Research a question with reliable citations
You need to get to the bottom of a question quickly for a report or decision, with a source for every claim.
Research notes with source links you can check
3 top picks
Every answer comes with source links; great for getting the lay of the land.
Free: Free plan available
Searches only peer-reviewed papers and tells you what the research says.
Free: Free plan: basic paper search, 10 Pro messages and up to 3 Deep reviews per month
A free academic search engine to see who cites a paper and find related work.
Free: Completely free
How to combine them
- 1
Ask in Perplexity to get the big picture, and open the sources to confirm they're real pages.
- 2
For health, education or science claims, check the evidence in Consensus.
- 3
Open key papers in Semantic Scholar to read abstracts and see citations.
- 4
Only cite sources you've opened and checked yourself.
How far the free plans go
Perplexity has a free plan; Consensus's free plan gives 10 Pro messages and up to 3 Deep reviews per month; Semantic Scholar is completely free.
Prices and limits change often. Data checked on 2026-10-27; the official sites are the final word.
Not for
- Decisions that need professional legal or medical advice (consult a professional)
- Treating AI answers as final without reading the sources
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