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Elicit vs Linkly AI

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. Elicit starts at $49, Linkly AI at $29. Both have a free tier. Only Elicit ships a public API.

ElicitLiterature review workflow that extracts data into tablesLinkly AIDesktop app that indexes local files so AI agents like Claude or ChatGPT can search them.

Side by side

FactElicitLinkly AI
CategoryAcademic Search & Literature ReviewChat with Documents & PDF
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$49 month$29 year
Public APIYesNo
PlatformsWeb, APImacOS, Windows, Linux
CompanyElicit—
Launched2021—
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 1, 2026

What our research says

Elicit

Elicit is the only one of these tools that treats a literature review as a structured extraction job rather than a chat, which is exactly right for the work. The price assumes you are billing someone else for the hours it saves.

Pros

  • Column-per-field extraction into a table is the correct shape for review work and rare elsewhere
  • Free tier is unusually generous: unlimited search, summaries and full-text chat
  • Every claim links back to the paper it came from
  • API access is included from the first paid tier rather than sold separately

Cons

  • The $49 to $169 jump is steep and Scale is priced for institutions, not labs
  • Free tier's limits on the Research Agent and Reports are not quantified anywhere on the pricing page
  • Extraction accuracy still needs spot-checking against the source PDF
  • Coverage is paper-centric, so grey literature and preprint-heavy fields are thinner

Linkly AI

Linkly AI fills a specific gap: giving AI agents access to your local files without uploading everything to a cloud service first, which matters for anyone handling sensitive documents. The tradeoff is that it's a desktop-only tool with setup involved, not a drop-in cloud chat product, so it suits people already working with AI agents locally more than casual chat users.

Pros

  • Processes and indexes files entirely on-device rather than uploading to the cloud
  • Supports 15+ file formats including PDFs, audio, video, and EPUBs
  • Free plan has no stated time limit

Cons

  • Requires installing and maintaining a desktop application rather than just visiting a website
  • Company name and location are not disclosed
  • Early-access Pro pricing is temporary, so the long-term price is likely higher

Which one fits

Choose Elicit if you need

  • Systematic reviews and evidence synthesis where every included paper needs the same fields pulled
  • Researchers screening hundreds of abstracts against defined inclusion criteria
  • Pharma, policy and academic teams that need an auditable trail back to sources

Choose Linkly AI if you need

  • Researchers and lawyers with large local document collections
  • Users who want AI agents to reference files without cloud upload
  • Product teams indexing a shared local knowledge base

More comparisons

All Elicit alternatives →Browse all Academic Search & Literature Review →