Elicit vs SciSpace: Which Content Optimizer is Best in 2025?

by | Last updated Jul 28, 2025

Winner
Scispace LOGO
4.5
  • Chat With PDF
  • Literature Review
  • AI Writer
  • Paraphrase
  •  Citation Generator
  • Free trial available
  • Paid Plans from $12/month
Runner Up
Elicit
3.5
  • Notebook
  • Data Extractor
  • Paper Researcher
  • Topic Finder
  • Custom Column
  • Free plan available
  • Paid Plans from $10
Elicit vs SciSpace

Choosing the right AI tools can be a game-changer for content creation. 

But with so many options popping up, knowing which is right for you can be challenging. 

Two popular choices are Elicit and SciSpace.

Both offer excellent features to help you research, write, and optimize your content, but each has strengths and weaknesses.

In this post, we’ll explain the key differences between Elicit vs SciSpace to help you decide which is best.

Overview

To give you the most accurate comparison, we’ve spent weeks testing both Elicit and SciSpace, pushing their features to the limit.

We’ve explored their research capabilities, experimented with their content generation tools, and analyzed their overall user experience.

This hands-on experience allows us to provide accurate insights and help you make an informed decision.

Elicit AI
3.5out of 5

Want to analyze research papers like a pro? Elicit’s free plan gives you a taste of its powerful capabilities.

Pricing: It has a free plan. The premium plan starts at $10/month.

Key Features:

  • Automated literature reviews
  • Research question generation
  • Data extraction from research papers
Scispace logo
4.5out of 5

Want to speed up your research process? SciSpace can help you analyze papers 40% faster and identify key findings with 95% accuracy.

Pricing: You can try it for free. Paid plan starts at $20/month

Key Features:

  • Literature discovery
  • AI paraphrasing
  • Collaboration tools

What is Elicit?

Elicit is like having a super-smart research assistant by your side. It uses AI to help you find relevant papers and extract key insights.

Think of it as Google Scholar on steroids. It’s good at understanding complex research questions.

You can even use it to generate different content formats, like summaries and answers.

Also, explore our favorite Elicit alternatives

Elicit AI homepage

Our Take

Elicit AI

Elicit is a promising tool for researchers who want to streamline their literature reviews and explore new ideas. The fact that it’s free makes it even more appealing. However, it’s still under development, so there’s room for improvement.

Key Benefits

  • Find relevant papers quickly and easily.
  • Get concise summaries of key findings.
  • Brainstorm new research questions and hypotheses.
  • Stay up-to-date on the latest research in your field.

Pricing

  • Basic: Unlimited search across more than 125 million papers, Unlimited summaries of 4 papers at once.
  • Plus: $10/month – Basic Editing Tool, 50 Completion Suggestions per day.
  • Pro: $42 Extract data from 1200 papers per year, Extract data from tables inside papers.
Elicit pricing

Pros

  • Saves time and increases efficiency
  • Improves accuracy
  • Enhances productivity
  • Expands research scope
  • User-friendly interface

Cons

  • Can be expensive
  • Limited credit system
  • Occasional inaccuracies
  • Reliance on existing research

What is SciSpace?

SciSpace is your one-stop shop for all things research. It’s designed to help you find, understand, and use scientific information.

SciSpace goes beyond just finding papers.

It helps you understand complex equations, generate citations, and discover related research you might have missed.

It’s an excellent tool for students, researchers, and anyone who wants to stay up-to-date with the latest scientific findings.

Also, explore our favorite SciSpace alternatives

SciSpace Homepage

Our Take

Scispace logo

It’s a powerful tool with so much to offer, especially for researchers. The AI features are impressive, and the interface is intuitive. However, the pricing could be a barrier for some users, and there’s still room for improvement in terms of features and stability.

Key Benefits

  • Discover relevant papers fast: SciSpace uses AI to recommend papers based on your interests.
  • Read papers efficiently: No more struggling with dense text! SciSpace summarizes key findings and highlights important information.
  • Write and format with ease: SciSpace helps you format your papers according to journal guidelines.
  • Collaborate seamlessly: Share your work and get feedback from colleagues.
  • Get published: SciSpace helps you find the right journals for your research.

Pricing

SciSpace offers a free plan with basic features. But if you’re serious about research, you’ll want to check out their premium plans:

  • Basic: $0/month.
  • Teams: $8/month.
  • Premium: $12/month.
  • Advanced: $70/month.
scispace pricing

Pros

  • I love the clean interface.
  • It’s very user-friendly.
  • The AI summaries are helpful.
  • It saves me so much time.

