Elicit

Elicit is an AI research assistant built specifically for academic workflows. Its core superpower is structured data extraction: you define columns like 'sample size', 'methodology', 'effect size', and Elicit automatically extracts those values from hundreds of papers, producing a structured table. The free tier gives 5,000 credits/month. The Plus plan ($12/month) provides 12,000 credits.

For researchers conducting meta-analyses or systematic reviews, this is the most specialized tool available. The ability to ask structured questions across a corpus of papers — 'what was the control condition in each of these trials?' — is unique and replaces enormous amounts of manual extraction work.

Where it struggles: the credit system is confusing, costs add up quickly for large review projects, and the search index doesn't cover all journals equally. But for serious researchers who need to process dozens to hundreds of papers methodically, Elicit is irreplaceable.