Scite

Scite is a research tool. Scite Assistant answers research questions using a large index of scholarly articles, including paywalled full texts. It adds Table Mode, search, collections and MCP connections for use inside other AI assistants.

Scite Assistant is an AI research tool that answers questions using published scholarly literature instead of general web text. The homepage describes a corpus of more than 320 million full-text articles, including paywalled sources that other AI tools cannot reach, while the page metadata cites 250 million open and paywalled papers. That coverage is the main reason to consider it over a general-purpose chatbot when a claim needs to be traced back to real studies. The tool is aimed at students, academics, clinicians and analysts who need literature-backed answers rather than fluent guesses. The starting screen asks "What are you researching?" and offers sample prompts that show the intended use: comparing findings on two diets for heart health, finding studies that support and studies that contrast with a claim about homework, or getting an overview of machine learning in medical diagnosis. Those examples point to a workflow built around evidence for and against a position, not only summaries. In practice, a user types a question into the Assistant and reads the response, with an optional Table Mode that presents results in a structured layout, which suits side-by-side comparison of studies. Navigation links lead to a separate Search area, a Collections feature and an MCP page, so the product extends beyond chat. The MCP integration is presented with Claude, ChatGPT and Copilot icons, suggesting the literature index can be connected to those assistants. Chat history is saved only after starting a free trial, so anonymous use is transient. Among alternatives, Scite sits with other academic research assistants and citation-aware search tools. Its positioning rests on full-text access to paywalled material and on grounding answers in literature, which separates it from general chat products that cite loosely or not at all. Buyers comparing options should weigh how much they value that corpus breadth against the account requirement for saved history and any limits that appear after the trial period, which the homepage does not detail.