Consensus

What is Consensus?

Consensus is an AI-powered academic search engine that answers research questions using only citations from over 220 million peer-reviewed papers, aggregated from Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and its own scholarly web crawl. Its signature Consensus Meter turns yes/no research questions into a visual breakdown of how much the scientific literature actually agrees, disagrees, or splits on a claim.

The Academic Search Reality

Consensus will not replace a full systematic literature review, but it dramatically accelerates the early research phase — Deep Search can synthesize findings across 50-plus papers into something close to a mini lit review in minutes. The tradeoff is a lack of direct in-document passage links, meaning verifying exactly why a paper was cited sometimes requires opening the full PDF, and the browser interface can lag during long research sessions.

Consensus vs. Elicit and Wolfram Alpha

Consensus and Elicit both search peer-reviewed literature and are frequently used together — Consensus leans toward quick, citation-backed answers, while Elicit is built more around structured, table-based literature review workflows; Wolfram Alpha, by contrast, solves computational problems rather than searching research literature at all.

Value and Pricing

The free plan includes limited searches and a small number of Deep Searches monthly, enough to test the platform on a real research topic. Paid plans unlock unlimited search and additional Deep Search volume, with a student discount available through a verified academic email.

Why Choose It?

-Consensus Meter gives an instant visual read on scientific agreement for yes/no research questions
-Every claim traces back to a specific peer-reviewed source, reducing fabricated-citation risk
-Deep Search condenses dozens of papers into a structured synthesis in minutes
-No direct passage-level linking means some claims still require manually checking the source PDF