Name: Consensus
Price: Freemium

What is Consensus?

Consensus is an academic search engine that answers research questions from peer-reviewed literature rather than the open web, drawing on over 200 million papers and summarising what the evidence actually says with direct citations. Its Consensus Meter is the distinctive feature: for yes-or-no research questions it shows the proportion of studies supporting, opposing or remaining unclear, which surfaces genuine scientific disagreement instead of flattening it into one confident answer. Two things to weigh. It is strongest for empirical questions with a clear literature and weaker for theoretical, historical or interpretive fields where findings do not reduce to agreement counts. And the meter reports what studies concluded, not how good those studies were, so a well-supported position built on small or poorly designed trials still shows as agreement. Use it to map the evidence quickly, then read the underlying papers before citing anything.

Key Features

Consensus Meter200M+ Paper DatabasePro AnalysisStudy SnapshotsAI-Generated SummariesCited Evidence Per ClaimDeep Search ModeAuthor and Journal FiltersField of Study FiltersChatGPT Plugin IntegrationAPI AccessNo-Ad ResultsPDF Access for Open PapersBookmark and Save PapersResearch Claim VerificationNatural Language QueryStudy Design Filters

How to Use Consensus

1Visit consensus.app and create a free account

2Ask a yes/no or relationship-style research question

3View the Consensus Meter showing evidence direction

4Read AI summaries with citations for each relevant paper

5Use Deep Search for comprehensive analysis on complex topics

✅ Best For

Health-conscious individuals and clinicians who want to quickly check whether a supplement, treatment, or intervention has genuine scientific backing before making decisions.
Graduate students and academics who need a fast way to gauge whether a research question has a strong evidence base before committing to a full literature review.
Science communicators and journalists who need to verify claims against peer-reviewed research without spending hours on PubMed or Scopus.

❌ Not For

Researchers who require full systematic review workflows, PRISMA compliance, or structured data extraction across hundreds of papers, as Consensus is optimized for fast evidence discovery rather than deep extraction.
Users looking for humanities, law, or social science sources, since Consensus is strongest in biomedical and natural science literature.

Reviews

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Pricing

Free$0

✓25 Pro Searches/month
✓basic paper access

Premium$8.99/mo

✓Unlimited Pro Analyses
✓Study Snapshots

Pro$15/mo

✓Unlimited searches
✓15 Deep Searches/month
✓full analysis

APICustom

✓$0.10/call plus platform fee

Prompts to Try

Does creatine supplementation improve cognitive performance?

Is mindfulness meditation effective for reducing anxiety?

Does caffeine consumption increase the risk of heart disease?

Use Cases

A fitness coach uses Consensus to verify whether high-intensity interval training is more effective than steady-state cardio for fat loss, finding a clear Yes consensus that she cites in her client coaching material.

A medical student preparing for rounds asks Consensus whether low-dose aspirin prevents colorectal cancer, receiving a Mixed result that helps him frame a nuanced discussion with his attending.

A health blogger uses Consensus before writing about seed oils to check whether the anti-inflammatory claims have scientific backing, and adjusts her article after seeing a Possibly verdict with limited evidence.

A pharmacist uses Consensus to quickly screen whether a patient's supplement stack has any evidence of drug interactions, pulling relevant studies in under two minutes.

An EdTech founder uses Consensus's API to embed evidence-based citations into their learning platform's AI tutor responses, making answers more credible for teacher users.

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