Consensus

Consensus describes itself as an AI workspace for scientific research. Its about page says the mission is to help people find, understand and create good science, and to make research evidence usable by people outside academia as well as by researchers. You ask a question in plain language, for example whether a habit improves sleep, and Consensus searches the research literature and summarizes what the papers it finds say, with links to each study.

The product is built for questions that research can answer. Consensus says it helps users find relevant papers with clear summaries and identify their study designs, which matters because a large randomized trial carries more weight than a small observational study. The homepage invites you to search for free, and the pricing page offers individual plans and a separate Team and Enterprise option, with monthly and annual billing. When we checked on October 24, 2026 the plan prices did not load for our checker, so we list Consensus as freemium and suggest you read consensus.app/pricing for current limits and prices.

Consensus says more than 5 million researchers, students and clinicians use it, and it has dedicated pages for universities and organizations.

Who it suits: students writing essays that need peer reviewed sources, health and science writers, clinicians and curious readers who want to know what studies actually found rather than what a blog claims. Who should look elsewhere: anyone researching current events, products or business questions, where the answer lives on the web rather than in journals; Perplexity is better there. Researchers running a full systematic review may prefer Elicit's extraction tables. In every case, open the papers Consensus cites and read at least the abstract and methods before you rely on a summary, because a short answer can hide important limits in a study.