Semantic Scholar
Free AI-powered scientific search engine from the Allen Institute: 200 million papers, AI summaries, and open API
Overview
Semantic Scholar is developed by the Allen Institute for AI and indexes over 200 million scientific papers across domains (medicine, biology, computer science, physics). It offers AI summaries, citation influence detection, personalized recommendations, citation visualization, and a free REST API for developers with 100 requests per 5 minutes (extendable on request).
Access is completely free with no subscription or freemium tier. The API provides access to paper data, authors, citations, and recommendations at no cost. Interface is in English. AI summaries are generated in English. Less powerful than Elicit for data extraction but ideal as an open scientific data layer.
Our verdict
Best for developers wanting to integrate scientific data into their applications, and for all researchers seeking a free and reliable discovery engine. Not for you if you need automated systematic reviews or data extraction: Elicit or Scite would be better suited.