Product overview
What is Consensus?
Consensus is an AI-powered academic search engine and research workspace. It searches a database of more than 220 million peer-reviewed papers, ranks relevant studies, and then uses AI to summarize individual papers or synthesize findings across a topic. Generated claims are tied back to source papers so researchers can inspect the supporting evidence.
Search combines semantic and keyword retrieval, followed by ranking signals such as relevance, recency, citation count, and journal reputation. The Research Agent can plan multi-step research tasks, chain searches, apply academic filters, compare studies, trace citations and authors, and keep context across follow-up questions.
How to Use Consensus
- Enter a research question, topic, DOI, paper title, or author in the search bar.
- Let the Research Agent select search tools and retrieve relevant literature.
- Apply filters for factors such as study type, date, sample size, population, or journal quality.
- Review the cited synthesis and open the underlying papers or source passages.
- Save useful papers to a library or collection for continued analysis.
Core Features
- Academic search: Searches more than 220 million peer-reviewed research papers.
- Cited synthesis: Summarizes findings while linking generated statements to supporting studies.
- Research Agent: Handles multi-step searches, citation crawling, author research, and study comparison.
- Advanced filters: Refines results by methodology, population, sample size, recency, citations, and other academic criteria.
- Full-text analysis: Reads and compares full papers, including uploaded documents and synchronized Zotero libraries.
- Consensus Meter: Visualizes agreement or disagreement in literature for yes-or-no questions.
Use Cases
- Literature reviews: Search, screen, organize, and synthesize evidence across a research topic.
- Evidence checking: Find peer-reviewed support for a question or written claim.
- Study comparison: Compare methods, sample sizes, findings, and limitations across papers.
- Research discovery: Identify influential authors, related work, citation paths, and open questions.
Pricing
The Free tier costs $0 and includes unlimited paper searches, 15 Pro messages per month, three Deep reviews per month, and ten Study Snapshots per month. Optional paid subscriptions provide additional advanced usage.
Frequently Asked Questions
What sources does Consensus search?
Its database includes peer-reviewed papers sourced through Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, publisher partnerships, and Consensus's scholarly-web crawl.
Are AI answers tied to research papers?
Yes. Consensus searches literature first and connects generated summaries to the supporting papers.
Can users analyze their own documents?
Yes. Users can upload PDFs or synchronize a Zotero library for private full-text analysis.
