Consensus vs ScienceOS

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

Free plan: Both have one
Public API: Consensus has one; not confirmed by us for ScienceOS
Best fit: Consensus: Checking whether a specific claim has support across published studies · ScienceOS: Literature reviews where citation trails matter
Platforms: Consensus: Web, iOS, Android · ScienceOS: Web
Trust score: About even — Consensus 90, ScienceOS 90

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

ConsensusSearch over peer-reviewed papers with claim summaries

ScienceOSResearch assistant that answers from 230M papers with citations, maps citation networks and chats across up to 4,000 PDFs.

Side by side

Fact	Consensus	ScienceOS
Category	Academic Search & Literature Review	Academic Search & Literature Review
Pricing model	Freemium	Freemium
Starts at	—	$8/mo
Public API	Yes	Not confirmed
Trust score	90 / 100	90 / 100
Platforms	Web, iOS, Android, API	Web
Company	Consensus NLP, Inc.	scienceOS UG (haftungsbeschraenkt)
Launched	2021	—
Last verified	Oct 15, 2026	Oct 16, 2026

What our research says

Consensus

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

ScienceOS

Priced well below the usual academic-AI tier and unusually specific about its corpus - 230M papers, 800M snippets, 2.4B reference pairs, refreshed weekly. EU-only storage and a no-training commitment make it easier to clear with a university's data office than most rivals. The free tier is limited enough that serious use means paying.

Pros

Answers carry cited sources against a stated 230-million-paper index
Citation networks make backward and forward reference tracing practical
Chat spans up to 4,000 PDFs, with 1,000-file bulk import on Team
EU-only servers and an explicit no-training-on-user-data statement
Cheapest paid tier is around EUR 7 a month, well under most competitors

Cons

Figure extraction from PDFs is paywalled - the free tier is text only
The best model is unlimited only on the Team tier at six seats or more
No API for integrating results into other workflows
Euro pricing means dollar buyers absorb exchange-rate movement

Which one fits

Choose Consensus if you need

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

Choose ScienceOS if you need

Literature reviews where citation trails matter
Researchers who need EU data residency
Working across a large personal PDF library at once