Paperpile vs ReadCube Papers
Paperpile
paperpile.comReadCube Papers
about.readcube.comSide by side
| Figure | Paperpile | ReadCube Papers |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $4.15/mo | $7.92/mo |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 6 |
| Spec score · Reference Management Software | 8.2 (#12) | 8.1 (#13) |
| Spec score · Citation Management Software | 8.2 (#11) | 8.1 (#12) |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States |
| Purpose | Paperpile describes itself as a home for research papers and says its goal is to simplify collecting, managing, and writing papers. | ReadCube is a platform to discover, read, organize and cite scientific literature. |
| Support | Paperpile directs questions to [email protected]. | Enterprise plans include dedicated support, training and onboarding, while the site provides a help center and support-ticket channel. |
Plans
Paperpile
- Regular$4.15 a month
- Expert$5.75 a month
- Enterprise and InstitutionsPriced on request
ReadCube Papers
- Essentials$10 a month
- Plus$20 a month
- Essentials$95 a year
- Plus$185 a year
- EnterprisePriced on request
- TeamPriced on request
In their own words
Paperpile
Paperpile is a reference manager for collecting, organizing and writing with research papers. It can import references, extract PDF metadata, organize libraries with folders and labels, detect duplicates, repair metadata and search collections. Plans include unlimited storage for research PDFs. Citation support includes more than 10,000 styles, with plugins for Google Docs and Microsoft Word. Shared folders and libraries, access permissions, and collaborative PDF annotations and citations support group work. The Android and iOS apps sync with the web library and support highlights, notes and drawn annotations. Users can also search 150 million articles across sources including PubMed, arXiv and CrossRef, and save PDFs with one tap. Integrations include Google Drive sync, Overleaf, browser extensions, and academic databases and publishers. Regular costs $4.15 a month and Expert costs $5.75 a month, with all plans billed annually; a 30-day trial is available. New sign-ups are currently available on Chrome, while Safari and Firefox access is in beta.
ReadCube Papers
ReadCube Papers brings scientific literature discovery, reading, organization, and citation into a platform for individual researchers and teams. Its research answers draw on 165M+ publications and 182M+ patents. Readers can annotate PDFs with highlights, underlines, drawings, notes, and sticky comments. The AI assistant answers questions about a library and compares up to 20 papers, but is available only in the web version. Saved searches can add new papers to a library and send daily, weekly, or monthly alerts. For systematic reviews, it supports dual-reviewer screening, custom data-extraction forms, AI autofill, and PRISMA exports. A browser extension imports articles from Dimensions, PubMed, Google Scholar, and journal websites, with associated PDFs when possible. ReadCube can connect to Overleaf, and enterprise workflows can link libraries with systems including Veeva Vault, SharePoint, and Salesforce. It runs on Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, and the web, with an API and browser extension. Essentials costs $10 a month; Plus costs $20 a month per user. Both have a 30-day trial, and there is no free plan.