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Elicit vs You.com

Features, pricing, ratings, and pros and cons, side by side.

Verdict

Elicit is listed under Education & Research and You.com under Developer Tools. Both have a free plan or trial. Only You.com is available on iOS and Android.

Best overall

Elicit

  • Academic researchers
  • Graduate students
  • Life sciences and pharma teams
  • Policy and government analysts

Choose Elicit if

  • You want a tool built for literature reviews.
  • Free plan with unlimited search across 138M+ papers.
  • Sentence-level citations for AI-generated claims.

Choose You.com if

  • You want a tool built for grounding LLM and agent outputs in live web data, RAG pipelines, cited research reports, adding web search to MCP-enabled coding agents.
  • Clear per-call pricing with no seat, minimum or platform fee.
  • Keyless free MCP tier (100 queries per day) makes prototyping frictionless.
Best for beginners
Elicit
Best for business
Elicit

Features

18 features compared.

  • Research Agent
    Elicit
    Available
    You.com
    Not available
  • Research Reports
    Elicit
    Available
    You.com
    Not available
  • Systematic Literature Review
    Elicit
    Available
    You.com
    Not available
  • Data extraction tables
    Elicit
    Available
    You.com
    Not available
  • Library
    Elicit
    Available
    You.com
    Not available
  • Routines
    Elicit
    Available
    You.com
    Not available
  • Chat with papers
    Elicit
    Available
    You.com
    Not available
  • Zotero import
    Elicit
    Available
    You.com
    Not available
  • API and MCP server
    Elicit
    Available
    You.com
    Not available
  • Web Search API
    Elicit
    Not available
    You.com
    Available
  • Contents API
    Elicit
    Not available
    You.com
    Available
  • Answer API
    Elicit
    Not available
    You.com
    Available
  • Research API
    Elicit
    Not available
    You.com
    Available
  • Finance Research API
    Elicit
    Not available
    You.com
    Available
  • Knowledge for Web Search
    Elicit
    Not available
    You.com
    Available
  • Hosted MCP Server and Agent Skills
    Elicit
    Not available
    You.com
    Available
  • Enterprise Security
    Elicit
    Not available
    You.com
    Available
  • Inference Router
    Elicit
    Not available
    You.com
    Available

Pricing

Plans as listed by each vendor. Check their sites for current prices.

  • Pricing model
    Elicit
    Freemium
    You.com
    Freemium
  • Free plan
    Elicit
    Yes
    You.com
    Yes
  • Starting price
    Elicit
    $0
    You.com
    $0
  • Plans
    Elicit
    4 plans
    You.com
    3 plans

Elicit plans

  • Basic

    $0

    Free plan with limited Research Agent and Reports usage

    • Unlimited search across 138M+ papers
    • Unlimited summaries
    • Unlimited chat with papers
    • View sources for answers
    • Zotero import

  • Pro

    Most popular

    $75/user/mo

    Billed monthly ($49 per user per month billed annually); standard usage for systematic reviews

    • Systematic review workflow screening up to 5,000 papers
    • 20 table columns
    • Reports from up to 135 data sources
    • Routines
    • Custom extractions from uploaded papers
    • API access

  • Scale

    $279/user/mo

    Billed monthly ($169 per user per month billed annually); 5x usage with collaboration

    • 5x Pro usage
    • Figure extraction
    • Live collaboration
    • Reports from up to 200 data sources
    • 30 table columns
    • Admin panel with usage tracking

  • Enterprise

    Custom/custom

    For companies and schools

    • Custom usage
    • Screen 40,000 papers with 40 columns
    • SSO and SAML
    • No training on your data by default
    • Custom data sources and templates
    • Unlimited API access

You.com plans

  • Free

    $0

    Keyless prototyping through the MCP server

    • No API key
    • account or credit card needed
    • 100 Web Search API queries per day via MCP

  • Pay as you go

    Most popular

    $5/1K calls

    Usage-based billing for production; $5 is the Web Search rate per 1,000 calls

    • No minimums
    • seats or platform fee
    • all endpoints
    • SDKs and MCP
    • auto top-up

  • Enterprise

    Custom/custom

    Enterprise teams needing compliance and capacity

    • Zero Data Retention
    • SOC 2
    • DPA-ready
    • custom QPS and dedicated capacity
    • SLA-backed support

Our ratings

Scored out of 10 by the Finder Atlas editorial team. Last reviewed November 2026.

