Consensus vs Liner
Consensus
consensus.appLiner
liner.comSide by side
| Figure | Consensus | Liner |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $20/mo | $1.25/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 7 | 9 |
| Spec score · AI Research Assistants | 9.4 (#1) | 8.9 (#5) |
| Company legal name | Crunchbase lists the legal name as Consensus NLP inc. | Crunchbase lists the legal name as Liner Corp. and identifies Jinu Kim and Chanmin Woo as co-founders. |
| Founded | 2021 | 2015 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Seoul, Republic of Korea |
| Product | Consensus is an AI workspace and academic search engine for scientific research. | Liner offers AI search, academic research, and writing tools for professional workflows. |
| Rating on Google Play | 3.7 out of 5 from 73 reviews | 4.0 out of 5 from 4.69K reviews |
| Rating on Trustpilot | 2.5 out of 5 from 6 reviews | 3.0 out of 5 from 3 reviews |
| Support | The company offers support through in-product Support Chat and at [email protected]. | The pricing page says Enterprise includes a dedicated manager and onboarding sessions, and lists dedicated customer success support for customized AI solutions. |
| What it does | Consensus is an AI academic search engine that retrieves scientific papers and produces cited syntheses. | Liner provides cited AI search, academic research tools, and professional writing workflows. |
Plans
Consensus
- ProPriced on request
- DeepPriced on request
- Free TierFree
- Pro$20 a month
- Deep$65 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
- TeamsPriced on request
Liner
- FreeFree
- Pro$14.99 a year
- Pro annual$14.99 a month
- Pro$17.99 a month
- Team$26.99 a month
- Max$29.99 a year
- Max annual$29.99 a month
- Max$35.99 a month
- EnterprisePriced 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.
Liner
Liner combines AI search, academic research, and writing tools for professional workflows. Its search answers include citations users can follow, and searches can be limited to a chosen pool of sources. Liner Scholar supports paper discovery, citation following, comparisons across papers, literature reviews, and research hypotheses. Liner Write drafts from a topic, adds citations, edits text with AI, and exports to PDF or DOCX. Free accounts get unlimited Advanced Search and access to Image Generation and Deep Research, but have no agent credits, receive answers with ads, and can upload one file per day up to 25MB. Pro and Max list ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude model access, with larger upload limits and ad-free search. Liner is available on Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, web, as an extension, and through an API. Pro costs $14.99 a month billed annually; Max costs $29.99 a month billed annually. Team includes a dedicated workspace and excludes team data from AI training.