Which AI research agent fits an academic literature review?

Consensus publishes Free, Pro, Deep, Teams, and Enterprise plan options.

Elicit publishes Basic, Plus, Pro, Scale, and custom Enterprise plans with different Research Agent, report, review, collaboration, export, and API allowances; purchasers should confirm the current billing interval and displayed regional price at checkout.

Google publishes Google AI plan packaging for Gemini features. Prices, included limits, and availability vary by country and account; buyers should use the current regional checkout as the source of truth.

Scite publishes individual and organization pricing paths with feature and usage differences. Buyers should verify the current displayed price and billing interval before purchase.

Consensus is provided as a hosted product and API service. Its official security documentation describes API query handling and organization-specific data controls but does not establish a self-hosted Consensus deployment.

Elicit is offered as a hosted service across self-serve plans, while Enterprise lists custom deployment options such as single tenancy; availability and architecture of a custom deployment require a sales agreement.

Gemini Deep Research is a hosted Gemini Apps capability that uses Google Search by default and can use connected Google services or uploaded sources. This does not establish a self-hosted deployment.

Consensus searches scientific literature and generates source-linked synthesis with documented limitations.

Elicit documents semantic paper and clinical-trial search, cited research reports, structured data extraction, and systematic-review workflows; generated claims are linked to sentence-level citations from underlying sources.

Gemini Deep Research researches topics and produces reports linked to sources.

Scite Assistant retrieves scientific literature, ranks sources, and generates cited responses with filtering, DOI scoping, structured output, and multi-turn support.

Consensus documents organization plans with centralized billing and account management; Teams covers groups up to 200 seats, while Enterprise is quoted for organizations over 200 users and adds management for thousands of users.

Elicit Enterprise lists SSO and SAML, two-factor authentication, user analytics, domain verification, custom deployments, and dedicated onboarding; Scale lists an admin panel with usage tracking and seat management.

Google Workspace administrators can control access to Gemini features according to Workspace edition and service settings. The exact controls and data protections depend on the organization's license and configuration.

Consensus documents organization separation and states that customer content is not used for model training.

Elicit's Privacy Policy describes the personal information it collects, how it uses and shares that information, retention practices, international transfers, and organizational and technical safeguards. Contract-specific and enterprise data-processing scope still requires procurement review.

For consumer Gemini Apps, Google documents collection of prompts and shared content, possible human review, activity-dependent use to improve services and train models, and retention controls. Users should not submit confidential information they would not want reviewed; Workspace protections vary by license and are not inferred here.

Consensus lists library integrations for Enterprise organizations. Its Teams plan describes a Consensus Search API as coming soon, so API availability is not treated as generally available by this review.

Elicit provides a bearer-token API for semantic search and automated report generation, with documented curl, Python, JavaScript, CLI, Slack bot, and Claude Code examples; API access requires Pro or above and is rate-limited by plan.

Gemini Deep Research uses Google Search by default and can add uploaded files, NotebookLM notebooks, Gmail, and Drive as research sources; Gmail and Drive require the Google Workspace connected app, and availability varies by account and plan.

Scite documents an OAuth-protected MCP service for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and other MCP-compatible clients, with full-text literature search and Smart Citation access. Account and content entitlements still apply.