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Scite AI is a research platform that shows how a paper has been cited, not just how often: it labels each citing statement as supporting, contrasting or mentioning. This guide covers what the platform does, what it costs as of October 2026, and why its labels are best used for screening rather than as verdicts.
What Scite AI is
Scite is a citation-analysis and literature-search service built around Smart Citations. A Smart Citation is a citation statement taken from the full text of a citing paper and classified as supporting, contrasting or mentioning the cited work. The definition is covered in the Scite (Smart Citations) dictionary entry; this page focuses on the product and its practical use. Scite also offers an AI assistant that answers questions from peer-reviewed literature and links each answer to its sources. For how it compares with other AI research tools, see AI-powered research assistant tools.
Who runs it and what it covers
The platform is operated by Scite, and its features page (read 2026-10-28) describes the scale in its own terms: more than 1.6 billion citation statements (the page banner says 1.7 billion Smart Citations), 300 million or more full-text articles (the banner says 323 million articles indexed), 50 million or more full-text sources, 44 or more publisher partners and 2 million users. These are the vendor’s own figures, and the page does not state them consistently, so treat them as order-of-magnitude claims. The method behind the classifier is described in a peer-reviewed paper, Nicholson et al., Quantitative Science Studies 2021;2(3), which the best AI for research comparison also cites.
What you can do with Scite AI
Scite’s features page lists the following tools. Names below are the platform’s own.
| Feature | What the features page says it does |
|---|---|
| Smart Citations | Classifies each citation statement as supporting, contrasting or mentioning. |
| Assistant | Gives answers grounded in peer-reviewed literature, linked to sources. |
| Search | Full-text citation search that matches on citation statements; includes citation chaining and alerts. |
| Reports | Quantitative and qualitative views of a paper’s citations, filterable by classification, section, year and source type. |
| Collections | Built from Zotero, Mendeley, a DOI CSV or search results; alerts on new supporting or contrasting citations and on retractions. |
| Reference Check | Upload a manuscript PDF to see how its references have been cited, including retractions and editorial notices. |
The page also lists integrations: MCP, an API, Holdings, a Zotero plugin and a browser extension. The sign-in is linked from the scite.ai home page. Reference Check is the least-discussed of these and the most practical before submission: checking whether a reference has since been retracted is a routine step, and the retraction entry explains what that status means.
Is Scite AI free?
No permanent free tier is listed on the pricing page (read 2026-10-28). Basic and Pro each offer a 7-day free trial that enrols you in the chosen plan when it ends unless you cancel first. Prices as listed that day, billed yearly:
- Basic: US$12 per month. Full Assistant and Search, 250 MCP credits per month, Article Smart Citation reports, collections of up to 1,000 papers, citation alerts and dashboards.
- Pro: US$40 per month. Adds API access, 2,500 MCP credits per month, collections of up to 10,000 papers, and patent, clinical-trial and grant datasets. Extra team seats are US$40 each.
- Enterprise: custom pricing, with SSO, collections of up to 50,000 and regulatory datasets such as FAERS, MAUDE and 510(k).
The pricing FAQ says a student or academic discount may apply if you recommend Scite to your institution. Prices change, so confirm them on the pricing page before relying on these numbers.
Scite AI review: strengths and limits
Strengths
- It shows the context of a citation, which a raw count cannot. A paper cited 500 times may be cited as a method, as background, or in disagreement. This is the gap that the citation impact measures leave open.
- Alerts on contrasting citations and retractions turn a one-time literature search into ongoing monitoring.
Limits
- The labels are not equally accurate. In a 2021 notice, HKUST Library reported Scite’s accuracy on a set of test papers as 97% for mentioning, 64% for supporting and 59% for contrasting. Those are the two labels people rely on most, and they are the weakest. The library also warned that a three-way scheme can oversimplify citations. The figures date from 2021 and the classifier may have changed since; they indicate the kind of gap to expect, not a current rate.
- Coverage is partial. The same library page noted that Scite had analysed over 26 million full-text articles against an estimated 80 million papers in existence. The vendor’s current figures are much larger, but the platform reports its own scale and does not claim to cover everything.
- The vendor’s counts are inconsistent across its own features page, as noted above.
Practical consequence: use a contrasting label as a prompt to read the citing sentence, not as proof that a paper has been disputed, and do the same for supporting labels.
Alternatives
Scite sits between citation indexes and AI research assistants. For a side-by-side view of AI tools for literature work, read the best AI for research comparison, and for the wider field of assistants, AI-powered research assistant tools. Both give the context for choosing between a citation-context tool such as Scite and a discovery or summarising tool.
FAQ
What is Scite AI used for?
Checking how a paper has been cited (supporting, contrasting or mentioning), searching the full text of citation statements, monitoring a collection for new citations and retractions, and asking the Assistant questions answered from the literature.
Is Scite AI free?
The pricing page lists no permanent free plan, only a 7-day trial on Basic and Pro that converts to a paid plan unless cancelled (checked 2026-10-28).
Is Scite AI accurate?
The accuracy depends on the label. One university library reported 97% for mentioning but 64% for supporting and 59% for contrasting in 2021, so treat the labels as a screening aid and read the underlying sentence.
How much does Scite AI cost?
Basic was US$12 per month and Pro US$40 per month, both billed yearly, on 2026-10-28; Enterprise is custom.
Sources
- Scite, Features, scite.ai/features, read 2026-10-28.
- Scite, Pricing, scite.ai/pricing, read 2026-10-28.
- HKUST Library, Trial of scite.ai (published 8 November 2021), library.hkust.edu.hk/sc/trial-scite, read 2026-10-29.
- Nicholson et al., scite: a smart citation index that displays the context of citations and classifies their intent using deep learning, Quantitative Science Studies 2021;2(3), direct.mit.edu/qss/article/2/3/882.
