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ScienceOS 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. ScienceOS starts at $8, scite at $20. Both have a free tier. Only scite ships a public API.

ScienceOSResearch assistant that answers from 230M papers with citations, maps citation networks and chats across up to 4,000 PDFs.sciteCitation index that shows whether papers support or contradict

Side by side

FactScienceOSscite
CategoryAcademic Search & Literature ReviewResearch & Citation Tools
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$8 month$20 month
Public APINoYes
PlatformsWebWeb, Chrome Ext, API
CompanyscienceOS UG (haftungsbeschraenkt)Research Solutions, Inc.
Launched—2018
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

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

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 and free browser extension carry the data into existing workflows without an account
  • Full API access to papers, tallies, citations and Reference Check endpoints
  • 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
  • $20/mo monthly is a hard sell against free-tier competitors unless you cite heavily
  • The Assistant is competent but not clearly better than dedicated research chat tools
  • Free tier is capped at roughly 100 reports a month

Which one fits

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

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
  • Librarians and institutions wanting citation-context badges inside existing discovery tools

More comparisons

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