Essay vs SciSpace
Essay
essay.app
SciSpace
scispace.comSide by side
| Figure | Essay | SciSpace |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $8/mo | $5.83/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 16 |
| Spec score · AI Essay Writers | 9.0 (#5) | 8.9 (#8) |
| Funding | Prospeo reports no disclosed funding and says the company has never raised funding. | Crunchbase lists three funding rounds and names Disruptors Capital and Haresh Chawla among two investors, with amounts obscured. |
| Integration | The Pro plan includes Zotero integration, and the site describes syncing references with Zotero. | The publisher offering explicitly lists OJS integration. |
| Integrations | Zotero is the documented external integration and can synchronize a user’s reference library. | SciSpace says users can import references from Zotero or EndNote; its Zotero guide notes papers without a DOI will not be imported. |
| Privacy | Essay’s privacy policy says personal information is collected and used with consent for providing its services, and identifies its basis as PIPEDA and the Canadian Standards Association Model Code. | SciSpace says uploaded PDFs are private, accessible only to the user, and are not used to train its AI models. |
| Purpose | Essay is a structured writing platform for planning, producing, editing, and sharing writing. | SciSpace describes itself as an end-to-end platform for discovering, analyzing, and writing scientific literature. |
| Support | The site lists [email protected] for support and contact. | Official pages publish [email protected] as the support contact. |
| What it does | Essay is a structured writing workspace for planning, drafting, revising, citing and sharing written work. | SciSpace describes itself as an end-to-end platform for discovering, analyzing and writing scientific literature. |
| Writing tools | The product includes outlines, a distraction-free drafting environment, rewriting, and reordering tools. | SciSpace lists AI-assisted writing suggestions, contextual paraphrasing, style improvements, and a multilingual editor supporting 75-plus languages. |
Plans
SciSpace
- Premium$12 a month
- Advanced$70 a month
- Max$160 a month
- BasicFree
- BasicFree
- Premium$12 a month
- Team$12 a month
- Researcher$20 a month
- Advanced$70 a year
- Advanced$70 a month
In their own words
Essay
Essay is a structured writing platform for planning, drafting, editing, citing, and sharing written work. Its tools include outlines, a distraction-free drafting space, rewriting, and reordering. Writers can collect research in notes, organize it, and link it to an essay or outline. They can share work with friends, teachers, or peers, using feedback categories to guide review. Essay also supports citations, reference management, bibliography formatting, and academic exports. Listed export formats include PDF, Word, Docs, and Markdown; Pro includes Zotero integration and academic export. The Free plan allows 3 essays, a 5,000-word count, 12 notes, and 10 personalized topic recommendations. Core costs $8 USD per month billed annually, while Pro costs $12 USD per month billed annually. Essay is available on iOS and the web. Its roadmap lists working offline as a live feature and native Android and iOS apps as planned. The site presents Core for everyday writers and Pro for academics and researchers, with uses including dissertations, proposals, creative writing, and research papers.
SciSpace
SciSpace is a platform for finding, analyzing, and writing about scientific literature. Its literature review tool searches more than 280 million articles and organizes concise findings in tables with customizable columns. Chat with PDF offers citation-backed answers, section-by-section summaries, explanations of highlighted passages, and related-paper recommendations. Writing tools include AI-assisted suggestions, paraphrasing in context, style improvements, and an editor supporting more than 75 languages. Users can import references from Zotero or EndNote, though the Zotero import flow excludes papers without a DOI. A Chrome extension explains selected text, math, and tables; its mobile app is for iOS and supports searching, summarizing, and exploring peer-reviewed journals. SciSpace says its repository has metadata for 200 million-plus papers and 50 million-plus open-access full-text PDFs. It lists extension, iOS, and web access. The free plan is free and includes 100 monthly credits; paid plans start at $20/mo. SciSpace says uploaded PDFs are private to the user and are not used to train its AI models.