ReviewAid vs RevMan
ReviewAid
reviewaid.github.ioRevMan
cochrane.orgSide by side
| Figure | ReviewAid | RevMan |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | £6.67/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 11 |
| Spec score · Systematic Review Software | 8.3 (#5) | 8.7 (#3) |
| Intended users | The maker says ReviewAid was built to assist researchers, especially those involved in evidence synthesis. | RevMan supports diagnostic test accuracy, intervention, methodology, overview, prognosis, qualitative, and flexible review types. |
| Purpose | ReviewAid is an open-source AI tool for full-text screening and data extraction in systematic reviews. | RevMan is Cochrane’s software for producing transparent systematic reviews, guiding authors from structured data entry and analysis through result visualization. |
| Support | The maker pages opened did not state a support channel. | Cochrane directs users to its Support Team and provides how-to articles, screencasts and release notes. |
Plans
RevMan
- Cochrane author accessFree
- Cochrane author accessFree
- Practice reviewFree
- Individual student annual subscription£80 a year
- Student£80 a year
- Academic£100 a year
- Individual academic annual subscription£100 a year
- Individual standard annual subscription£130 a year
- Standard rate£130 a year
- OrganizationPriced on request
In their own words
ReviewAid
ReviewAid is a free, open-source AI tool for full-text screening and data extraction in systematic reviews. Researchers can provide PICO inclusion and exclusion criteria for classifying papers, then define which fields they want extracted. The tool reports confidence scores and marks low-confidence results for manual review. Downloads are available as CSV, XLSX, or DOCX. ReviewAid supports OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, Cohere, Z.ai, and local Ollama. When a cloud provider is selected, paper text is sent to that provider for the run; with Ollama, inference takes place on the local machine and the text remains there. The maker says API keys are not stored. Users can work in a browser-based Streamlit app or install locally with Python 3.12 or later and Streamlit on Windows, macOS, or Linux. Hosted sessions may take about 30 seconds to initialize. Submission guidance caps full-text screening at 10 articles and extraction at 20 per submission. ReviewAid is licensed under Apache 2.0 and is described as a supplementary reviewer, not a substitute for manual screening or extraction.
RevMan
RevMan is Cochrane’s software for building systematic reviews, from structured data entry and analysis to presenting results. It supports diagnostic test accuracy, intervention, methodology, overview, prognosis, qualitative, and flexible review types. Authors can edit separate parts of a review at the same time and see who else is working on it. Analysis options include pairwise meta-analyses, sensitivity and subgroup analyses, and fixed-effects, random-effects, Mantel-Haenszel, and inverse-variance models. Built-in outputs include forest, SROC, and funnel plots, risk-of-bias assessments, and PRISMA flow diagrams. Authors can work from ready-made or custom templates and structured headings with Cochrane methodological guidance. RevMan imports study data and references from Covidence, and RIS reference imports can draw on Crossref, PubMed, or CRS. A free practice review is deleted after 30 days and permits one person, with no data export. Free access is also available to authors working on Cochrane Reviews. Individual annual plans are £80 a year for eligible students, £100 a year for eligible academics, and £130 a year for standard subscriptions; VAT applies in the EU and UK.