Elicit
8.3overall
You.com
8.2overall

  • Academic Paper Search

    Elicit
    8.8
    You.com
    Not rated

  • Structured Data Extraction

    Elicit
    8.7
    You.com
    Not rated

  • Citation Transparency

    Elicit
    8.6
    You.com
    Not rated

  • Systematic Review Support

    Elicit
    8.5
    You.com
    Not rated

  • Pricing Clarity

    Elicit
    7.0
    You.com
    Not rated

  • Ease of Use

    Elicit
    Not rated
    You.com
    8.0

  • Feature Depth

    Elicit
    Not rated
    You.com
    8.3

  • Value for Money

    Elicit
    Not rated
    You.com
    7.8

  • Performance & Speed

    Elicit
    Not rated
    You.com
    8.4

  • Documentation & Support

    Elicit
    Not rated
    You.com
    8.5

Scores weigh documented features, plan value, platform coverage, integrations and user feedback. A missing score means we have not rated that area yet.

Pros and cons

Elicit

Pros

  • Free plan with unlimited search across 138M+ papers
  • Sentence-level citations for AI-generated claims
  • Structured extraction of paper details into tables
  • Dedicated systematic review workflow and Routines for tracking new research
  • API and MCP server for use with other tools

Cons

  • Research Agent and Reports usage is limited on the free plan
  • Systematic reviews, Routines and API access need Pro at $75 per user per month ($49 billed annually)
  • Pricing page shows only annual-billing rates for Pro and Scale
  • Focused on research; not a general-purpose assistant
  • No mobile app

You.com

Pros

  • Clear per-call pricing with no seat, minimum or platform fee.
  • Keyless free MCP tier (100 queries per day) makes prototyping frictionless.
  • Range of endpoints from raw search to cited multi-step research on one index.
  • Documented MCP server, agent skills and plugins for many coding agents.
  • Enterprise options include zero data retention and SOC 2.
  • Published latency figures per endpoint help with capacity planning.

Cons

  • Per-call billing makes costs harder to predict than a flat subscription, and top Research tiers reach $1,200 per 1,000 calls.
  • No consumer plans are published on the website, so anyone looking for the old chat assistant gets no clear pricing.
  • The consumer search and chat experience is no longer promoted, so it is a poor fit for casual users.
  • Free tier is capped at 100 Web Search queries per day.

Platforms

  • Web
    Elicit
    Supported
    You.com
    Supported
  • Windows
    Elicit
    Not supported
    You.com
    Not supported
  • macOS
    Elicit
    Not supported
    You.com
    Not supported
  • iOS
    Elicit
    Not supported
    You.com
    Supported
  • Android
    Elicit
    Not supported
    You.com
    Supported
  • API
    Elicit
    Supported
    You.com
    Supported
  • Browser Extension
    Elicit
    Not supported
    You.com
    Not supported

Integrations

Elicit

4 integrations
  • Zotero
  • PubMed
  • ClinicalTrials.gov
  • MCP

You.com

11 integrations
  • Claude Code
  • Cursor
  • Codex CLI
  • GitHub Copilot CLI
  • Windsurf
  • Gemini CLI
  • VS Code
  • JetBrains IDEs
  • Zed
  • OpenCode
  • Jan

Company

  • Company
    Elicit
    Elicit
    You.com
    You.com
  • Founded
    Elicit
    Not listed
    You.com
    2020
  • Headquarters
    Elicit
    Oakland, CA
    You.com
    Palo Alto, CA
  • Monthly users
    Elicit
    5M+ researchers
    You.com
    Not listed
  • Listing
    Elicit
    Claimed
    You.com
    Claimed

Frequently asked questions

Is Elicit better than You.com?

It depends on your workflow. Elicit is built for literature reviews. You.com is built for grounding LLM and agent outputs in live web data, RAG pipelines, cited research reports, adding web search to MCP-enabled coding agents.

What are the key feature differences between Elicit and You.com?

Elicit: AI research assistant for literature search, systematic reviews and evidence reports. You.com: Real-time web search, research and answer APIs that ground AI agents in live data.

Does Elicit or You.com have a free plan?

Yes, both do. Elicit is freemium and You.com is freemium, and each has a free plan or trial.

Which is cheaper, Elicit or You.com?

Both can be used for free. Paid plans differ in limits and features, so compare the tiers in the pricing table above.