A workflow that costs nothing
Start in Consensus or Elicit to find out what has been published. Move the papers you keep into NotebookLM or Scholarcy to read them quickly. Write in whatever you normally use, then run the finished draft through Paperpal before you submit.
Every one of those steps has a free tier. Pay only where you hit a ceiling, and you will know exactly which one when you do.
The one thing worth paying for early
If you are submitting to a journal, Paperpal is the cheapest useful purchase here at $7.52/mo billed annually. Its thirty-plus journal readiness checks target the stage where papers get returned for formatting and reference problems that have nothing to do with the research. That is a category of rejection you can simply remove.
Where each free tier stops
NotebookLM takes 50 sources on its free tier, which is genuinely capable and enough for a single project. Paid raises it toward 600.
Elicit is not built for quick answers and will disappoint anyone expecting a tidy summary — it is for screening at volume, up to 5,000 papers on its systematic review workflow.
Consensus has no mobile app, which matters more than it sounds if you wanted to check something between lectures or on a ward.
QuillBot does not publish its pricing clearly, so budget for a look rather than a number.
A word on AI detection
Several of these include it, and it is worth thinking about rather than automating past. Check what your institution or target journal requires you to disclose. Most now have a policy, and following it is considerably easier than explaining afterwards why you did not.
