Abstrackr vs Bango

Abstrackr is a free web tool for screening citations in systematic reviews. It supports solo work, blinded team screening, pilot rounds, and conflict resolution. After about 100 labels, machine learning ranks remaining citations by predicted relevance. A live PRISMA flow table records screening thresholds, resolved conflicts, exclusion reasons by tag, and analysis of the model’s stop point. Citations can be imported from PubMed, Scopus, or Embase, or uploaded as RIS and CSV files. The service deduplicates records by DOI and PMID and can merge remaining near-duplicates. Results export as CSV or RIS, with a full JSONL download for DuckDB queries. Blinding starts enabled, and changes are logged with user, reason, timestamp, and project snapshots. Member and Leader roles have no stated team-size limit, while reminders arrive 7, 4, and 1 day before deadlines. No installation is needed, and the site directs methodology questions to its community forum.

Bango automates abstract screening for systematic literature reviews by assessing articles against criteria users define. Its AI screening returns decisions along with reasoning, matched rules, suggested tags, and confidence scores. Projects can import RIS and BibTeX files or Zotero collections, with up to 10,000 articles supported per project. Bibliometric analysis includes co-authorship networks, citation graphs, keyword maps, publication timelines, author rankings, and co-citation analysis. Bango can produce PRISMA 2020 flow diagrams from record counts and export them as SVG or PNG. It also supports Zotero import and export and can generate Boolean search strings for several research indexes and libraries. The maker says project data stays on the user's computer, with no cloud uploads, login, or account required. The README describes locally encrypted API keys and backups that omit credentials. AI connections include hosted providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Mistral AI, and z.ai, as well as local and other OpenAI-compatible endpoints. Bango runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, though macOS builds support Apple Silicon only. The Free plan is free, with no subscription, paywall, or limits.