs and figures into citable tables.
sourceGenerate research reports with citations
SupervisedProduces Automated Reports via a systematic-review-inspired process with sentence-level citations; multi-step and user-initiated.
sourceRun systematic-review workflows
SupervisedA dedicated workflow screens up to 5,000 papers end to end for review-grade synthesis.
source
Strengths
- +Purpose-built for systematic reviews with sentence-level citation traceability
- +Massive corpus (125M+ papers) plus structured table extraction
- +Credible research lineage (Ought) focused on reasoning transparency
Limitations
- −Pro and Scale pricing is steep for individual academics
- −Accuracy claims are self-reported and should be validated per domain
- −Coverage skews to indexed literature; paywalled full text and gray literature gaps remain
Overview
Elicit is an AI research assistant for academic literature, focused on automating literature and systematic reviews. It grew out of the nonprofit lab Ought and spun out as a public benefit corporation in 2023.
What it does
Elicit searches over 125 million papers, ranks them semantically, extracts structured data into citable tables, summarizes, and chats with full-text PDFs. Its agentic workflows include Automated Reports, a Systematic Review Workflow that screens up to 5,000 papers, and Research Agents for landscape exploration.
Integrations & setup
Zotero import, PDF upload, and data from PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Semantic Scholar-class sources, with REST API access on paid tiers.
Pricing
Freemium: a free Basic tier, Pro at $49/user/mo, Scale at $169/user/mo (figure extraction, collaboration), and a custom Enterprise tier.
Best for / not for
Best for researchers, grad students, and enterprise R&D doing evidence synthesis and systematic reviews. Less suited to casual users put off by the per-seat cost.
Traction
Elicit raised a reported $9M seed in September 2023 on its spin-out from Ought.
Alternatives
Consensus is the closest scientific-search alternative; Hebbia targets document-heavy enterprise research.
What people are saying
We aggregate real LinkedIn discussion into sentiment for the agents people search most. Elicit isn't tracked yet, want it added? Request tracking.
FAQ
Is Elicit a fully autonomous agent?+
Its core search-and-summarize loop is assistant-level. Its Automated Reports and Systematic Review Workflow are multi-step and user-initiated, with the researcher reviewing and validating outputs, so those are supervised-agent behaviors.
Where did Elicit come from?+
It was built inside the nonprofit research lab Ought (founded 2017) and spun out as a public benefit corporation in 2023 with a reported $9M seed.
Sources
- Elicit (official site) · accessed 2026-06-19
- Elicit pricing · accessed 2026-06-19
- Elicit is building a tool to automate scientific literature review (TechCrunch) · accessed 2026-06-19
Last reviewed 2026-06-19