Cons

  • The free plan is limited.
  • Some features can be buggy.
  • It’s not cheap for students.

Feature Comparison

Choosing the right AI tool can transform your research and writing.

This section dives deep into the specific features of Elicit AI and SciSpace, helping you understand their strengths and how they compare across various essential functions.

1. Literature Review Capabilities

  • Elicit AI: Elicit AI is a powerful literature review tool. It helps you find seed articles by searching vast scientific literature. Its advanced searching features enable you to quickly identify relevant papers, streamlining your initial literature review process.
  • SciSpace: SciSpace also offers robust features for literature review. It helps you discover related papers and provides tools to navigate the literature review process efficiently, ensuring you cover all important aspects of your topic.

2. AI Models and Language Models

  • Elicit AI: Elicit uses language models to understand your queries and generate relevant results. These AI models are central to its ability to extract key information and provide insightful summaries.
  • SciSpace: SciSpace also leverages advanced AI models and language models to power its features, from answering follow-up questions to summarizing takeaways from complex documents.

3. Information Extraction

  • Elicit AI: Elicit AI excels at its primary research tasks, which include the ability to extract key information from research papers. It helps you quickly pull out the most important parts of a study.
  • SciSpace: SciSpace also allows you to extract key information from documents. Its AI research assistant helps you pinpoint and pull out critical data points for your research tasks.
Elicit AI Paper Researcher

4. Summarization

  • Elicit AI: Elicit AI can summarize takeaways from research papers, providing a concise abstract summary. This feature is designed to give you the gist of a paper without reading the entire document.
  • SciSpace: SciSpace also offers robust summarization features, allowing you to quickly get an overview of academic papers and understand their core arguments.

5. Keyword Matching and Mining

  • Elicit AI: Elicit AI helps you mine for keywords and subjects within scientific literature. While it doesn’t always promise a perfect keyword match, it provides highly relevant results based on your prompt.
  • SciSpace: SciSpace is excellent for keyword matching. It helps you identify and integrate relevant keywords into your research, ensuring your content aligns with your subject.

6. Automating Research Workflows

  • Elicit AI: Elicit AI aims to automate research workflows by handling other research tasks like data extraction and summarization, freeing up your time for deeper analysis.
  • SciSpace: SciSpace also helps automate research workflows. It provides modern tools that streamline various research tasks, from finding papers to organizing your findings.

7. Interactive Questions and Answers

  • Elicit AI: Elicit AI allows you to ask questions using its AI. You can prompt it with specific inquiries and get results based on the scientific literature it has analyzed.
  • SciSpace: SciSpace features an AI copilot that enables you to ask follow-up questions about research papers, providing detailed insights and explanations.
Scite Research Assistant

8. Content Authenticity and AI Detection

  • Elicit AI: Elicit AI doesn’t primarily focus on content authenticity or AI detection. Its strength lies in research and information extraction.
  • SciSpace: SciSpace offers an AI detector and integrates with tools that ensure research papers are free from potential academic misconduct. This provides a fast and streamlined solution for verifying content originality, especially important in the publishing process.

9. Overall Utility and Modern Tools

  • Elicit AI: Elicit AI is a specialized review tool that provides detailed insights, particularly for literature review and data extraction.
  • SciSpace: SciSpace is a comprehensive platform offering a broader range of modern tools to support the entire research and publishing process.

What to Look for When Choosing a Content Optimizer?

  • Your needs and goals: Are you primarily focused on SEO and ranking higher in search results? Or do you need help with research and academic writing?
  • Ease of use: How intuitive is the platform? Can you easily find the features you need?
  • AI capabilities: How influential are the AI writing and paraphrasing tools? Do they produce high-quality, human-like text?
  • Pricing: Does the tool offer a free trial or a free version? Are the paid plans within your budget?
  • Integrations: Does the tool integrate with other platforms you use, such as WordPress or Google Docs?
  • Customer support: What kind of support does the company offer? Are they responsive and helpful?

Final Verdict

So, which tool comes out on top? For us, it’s SciSpace.

It offers a fantastic balance of features and affordability. SciSpace is like a copilot for your research workflow, helping you find, understand, and use information effectively.

It’s also easy to use and integrates seamlessly with other tools like ChatGPT. 

Plus, you can automate tasks, export your work, and get started without a credit card.

We’ve spent years testing and reviewing AI tools. You can trust our verdict.

While Elicit is a powerful tool, SciSpace might offer more value for your money, especially if you’re just starting out with AI research assistants.

