Elicit vs Litmaps

Elicit is an AI research assistant for researchers gathering and assessing evidence. Its Research Agent draws on scientific databases, academic journals, public data sources, uploaded documents, a corpus of 138 million academic papers, and the wider web. A session can use up to 20 uploaded resources, including PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, and JPG files. Elicit offers Research Agent sessions, Research Reports, and Systematic Reviews, and supports AI-generated claims with sentence-level citations to underlying sources. It can find up to 1,000 relevant papers and analyze up to 20,000 data points at once. Research Reports export as PDF or Word, tables as CSV or Excel, and references as RIS or BIB. Elicit runs on the web and provides an API, but API access requires Pro or above. Its MCP server connects to Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and other compatible clients using OAuth 2.0. Basic is free with limited usage for Research Agent and Research Reports; Plus costs $11 a month. Pro is $39 a month and Scale is $89 a month. Elicit states that it has achieved SOC 2 Type II compliance.

Litmaps is a web-based research tool that uses citation networks and advanced search to help researchers find papers and conduct literature reviews. Its search catalogue contains more than 270 million papers. A Litmap visualizes connections among articles through citations and references; users can annotate papers and change how the map is arranged. Topic monitoring sends automatic emails when new articles appear, and maps can be shared as images, public links, or with selected email addresses. The free plan costs nothing and includes basic search, up to 20 inputs and 100 articles, one Litmap, and a monthly summary, but no collaboration. Pro (Education) costs $10 a month, billed $120 / year - save 20%; it adds advanced search, unlimited inputs, articles, and Litmaps, plus daily or configurable alerts, and requires an academic email address. Litmaps Pro syncs Zotero collections with Litmaps Tags in both directions. Articles can also be imported from BibTeX, RIS, or PubMed files and exported in BibTeX, RIS, or CSV formats. Open Access PDFs are available to all users; other PDF access requires institutional access through LibKey.