Consensus
Consensus · AI Science Search Engine
A search engine that finds answers to research questions by analysing the findings of peer-reviewed scientific papers, with a Research Agent for deep, cited literature reports.
Best for
Non-experts and analysts who want clear, source-backed answers from the scientific literature
Not ideal for
Researchers who need a formal, protocol-driven systematic review (PRISMA screening, risk-of-bias tooling)
Who it's for
Healthcare professionals, journalists, and researchers who need evidence-backed answers from peer-reviewed science
Capabilities
- Natural language questions answered from scientific literature
- Results linked to peer-reviewed source papers
- Pro Search and Deep Search (the Research Agent reads 50–100 papers per Deep report)
- Full-text reading, including paywalled papers via publisher partnerships and your own uploads
- Consensus Meter and Study Snapshots for judging evidence strength
- Filters by study type, year, and journal
- Library and Collections with Zotero import
- REST API and MCP server for AI clients like Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor
Limitations
- Limited to published academic research — not suitable for current events or practical how-to questions
- Quality depends on what has been published and indexed
- Advanced features and higher usage limits require a paid subscription
- Not ideal for teams that need deep workflow automation beyond search and synthesis
Use cases
- Quickly checking what scientific evidence says on a health or policy question
- Supporting claims with cited peer-reviewed sources
- Comparing findings across multiple studies on a topic
- Background research before a deeper academic review
- Fact-checking claims against published science
Integrations & fit
Alternatives to consider
Consensus vs Elicit — full comparison →Elicit
Researchers, students, and R&D teams who need to process large volumes of scientific literature efficiently
FreemiumResearch Solutions (Scite)
Researchers, scientists, and systematic reviewers who need to evaluate the evidentiary weight and replication status of specific claims in the scientific literature — not general topic discovery
FreemiumAbout Consensus
Consensus is an AI search engine built on top of a large corpus of peer-reviewed scientific literature. Users ask a research question in natural language and receive a plain-language summary of what the scientific evidence says on that topic, alongside links to the underlying papers. It is designed to make evidence-based information accessible without requiring academic database access or familiarity with scientific search syntax. Answers are generated by Consensus's Research Agent, which powers Pro searches and Deep Search — a mode that runs many searches in parallel and reads 50–100 papers before writing a cited report. Consensus reads full papers rather than just abstracts, including paywalled articles from major publishers and papers you upload, and adds tools like the Consensus Meter and Study Snapshots to help judge the strength of the evidence. It is particularly useful for healthcare professionals, science communicators, journalists, and researchers who need to understand what published evidence says without performing a full systematic review. Unlike general AI assistants, it does not generate answers from its own training data — it synthesises directly from real papers and shows the sources. A free tier is available with a small monthly allowance of Pro and Deep searches; paid plans (Pro, Deep, and Team/Enterprise) unlock unlimited Pro searches, more Deep Searches, and higher API and MCP allowances.
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