Patent77 vs PatSnap

Patent77 searches public patent records for prior art from a plain-English description of an invention, then returns cited references and a knockout-risk read. Its engine breaks the description into claim-style elements, expands synonyms, iterates searches, examines candidate documents and scores relevant references. Searches query the live Google Patents record, including US and major international patent collections. Paid patentability reports add an element-by-reference map, a novelty and obviousness narrative, limitations and PDF export. Lookups by publication number are never billed. Patent77 offers a web app, JSON API and hosted MCP server with tools for prior-art search, patent lookup and patentability assessment. Anonymous API requests need no account, but are limited to 4 requests per minute, 20 per day and three references per search. The Free plan is free and includes 3 AI searches per month and the top 5 references. Pro costs $49 a month; Scale costs $199 a month. Patent77 says descriptions are account-scoped and not used to train models, shown to others or sold, while descriptions are sent to an AI provider for query planning and reference reading. It does not cover non-patent literature, unpublished applications in the 18-month publication window or collections outside its corpus, and it is not legal advice.

PatSnap provides AI-driven innovation intelligence for intellectual property, research and development, materials science and drug discovery. It is aimed at R&D leaders, IP professionals, engineers, scientists and researchers. PatSnap says its data covers more than 2 billion structured data points across patents, science, litigation and technology; its Open Platform provides more than 210 million global patent and science records. Open Platform use cases include patent search and analysis, competitive intelligence, R&D innovation and patent application support. Developers can connect through REST APIs, MCP servers, UI widgets and Agent Skills. Listed options include Python, Node.js and Java SDKs, MCP support for Claude Desktop and Cursor, React and Vue widgets, and Agent Skills for LangChain and AutoGen with more than 140 atomic tools. PatSnap states that products are available in cloud or on-premises deployments. It says it holds SOC 2 Type 1 certification and meets ISO 27001:2022 standards, and that user data is encrypted in transit and at rest using TLS 1.3 and AES-256. Its proprietary LLM does not use customer data for pretraining or retraining. Plans include a free Basic tier; the pricing note lists a starting price of $200/mo and a 14-day trial.