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Long Summary vs Scholarcy

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. Both have a free tier. Both ship a public API.

Side by side

FactLong SummaryScholarcy
CategorySummarizationPaper Reading & Summarization
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Public APIYesYes
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, Chrome Ext, API
CompanyMB SkydisTexthelp
Launched2018
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

Long Summary

Every other summarizer optimises for brevity; this one lets you dictate the output length, which is the correct tool when you need a twenty-page digest of a report rather than five bullets. The API framing as a substitute for retrieval — summarise the corpus, then feed the summary as context — is a genuinely useful pattern. The problem is commercial opacity: no plan table exists anywhere on the public site.

Pros

  • Output length is a parameter you set, not a fixed style
  • Handles file uploads and inputs described as millions of characters
  • Public developer API for automating the whole thing
  • Named legal operator with terms and a stated deletion-after-processing policy

Cons

  • No public pricing at all — /pricing 404s and /plans renders nothing
  • Long output means long generation time and higher token cost per run
  • One of several thin sites from the same operator, which raises maintenance questions

Scholarcy

The strongest option when you need a consistent structured breakdown of a specific paper you already have. It is a summariser, not a discovery engine, so it does not replace Elicit or Consensus for finding what to read.

Pros

  • Flashcard structure (claims, methods, limitations) is consistent enough to compare papers side by side
  • Citation links resolve to open-access copies, saving a separate hunt
  • Exports to Word, Excel and reference managers rather than trapping output in the app

Cons

  • Extraction quality drops on badly formatted or scanned PDFs
  • Free tier's roughly 10 summaries a month runs out within one review session
  • Site is behind aggressive bot protection, which makes automated or scripted use awkward

Which one fits

Choose Long Summary if you need

  • Condensing long reports without dropping detail
  • Developers wanting summarised context instead of a RAG pipeline
  • Legal and academic reading where nuance matters more than brevity

Choose Scholarcy if you need

  • Postgraduates screening a pile of PDFs before deciding what to read fully
  • Building a literature matrix across a set of papers
  • Librarians and study-skills teams wanting an institutional licence

All Scholarcy alternatives →Browse all Summarization