Consensus vs Embase AI

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.

Embase AI is Elsevier’s natural-language search tool for biomedical literature. It searches Embase, which the product page says contains 47 million records, and summarizes findings from the 30 most relevant peer-reviewed articles. Users can filter by publication year, publication type and study type, or extend searches to preprints, conference abstracts, ClinicalTrials.gov studies, and articles in press or in process. Summaries link to relevant articles, with references ranked through term-based retrieval and then neural semantic ranking. Users can inspect the AI-generated Embase query, refine it by opening results in Embase, or copy the query text. Follow-up questions and session export support continued searching and record keeping. Elsevier says information is not stored in the LLM or used for training. It presents the product for biomedical research, including users in pharma, medtech, universities and libraries. Embase AI is paid, has a three-day trial, and lists no price; prospective customers can request a demo. It is available on Android, iOS, macOS, web and Windows.