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Launched 2021 · Verified Oct 15, 2026

Consensus

Verified Oct 15, 2026 Active
Academic Search & Literature Review1viewsWrite a reviewUnited StatesEffect68/ 100
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Search over peer-reviewed papers with claim summaries

academic searchresearchevidence synthesiscited answersFreemium

Listed on EffectHub ·

Web · iOS · Android · API
Screenshot of the Consensus website
#326
consensus.app as we captured it — our own screenshot, not the vendor’s press image.

Pricing

Pricing model
Freemium

A free plan exists alongside paid individual plans (monthly or annual) and Team/Enterprise plans, but the pricing page loads its amounts from an endpoint that Cloudflare blocked on 15 October 2026, so no entry price is recorded. Third-party trackers list a Pro plan near $10/month on annual billing; that figure is not confirmed on the vendor page.

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Overview

About Consensus

Consensus is a search engine for academic literature: you ask a research question in plain language and it returns answers drawn from an index of more than 220 million peer-reviewed papers and preprints, with each claim tied to the study it came from. Beyond quick answers it offers a deeper review mode that reads more papers per query and filters by study design, sample size and journal. The same index is available to ChatGPT, Claude and other assistants through an MCP connector and an API. It is aimed at students, clinicians and researchers who want a cited starting point before reading the papers themselves.

Platforms
Web · iOS · Android · API
API
Yes
Last verified
Oct 15, 2026

Verified sources

  • Pricing page shows Individual and Team and Enterprise views with a Monthly/Annual toggle, but the plan amounts are fetched client-side from a Cloudflare-protected endpoint and could not be read (15 October 2026)consensus.app ↗
  • About page says Consensus was founded in 2021 by Christian Salem and Eric Olson, is now based in San Francisco and has raised $45M from Union Square Ventures and others (15 October 2026)consensus.app ↗
  • Terms of Service are issued by Consensus NLP, Inc. under Delaware law (15 October 2026)consensus.app ↗
  • MCP page describes connecting ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot to 220M+ peer-reviewed papers and links to API docs (15 October 2026)consensus.app ↗
Fact check

Is Consensus legit?

We don’t label tools safe or unsafe. Below are the records we checked ourselves, each with the date we read it.

Domain registered
Jul 27, 2020 (6 years ago)Registry record (RDAP), registrar Squarespace Domains II LLC., looked up Sep 6, 2026
TLS certificate
Issued by Google Trust Services, valid until Dec 15, 2026Seen in our own connection to the site on Oct 15, 2026
Last checked
Oct 15, 2026The site answered
On the market since
2021The vendor's own material, read by us
Operated by
Consensus NLP, Inc., United StatesOur research, card verified Oct 15, 2026

How we collect these records

Editorial verdict

Pros & cons of Consensus

low confidence

Useful when you want to know what a body of literature actually concludes rather than reading one paper at a time, but it orients you, it does not replace reading them.

Pros

  • Every answer is tied to specific papers with study design and sample size
  • Free tier is a standing plan rather than a time-limited trial
  • The yes-or-no consensus meter is a fast orientation device
  • Covers a very large index of peer-reviewed literature

Cons

  • Summaries can flatten real disagreement between studies into false consensus
  • Coverage skews to indexed English-language biomedical work
  • Pricing cannot be verified from outside; the site blocks automated access
  • Free allowance of the deeper analyses runs out quickly in real use

Best for

  • Checking whether a specific claim has support across published studies
  • Clinicians and students orienting quickly in an unfamiliar literature
  • Anyone who wants citations attached to every summarised claim

Not for

  • Systematic reviews, which need the papers read properly
  • Fields poorly covered by indexed English-language journals

Watch out: The consensus meter reflects what the indexed abstracts say, not study quality — a majority of weak papers still reads as agreement.

#3inAcademic Search & Literature Review· of 21 tools, ranked by rating and popularity

Consensus head-to-head

Side-by-side fact sheets against the competitors our research or their makers name — pricing, platforms, API and both verdicts on one page.

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