scite
Verified Oct 15, 2026 ActiveCitation index that shows whether papers support or contradict
Listed on EffectHub ·
Pricing
- Pricing model
- Paid
- Paid options from
- $12/mo
- Billing
- Monthly
No permanent free plan on the pricing page: Basic is $12/month billed yearly (250 MCP credits a month) and Pro $40/month billed yearly, which adds API access and more MCP credits; Enterprise is custom. Both paid plans start with a 7-day free trial that rolls into the chosen plan unless cancelled.
Use tool ↗About scite
scite indexes more than a billion citation statements and classifies each one as supporting, contrasting or merely mentioning the cited claim, so a paper's citation count can be read as evidence rather than popularity. Its Assistant answers research questions with references drawn from that index, Reference Check audits a manuscript's own citations, and collections with alerts track a set of papers over time. A browser extension, a Zotero plugin and an MCP server carry the classifications into Google Scholar, a reference library or an AI assistant. It is run by Scite LLC, part of the US-listed Research Solutions group, and sold as annual-billed Basic and Pro plans after a 7-day trial.
- Platforms
- Web · Chrome extension · API
- API
- Yes
- Last verified
- Oct 15, 2026
Verified sources
- Pricing page: Basic $12/month billed yearly (save $96, 250 MCP credits), Pro $40/month billed yearly (save $120, API access), Enterprise custom; 7-day free trial, no free plan listed (15 October 2026)scite.ai ↗
- Home page footer: 'Copyright © 2026 Scite LLC', 'Part of the Research Solutions Family'; navigation lists Browser Extension, Zotero Plugin and MCP (15 October 2026)scite.ai ↗
- scite acquired by Research Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: RSSS), announced 27 November 2023researchsolutions.com ↗
Is scite legit?
We don’t label tools safe or unsafe. Below are the records we checked ourselves, each with the date we read it.
- Domain registered
- Feb 21, 2018 (8 years ago)Registry record (RDAP), registrar GoDaddy.com, LLC, looked up Sep 6, 2026
- TLS certificate
- Issued by Amazon, valid until Jan 31, 2027Seen in our own connection to the site on Oct 15, 2026
- Last checked
- Oct 15, 2026The site answered, but turned our crawler away
- On the market since
- 2018The vendor's own material, read by us
- Operated by
- Research Solutions, Inc., United StatesOur research, card verified Oct 15, 2026
Pros & cons of 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
Best for
- 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
Not for
- Fields poorly covered by indexed full text, where classification thins out
- Casual fact-checking, where a general AI search tool is cheaper
Watch out: The 7-day trial enrols you in the plan you picked when it ends, and the headline prices are annual commitments; a high 'supporting' tally also counts citation sentences, not peer review.
Alternatives to scite
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