Bango vs Universal SLR Assistant

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.

Universal SLR Assistant supports systematic and scoping reviews with AI-assisted screening, extraction, and reproducible outputs. It provides a desktop interface and a browser-based local Web App, and imports RIS, BibTeX, CSV, and plain-text references, including exports from PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Its workflow covers abstract screening, full-text PDF processing, structured extraction, and export; likely duplicates are identified by DOI and fuzzy title matching. Workspace mode stores references, PDF metadata, review items, decisions, and audit events in a local SQLite workspace, separating AI suggestions from human decisions. Exports can include decision files and logs, exclusion reasons, PRISMA-ready counts, a methods disclosure draft, and a manifest. The project supports a range of cloud and local AI providers. Cloud providers receive submitted paper text, while Ollama or another local endpoint can keep it on the user's computer or local network. AI results are assistance only: people must verify them and make final review and reporting decisions. The software is free under the MIT License; cloud AI provider API fees may apply.