Consensus

What is Consensus?

Academic search engine that answers yes/no research questions by aggregating findings across peer-reviewed papers and showing a 'Consensus Meter' indicating how much the literature agrees.

Main features

• Consensus Meter showing agreement/disagreement across studies
• study snapshots with sample size, methodology and journal quality
• Pro Analysis
• Copilot for synthesised answers
• GPT-4-class summarisation of findings
• Semantic Scholar corpus of 200M+ papers
• filters by study design and rigour.

Practical use cases

• Answering 'does X cause Y' style questions with literature backing
• checking whether a popular health claim is supported
• quickly gauging scientific consensus before a deeper review
• sourcing citations for a claim.

Who is it for?

• Clinicians, evidence-based practitioners, health and nutrition researchers, science journalists, students.

Pricing, free access & limits

Freemium subscription; institutional licensing

Plans described in the source

Free tier with unlimited searches but limited AI credits per month. Premium around $8.99/mo billed annually (about $11.99 monthly) for unlimited GPT-4 summaries, Consensus Meter and Copilot. Enterprise/institutional pricing on request. Student discounts available.

Usage limits to consider

Free tier limits AI-generated summaries and Consensus Meter uses per month; unlimited plain search remains.

Strengths & tradeoffs

These points summarize the supplied research, rather than hands-on test results.

Strengths noted in the source

• The Consensus Meter is an unusually honest interface - it shows disagreement rather than manufacturing a confident answer
• very cheap
• excellent for clinical and nutrition questions
• strong study-quality signals.

Limitations to consider

• Works best on empirical yes/no questions and poorly on open-ended or theoretical topics
• corpus is English-dominant
• does not do structured extraction like Elicit
• the meter can oversimplify a nuanced literature.

Platforms, languages & integrations

Platforms

• Web
• ChatGPT plugin/GPT

Languages

• English interface and predominantly English corpus

API access

Limited - contact for enterprise access

Integrations and exports

• ChatGPT (custom GPT), citation export, Semantic Scholar corpus

Evaluation notes

Treat the Consensus Meter as a starting signal, not a verdict - always read the underlying studies for anything consequential. Complements rather than replaces Elicit.

Compare Consensus

Explore similar tools

Other tools in AI Research Tools. Compare their specific features and limits for your task.

Frequently asked questions

Sources & editorial notes

Based on the directory editor’s supplied research. The source does not provide a verification date for this row. Importing a record does not independently verify every product claim.

• Official product website
• Official pricing

How Consensus compares in AI Research Tools

Which one should you pick?

• Choose Consensus — best for: fast evidence checks on empirical yes/no questions.
• Look at Elicit — best for: systematic reviews and structured evidence extraction at scale.
• Look at Scite — best for: verifying whether a claim has held up in the literature since publication.
• Look at SciSpace — best for: reading and understanding dense papers, especially for non-native English speakers.
• Look at Gemini Notebook (NotebookLM) — best for: answering questions from a closed, trusted set of your own documents.

Before you commit to Consensus

Weigh these limits against your needs:

• Works best on empirical yes/no questions and poorly on open-ended or theoretical topics
• corpus is English-dominant
• does not do structured extraction like Elicit