Explainpaper vs Paperpal

Explainpaper is a web-based AI reader for research papers. Readers highlight confusing passages to get explanations with adjustable complexity, support for more than 50 languages, and context from the full paper. Paper chat answers questions using the paper’s content, allows follow-ups, and can summarize findings; answers can cite sections so readers can locate relevant material. The product also generates outlines, extracts key points, and shows relationships between concepts. Its free plan is available indefinitely and includes unlimited highlight explanations, follow-up questions, Zotero library import, and basic AI models. Pro costs $16 a month and adds Math Explain for formulas and figures, advanced AI models, whole-paper summaries, saved highlights and explanations, and paper questions. The Pro trial lasts seven days and requires a card. Explainpaper says subscriptions are billed monthly or annually according to the selected plan and payments are processed through Stripe. The product describes its audience as researchers.

Paperpal is an AI research and academic writing workspace for students and researchers, combining writing help, citation tools, and academic checks. Users can upload references and PDFs, ask questions, and receive cited findings from more than 300 million verified research articles. Writing tools cover academic suggestions, paraphrasing, tone changes, word reduction, grammar, proofreading, and citation formatting. Its checker suite looks for plagiarism and AI-writing patterns, checks references, and assesses journal submission readiness. Paperpal runs on the web and as a browser extension; it also offers a Microsoft Word add-in and browser-extension support for Google Docs and Overleaf. The free plan includes 200 language suggestions, five generative AI uses per day, 7,000 plagiarism-check words per month, and five daily AI-detection scans of up to 1,200 words each. Prime costs $144 a year billed annually, or $25 a month billed monthly. Pro costs $348 a year billed annually, or $59 a month billed monthly. Paperpal says it does not train its AI models on user documents, uploads, or personal information, and allows document deletion.