Rayyan vs Semantic Scholar (2026)

Rayyan

by Rayyan

Semantic Scholar

by Allen Institute for AI

Pros

• ✓A usable free plan with duplicate detection and AI relevance predictions, and paid seats from $4.99/mo billed annually.
• ✓Covers the whole screening workflow in one place: import, duplicates, blind screening, full-text review, data extraction, risk of bias and PRISMA diagrams.
• ✓Rayyan says it is used by more than 1 million researchers at more than 30,000 institutions, and it offers iOS and Android apps that screen offline.

Limitations

• –It screens references a team has already gathered; it does not search literature databases for them.
• –ResearchPilot's AI Reviewer starts on the Business/Academic plan at $2,500 a year for 5 licenses, and the API and SSO need the custom-priced Enterprise plan.
• –A thin independent review record: no G2 reviews and 3.6 stars from 240 reviews on Google Play, and SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 are shown as engagements rather than completed certifications.

Pros

• ✓Free with no paid tier: search, the AI features, accounts, the Academic Graph API and the bulk datasets cost nothing, and Ai2 runs the project as a nonprofit.
• ✓Built for developers and agents: a free REST API with anonymous access on most endpoints, monthly bulk datasets, and the Asta Scientific Corpus Tool MCP server, with research tools including Elicit, Consensus and Undermind naming Semantic Scholar as a data source.
• ✓AI signals on top of search: TLDR summaries, Highly Influential Citations and citation intent labels, plus Research Feeds and alerts, with no account needed to search.

Limitations

• –Search and annotation rather than synthesis: it does not summarize across many papers or extract data into tables, and Ask This Paper answers questions about one paper at a time, tested only on English-language papers and available on a subset of papers.
• –Coverage focuses on English-language publications, book coverage is very limited and patents are not included, so non-English research and books are thinly covered.
• –Several AI features are narrow: TLDRs cover computer science and biomedical papers only, Semantic Reader is limited to arXiv papers and still in beta, and Topic pages cover computer science only.