CiteTrue vs scite

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors.

The short answer

Cheaper paid plan: CiteTrue — $5.99/mo vs $12/mo for scite
Free plan: Only CiteTrue (scite has paid plans only)
Public API: Both have one
Higher Trust score: scite — 90 vs 80 for CiteTrue
Best fit: CiteTrue: Writers and researchers checking citations added by an AI drafting tool · scite: Checking whether a paper you plan to cite has been disputed in later literature

From our own records as of each tool's last check. Anything we have not confirmed is left out rather than guessed. How we verify

CiteTrueChecks citations against academic databases to catch fabricated or inaccurate references, including ones made up by AI.

sciteCitation index that shows whether papers support or contradict

Side by side

Fact	CiteTrue	scite
Category	Research & Citation Tools	Research & Citation Tools
Pricing model	Freemium	Paid
Starts at	$5.99/mo	$12/mo
Public API	Yes	Yes
Trust score	80 / 100	90 / 100
Platforms	Web, macOS, Chrome extension, API	Web, Chrome extension, API
Company	DocumentMind LLC	Research Solutions, Inc.
Launched	—	2018
Last verified	Oct 15, 2026	Oct 15, 2026

What our research says

CiteTrue

CiteTrue targets a specific failure mode of AI writing tools, invented citations that look real but don't exist or don't say what's claimed, by checking each reference field against academic databases. Shipping it as a Chrome extension and API alongside the web app makes it easier to slot into an existing writing workflow than a check-one-document-at-a-time tool.

Pros

Free tier offers 30 checks a day with no account cost
Available as web, Chrome extension, Mac app, API, and MCP server
Suggests replacement citations on paid tiers, not just flags

Cons

Credits now also feed an 'AI Humanizer' and paper-drafting tools, an odd mix for an academic-integrity checker
Paid tiers scale quickly in price for higher-volume checking, up to $47.99/month
Accuracy depends on database coverage, which isn't detailed publicly

scite

The citation-classification dataset is the moat — no other research assistant tells you a paper has been contradicted 14 times. Use it to vet sources, not to discover them; Elicit and Consensus are better at the initial sweep.

Pros

Supporting/contrasting/mentioning classification is genuinely unique among research tools
Zotero plugin, browser extension and MCP server carry the data into existing workflows
Pro plan includes API access to papers, tallies, citations and Reference Check
Backed by a public company since the 2023 acquisition, so it is unlikely to disappear

Cons

Classification quality depends on full-text access; low-coverage publishers yield sparse tallies
No permanent free plan any more, only a 7-day trial that converts automatically
The Assistant is competent but not clearly better than dedicated research chat tools
API access now requires the Pro plan, not Basic

Which one fits

Choose CiteTrue if you need

Writers and researchers checking citations added by an AI drafting tool
Anyone wanting a quick daily citation sanity-check without paying
Developers wanting citation verification via API or MCP inside another tool

Choose scite if you need

Checking whether a paper you plan to cite has been disputed in later literature
Systematic reviews where you must justify why a source was included or dropped
Auditing your own manuscript's reference list before journal submission