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Literfy 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

Entry price
Literfy from $19 once, scite from $12/mo — different billing units, so no direct winner
Free plan
Only Literfy (scite has paid plans only)
Public API
scite has one; not confirmed by us for Literfy
Higher Trust score
scite — 90 vs 75 for Literfy
Best fit
Literfy: Graduate students and PhD candidates drafting a first-pass literature review · 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

LiterfySearches Google Scholar, PubMed, and Semantic Scholar at once and drafts a literature review grounded in the papers it finds.sciteCitation index that shows whether papers support or contradict

Side by side

FactLiterfyscite
CategoryAcademic Search & Literature ReviewResearch & Citation Tools
Pricing modelFreemiumPaid
Starts at$19 once$12/mo
Public APINot confirmedYes
Trust score75 / 10090 / 100
PlatformsWebWeb, Chrome extension, API
CompanyLiterfyResearch Solutions, Inc.
Launched—2018
Last verifiedOct 14, 2026Oct 15, 2026

What our research says

Literfy

Literfy's pitch — grounding every sentence of a generated review in an actual retrieved paper — targets the real failure mode of AI writing tools in academic contexts, which is confident-sounding citations to papers that don't say what the tool claims. Whether it fully avoids that failure mode isn't something that can be verified without testing it against a review the researcher already knows well.

Pros

  • Searches three major academic databases in one query instead of separately
  • Citation export in BibTeX/RIS plus direct sync to Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote
  • One-time credit pack option for a single project instead of forcing a subscription
  • Free tier lets a user test output quality before paying

Cons

  • Company's legal name and country aren't disclosed on the site
  • Like any AI summarization tool, grounding claims still need a researcher's own verification against the source papers

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 Literfy if you need

  • Graduate students and PhD candidates drafting a first-pass literature review
  • Researchers wanting one search across Google Scholar, PubMed, and Semantic Scholar instead of three separate searches

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

Literfy vs scite: the questions people ask

Is Literfy cheaper than scite?

They charge in different units, so there is no like-for-like answer: Literfy starts at $19 once, scite at $12/mo. Entry price is the lowest paid plan as we last verified it.

Does Literfy or scite have a free tier?

Literfy has a free tier; scite has paid plans only.

Which has a public API, Literfy or scite?

scite ships a public API, as of our last verification. A public API for Literfy is not confirmed by us — check its developer docs before you plan an integration.

More comparisons

All Literfy alternatives →All scite alternatives →Browse all Academic Search & Literature Review →