More of Elicit

  • Elicit vs Paperpal: Elicit aids research tasks; Paperpal refines academic writing with grammar checks, paraphrasing, and plagiarism detection.
  • Elicit vs Yomu: Elicit directly answers research questions; Yomu summarizes papers and assists with academic writing, offering citation help.
  • Elicit vs Jenni: Jenni assists in writing with AI prompts and citations, whereas Elicit directly answers research questions using information from papers.
  • Elicit vs Writesonic: Elicit specializes in research and summarization; Writesonic generates diverse content formats beyond research papers.
  • Elicit vs Frase: Elicit analyzes research papers; Frase optimizes content for SEO, from research to writing within one platform.
  • Elicit vs CoWriter: Elicit answers research questions; CoWriter aims to streamline research and writing for efficiency.
  • Elicit vs SciSpace: Both aid in understanding research, but SciSpace offers broader paper analysis, while Elicit directly answers questions.
  • Elicit vs Scite: Elicit finds and summarizes papers; Scite evaluates research reliability through citation analysis.
  • Elicit vs Quillbot: Elicit focuses on research insights; Quillbot rephrases and summarizes text to enhance clarity and avoid plagiarism.
  • Elicit vs Grammarly: Elicit extracts information from research; Grammarly improves writing with grammar, style, and tone suggestions.
  • Elicit vs Paperguide: Elicit answers research questions; Paperguide simplifies complex research concepts and aids literature review.

More of SciSpace

  • SciSpace vs Jenni: While Jenni focuses on simplifying general essay creation and enhancing grammar, SciSpace is tailored for deep scholarly research, enabling interaction with PDFs and automated literature reviews.
  • SciSpace vs Yomu: Yomu AI swiftly generates concise summaries using semantic search, while SciSpace also employs semantic search for research but offers more comprehensive research workflow features.
  • SciSpace vs Paperpal: Paperpal excels in advanced academic text refinement, offering comprehensive AI writing support with features like plagiarism checks. SciSpace is primarily a literature search tool with some writing capabilities.
  • SciSpace vs Writesonic: Writesonic is a versatile AI for diverse content formats, including marketing copy, whereas SciSpace concentrates on academic research assistance, providing tools for literature analysis and citation.
  • SciSpace vs Frase: Frase is an AI content platform geared towards SEO optimization and content creation, whereas SciSpace is designed to aid in academic research, focusing on understanding and analyzing research papers.
  • SciSpace vs CoWriter: CoWriter aims to streamline research and writing tasks with general AI assistance, while SciSpace provides specialized tools for academic literature analysis and research workflows.
  • SciSpace vs Elicit: Elicit directly answers research questions by extracting information from scholarly papers, contrasting with SciSpace’s broader suite of tools for understanding and working with research literature.
  • SciSpace vs Scite: Scite helps assess research reliability by showing citation context, whereas SciSpace offers a wider array of features for comprehending, summarizing, and working with research papers.
  • SciSpace vs Quillbot: Quillbot primarily rewords and summarizes text, useful for avoiding plagiarism, while SciSpace focuses on assisting with in-depth research and understanding academic content.
  • SciSpace vs Grammarly: Grammarly checks grammar and style across various writing, whereas SciSpace is specifically built for researchers to understand, analyze, and manage scientific literature.
  • SciSpace vs Paperguide: Paperguide acts as an AI research assistant, simplifying complex research concepts and aiding literature review, while SciSpace provides a more extensive platform for research analysis and management.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the key differences between SciSpace and Elicit?

Both are AI-powered research tools, but SciSpace offers a broader range of features, such as citation generation and PDF annotation. Elicit excels at summarizing research papers and extracting data. Think of SciSpace as your AI copilot for the entire research process, while Elicit specializes in understanding and summarizing academic research.

Are SciSpace and Elicit like search engines?

SciSpace and Elicit are similar to search engines but much more powerful! They are generative, meaning they can answer your questions using OpenAI technology (like ChatGPT) and provide summaries, not just links.

How much do SciSpace and Elicit cost?

SciSpace has a free basic and paid plans starting at $12 per month, billed annually. Elicit’s paid plans start at $20 per month.

Can I use SciSpace and Elicit to find keywords and references?

Absolutely! Both tools are excellent for finding keywords and references and generating citations for academic research. SciSpace even has a built-in paraphraser to help you avoid plagiarism.

What are some of the unique features of Elicit?

Elicit uses machine learning to extract data from research papers and can even help you add columns to CSV files for analysis. It also summarizes research papers and concisely answers questions using natural language processing.