Best AI Research Tools Under $10/mo

Tools at this price rarely try to do everything. Each one handles a single stage of research well, and the cheap plan is usually the first step above a free tier that rations heavily. The questions that matter are which stage you need covered, what the entry plan removes from the meter, and whether the tool works on papers you already hold or finds new ones. This guide takes those in order and ends with how to pair two of these tools.

Start with the job, not the tool

The six tools on this page cover four jobs, and no two of them overlap much.

• Screening records for a review. You have exported hundreds of references from several databases and need to decide which stay. Rayyan is built for this, with deduplication, PRISMA flow diagrams and shared workflows on its Advanced plan.
• Finding papers. You need new sources on a topic. Semantic Scholar searches a huge index at no charge, and Keenious adds a field map and a chat that explains unfamiliar areas.
• Summarizing papers you hold. You want the core of a paper without reading all of it. Scholarcy turns papers into flashcard summaries, and SciSummary splits them into labeled sections such as methods and results.
• Asking questions across PDFs. You have a folder of documents and a set of questions. Humata answers across many files and points to the exact source page.

Once the job is clear, this table gives the first pick and the catch with the runner-up.

Job	Start with	Runner-up and the trade-off
Screening a review	Rayyan	Humata answers questions about files, which is a different job from screening
Finding sources for an essay	Semantic Scholar	Keenious explains the field better, yet its free chat is short
Skimming a pile of papers	Scholarcy	SciSummary analyzes figures, but its free access is a seven day trial
Querying your own PDFs	Humata	Scholarcy summarizes each paper rather than answering across several
Learning a new field	Keenious	Semantic Scholar returns papers by concept and has nothing to pay

What the price actually buys

At this price, you are paying to remove a meter, and each kind of tool has a different one.

• Review platform. Rayyan's Essential plan costs $8.33 a month billed quarterly, which is $24.99 per quarter, and no monthly plan exists. It is the one plan on this page that you pay for three months at a time.
• Search tools. Semantic Scholar has no paid tier and nothing to buy. Keenious at $10 a month removes its free caps of 5 responses per conversation and 3 conversations a day, and raises the file limit from 3MB to 20MB.
• Paper readers. Scholarcy at 8.99 euros a month lifts the cap of 10 summaries to unlimited and adds a library, collections, notes, highlights and up to 100 flashcard exports. SciSummary at $7 a month makes summaries, figure analysis and chat messages unlimited, with semantic search over 1,000 indexed documents.
• Document question tools. Humata at $9.99 a month covers up to 3 users and 500 pages a month, then charges $0.02 for each extra page. A 300 page overage adds $6 to the month.

Which tool fits which researcher

• Students writing essays. Start with Semantic Scholar, because it costs nothing and returns papers across STEM, social sciences and humanities. Add Scholarcy to turn the best ones into flashcards you can revise from.
• Anyone reviewing a body of literature. Start with Rayyan to screen, and keep Scholarcy for the papers that survive. Scholarcy converts a whole Zotero library in one batch.
• Science and engineering readers. Start with SciSummary, which structures a paper into abstract, methods, results and conclusion and lets you chat with the figures. Pair it with Semantic Scholar to find the next paper.
• Newcomers to a field. Start with Keenious, whose field map shows how clusters of research relate. It is the quickest route to learning what the neighborhood looks like before you pick a reading list.
• Small teams with shared documents. Start with Humata, whose Expert plan takes up to 3 users and which is built around shared file libraries. It answers from the files you upload and does not search beyond them.

Where the entry plans stop

Limit	Tools	What happens when you hit it
Pages in a month	Humata (500 pages on Expert)	Extra pages cost $0.02 each, so the bill grows with the paper count
Billing term	Rayyan (quarterly)	You commit to three months at a time
Upload size	Keenious (20MB on the paid plan)	A very large file still needs splitting
Mobile app	Scholarcy, SciSummary, Keenious	None has one, so you work from a computer
Source reach	Scholarcy, Humata	They read files you bring and do not search databases for you

Plan around the first row most. Pages billed beyond the 500 are a pay-as-you-go cost, so a heavy month at Humata is a known figure you can estimate before you upload. The other limits are habits to build around, such as exporting records from PubMed or Embase before opening Rayyan, which takes imported records as RIS or BibTeX files.

What the cheapest plan leaves out

The cheapest plan on this page leaves out the AI layer in more than one place. Rayyan's Essential plan is the entry tier, while the full platform with ResearchPilot AI sits at the Business and Academic plan, which starts with 5 licenses billed annually. SciSummary keeps semantic search over your indexed documents for Pro. Scholarcy keeps its enhanced summaries and one-click bibliographies behind the monthly plan.

Team features come at a higher step too. Humata's Team plan, at $49 per user, takes up to 10 users and 5,000 free pages a month. Keenious leaves its admin console, billing controls and two-factor authentication for the Teams plan at $20 per user a month.

Privacy and who sees your documents

Reading a confidential draft, grant application or client report in a hosted tool is a real decision. Two tools here say your content is not used for training.

Tool	What is stated
Humata	Not used for training
Keenious	Not used for training; ISO 27001 listed

Use one of these two for sensitive material, and keep uploads to the other tools for published papers.

Mistakes to avoid

1. Buying a reader to find papers. Scholarcy and Humata work on files you bring and cannot search databases. Find sources in Semantic Scholar first, then upload what you have gathered.
2. Paying for three months of Rayyan for a one-off job. The Essential plan is billed per quarter, so a single afternoon of screening costs $24.99. Rayyan lists a free tier, so start there and pay when the review is large.
3. Letting Humata pages run past the allowance. The $0.02 per page overage is cheap per page and adds up on book-length PDFs. Count pages before you upload a long report.
4. Treating a seven day trial as a plan. SciSummary's trial gives 30,000 words, 5 figures analyzed and 100 chat messages. Start it when a real paper pile is ready, not before.
5. Skipping the student offer. SciSummary lists a free first month for students with unlimited summaries, figures and chat. Use that route before paying for the first month.

When to move up a plan

You are ready to pay once you are planning your reading around a meter. Holding back a question until tomorrow, splitting a PDF to fit a 3MB cap, or choosing which papers deserve one of your 10 summaries are the signs.

If you are	Upgrade to	What changes
Asking many questions in a day	Keenious at $10	Unlimited responses and conversations, and uploads up to 20MB
Summarizing papers every week	Scholarcy monthly	Unlimited summaries, a library, notes and highlights
Reading a lot of figures	SciSummary Pro	Unlimited summaries, figure analysis and chat
Working through long reports	Humata Expert	500 pages a month shared by up to 3 users
Running a larger review	Rayyan Essential	AI-powered tools for serious researchers

Billing changes the math. SciSummary lists a 42% saving on yearly billing and Scholarcy 25%, while Rayyan bills quarterly. Scholarcy and SciSummary both offer a trial, and Rayyan offers a free tier indefinitely.

Using two tools together

Because each tool covers one job, a pair covers a project.

1. Find. Search Semantic Scholar for sources and save the PDFs you want.
2. Skim. Run them through Scholarcy or SciSummary to decide which deserve a full read.
3. Ask. Upload the keepers to Humata and question them together, with answers that cite the page.

A second pairing suits formal reviews. Export records from your databases, screen them in Rayyan, and use Scholarcy on the included papers to build a literature matrix.