Explainpaper

Explainpaper is the AI research paper explainer purpose-built for the specific workflow of reading dense academic papers and getting instant simple explanations of confusing sections — letting users highlight any text in a paper and receive AI-powered explanations that translate jargon into accessible language. Founded with a focus on accelerating research paper reading, Explainpaper has grown into a competitive specialized brand in the AI research reading category serving 400,000+ researchers worldwide, with positioning as the "read research papers 10x faster" tool that addresses the specific pain of academic jargon density. Pricing follows a freemium tiered model: Free at $0/month covers individual researchers with limited monthly explanations and basic AI features. Pro at $16/month covers active researchers with unlimited explanations, advanced AI capabilities, and priority features. Pricing is materially accessible compared to enterprise research subscriptions, with the free tier providing genuine evaluation experience. Explainpaper's differentiation versus general AI research tools (Elicit, SciSpace, ChatGPT) and broader academic platforms (Otio, Scholarcy) is the highlight-and-explain interaction methodology combined with the focused use case: rather than positioning around comprehensive research synthesis (Elicit pattern) or general document analysis (ChatGPT pattern), Explainpaper is built around the specific moment when a researcher hits a confusing paragraph in a paper — letting them highlight it and get instant simple explanation in context. This produces materially better workflow integration for active paper reading than tools requiring context switches to separate AI assistants. Explainpaper capabilities include AI-powered explanation of highlighted paper sections, support for various paper formats (uploaded PDFs), instant explanation generation, simple language translation of academic jargon, and integration with major paper sources. The platform serves academic researchers, graduate students, undergraduate students reading research papers, and knowledge workers in research-intensive fields globally. Explainpaper operates under standard SaaS security practices with GDPR compliance.