Patent77 vs Scout IP
Patent77
patent77.comScout IP
scoutip.aiSide by side
| Figure | Patent77 | Scout IP |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $49/mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 3 | 0 |
| Spec score · AI Patent Search Software | 8.0 (#7) | 6.9 (#23) |
| Intended users | The site describes inventors and founders, attorneys and agents at small firms, and AI agents as audiences for the product. | The site identifies startups, researchers, inventors, R&D teams, investors, and IP professionals as users. |
| Legal limitation | Patent77 states that it is not legal advice and recommends consulting a registered patent attorney or agent for filing decisions. | The terms say Scout IP is an intelligence tool, not a legal service, and its AI-generated reports may contain errors or omissions and are not exhaustive. |
| Reports | Paid patentability reports include an element-by-reference map, an examiner-style novelty and obviousness narrative, limitations, and PDF export. | Reports show close matches and explain why they are relevant; the site describes them as a starting point, not a verdict. |
| Search method | The engine decomposes an invention into claim-style elements, expands synonyms, runs iterated queries, reads candidate documents, and scores relevant references. | Scout IP extracts technical features, semantic keywords, and CPC classifications, then searches by meaning and reviews close matches feature by feature. |
| Security | Patent descriptions are stored as saved searches scoped to the user's account and are not used to train models, shown to other users, or sold. | The privacy policy says idea descriptions are encrypted with AES-256-GCM in Cloud Mode; users can optionally enable a passphrase that Scout IP cannot use to open them. |
Plans
In their own words
Patent77
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.