Consensus vs CORE
Consensus
consensus.app
CORE
core.ac.ukSide by side
| Figure | Consensus | CORE |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $20/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 7 | 11 |
| Spec score · Research Paper Discovery Tools | 9.3 (#1) | 8.8 (#3) |
| Founded | 2021 | The Open University records the CORE project period as February–July 2011, and contemporary OU news says the service launched in 2011. |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Milton Keynes, United Kingdom |
| Integrations | Consensus supports Zotero library import and exports CSV or RIS files compatible with reference managers including EndNote, Mendeley, and Zotero. | CORE says its Discovery tool can integrate with repositories, and its API documentation includes examples and wrappers for common programming languages. |
| Support | The company offers support through in-product Support Chat and at [email protected]. | Starting members receive general support, while Supporting and Sustaining members receive increasing levels of technical support. |
| System requirements | The Android app is available for phones and tablets; the service also provides iOS and Android mobile applications and an installed web app. | The documented downloadable client is a Chrome browser extension; its listing specifies English, 173 KiB and version 1.0.4. |
| What it does | Consensus is an AI academic search engine that retrieves scientific papers and produces cited syntheses. | CORE aggregates and indexes open-access scholarly metadata and full texts so people can search, read and reuse research. |
| Who it serves | Consensus describes its users as researchers, students, and clinicians, and offers team plans for research groups, labs, and academic departments. | CORE lists researchers, the general public, academic institutions, developers, funders, and companies among the stakeholders its services support. |
Plans
Consensus
- ProPriced on request
- DeepPriced on request
- Free TierFree
- Pro$20 a month
- Deep$65 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
- TeamsPriced on request
CORE
- StartingPriced on request
- SupportingPriced on request
- SustainingPriced on request
- CORE APIFree
- CORE API — free access without registrationFree
- Institution and Enterprise API trialFree
- Starting membershipFree
- Starting membershipFree
- CORE API — registered accessPriced on request
- Supporting membershipPriced on request
In their own words
Consensus
Consensus is an AI workspace and academic search engine for scientific research, available on web, Android, iOS, and as an extension. It searches more than 220 million peer-reviewed papers, with the database updated weekly, and offers filters for publication date, access, citations, journal rank, study design, population, sample size, and other paper details. Its Research Agent plans multi-step searches, uses tools such as citation crawling and DOI lookup, and returns citation-backed answers. Consensus says citations in its AI summaries correspond to exact paper quotes, with the relevant section identified and PDF text highlighted when available. Medical Mode searches a selected collection of about 8 million papers and 50,000 clinical guidelines from the top 1,000 medical journals. Users can import Zotero libraries and export CSV or RIS files for reference managers. Consensus also works in ChatGPT, Claude, and Microsoft 365 Copilot; API and MCP calls share a monthly allowance. The Free Tier costs nothing. Pro is $20 a month, or $144/year billed annually; Deep is $65 a month, or $540/year billed annually.
CORE
CORE is a multidisciplinary discovery service for scholarly work gathered from repositories, preprint servers and journals. Its search covers research papers, journal articles, preprints, theses, dissertations, conference proceedings, reports and books. CORE says its collection holds 449 million searchable papers, including 57 million full texts. Researchers and the public can search this material; developers can use the API for real-time access to metadata and full texts. The CORE Dataset supports downloading data for analysis and text mining on an organisation’s own infrastructure, though access is limited to users representing organisations registered in non-sanctioned countries. Individuals can use the API instead. CORE Discovery is available as a browser extension, repository plugin and API, and CORE Recommender suggests related articles in repositories, journal systems and web interfaces. Free API access costs nothing, subject to rate limits of one batch request or five single requests per 10 seconds. Starting membership costs nothing for data providers. The service describes itself as not-for-profit and community-governed.