scite
Scite is an AI-powered research platform that classifies scientific citations as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning across 1.6B+ citation statements and 280M+ full-text articles, serving academic researchers, universities, pharmaceutical organizations, and AI developers via SaaS, API, and embedded Claude/ChatGPT integrations.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2018
- HeadquartersBrooklyn, United States
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What scite does
Scite operates an AI-powered research platform built around a proprietary citation classification system called Smart Citations. The company's deep learning model analyzes more than 1.6 billion citation statements extracted from 280 million+ full-text scholarly articles and classifies each citation as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning the cited paper, with the surrounding sentence shown in context. This classification layer sits beneath an integrated product suite that includes Scite Assistant (an AI research chatbot grounded in peer-reviewed literature), full-text Search, Reports (citation analytics), Collections (research monitoring across Zotero, Mendeley, or DOI lists), Reference Check (manuscript PDF evaluation), and a Developer API. The platform's content coverage is enabled by direct licensing agreements with 35+ publishers — including Wiley, SAGE, Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, Springer Nature, AAAS, and the American Chemical Society — giving Scite access to paywalled material that competing AI tools generally cannot reach.
Scite's business model is a multi-stream SaaS platform. End users access the product via a self-service freemium trial at scite.ai and convert to monthly or annual subscriptions; enterprises and institutions procure organization-wide licenses through a direct sales motion ([email protected]); and developers consume the same citation and full-text data via a Developer API, MCP-compatible endpoints, and embedded connectors inside third-party AI assistants (Claude, ChatGPT). Customer segments span individual academic researchers and PhD students, research-intensive universities and medical schools (Stanford, NYU Langone, Johns Hopkins, ETH Zurich, Purdue, McMaster, West Point), pharmaceutical and healthcare organizations (Novo Nordisk), and AI developers building custom research tools. The company is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Research Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: RSSS), which provides public-company capital and operational infrastructure; the corporate entity (Scite, LLC) is headquartered in Henderson, Nevada, with original operations in Brooklyn, New York.
Strategically, Scite has shifted from a standalone web application to a "headless" distribution model in 2026, embedding Smart Citations and the 280M+ article corpus directly inside Anthropic's Claude (April 2026) and OpenAI's ChatGPT via MCP. Recent product expansion has extended the platform's scope beyond articles to include 719K+ clinical trials, 3.5M+ grants, and 90M+ patent families. The company has received the ALPSP Award for Innovation in Publishing, the Vesalius Prize Runner Up, and the ISMTE People's Choice Award, and has secured NSF Phase 1 and NIH/NIDA SBIR grants supporting its core technology. Revenue, pricing, and headcount details are not publicly disclosed; the standalone employee count is reported at 1–10, though operational scope extends through the Research Solutions parent.
scite firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- scite
- Legal name
- Scite, LLC
- Website
- https://scite.ai
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2018
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Scite is an AI-powered research platform that classifies scientific citations as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning across 1.6B+ citation statements and 280M+ full-text articles, serving academic researchers, universities, pharmaceutical organizations, and AI developers via SaaS, API, and embedded Claude/ChatGPT integrations.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
scite industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Research Intelligence Software
- NAICS
- Software Publishers (5132), Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services (54169), Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (5192)
- SIC
- Services-Commercial Physical & Biological Research (8731)
- akta.pro primary industry
- STEM & Engineering Scholarly Publishing (EDAGAFAA)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Scientific & Laboratory Reference (Chemistry, Biology, Physics; Methods & Protocols) (EDAGAGAG), Life Sciences (Biology, Ecology, Agriculture) Scholarly Publishing (EDAGAFAC)
Keywords
Where scite is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Brooklyn
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices1 record
Markets served
scite business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Supply Chain
Revenue model
- SaaS Subscription: Recurring subscription model for individual and institutional access to the Scite platform. Users can start a free trial and subscribe monthly or annually to access Smart Citations, Assistant, Search, Reports, and Collections features.
- API Access: Programmatic access to Scite's data and capabilities for teams building their own tools. Provides periodic data dumps and custom data analysis services for enterprise customers.
- Enterprise Licensing: Organization-wide licensing for academic institutions, healthcare organizations, and enterprises requiring institutional access, custom configurations, and dedicated support.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Monthly | Free Trial - Initial access to platform features |
Go-to-market motion4 records
Distribution channels8 records
Marketing channels8 records
scite product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Scite operates an AI-powered research platform that uses natural language processing and a proprietary deep learning classifier to analyze how scientific papers cite one another. Its Smart Citations classify each of 1.6B+ citation statements as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning, going beyond traditional citation counts. The platform includes Scite Assistant (AI research chatbot), Search (full-text discovery), Reports (citation analysis), Collections (research monitoring), Reference Check (manuscript evaluation), and a Developer API, all backed by 280M+ full-text articles from licensing agreements with 35+ publishers.
Product overview
Scite is an AI-powered research platform built on Smart Citations — a proprietary citation intelligence system that classifies each citation as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning. The platform combines multiple integrated modules: Scite Assistant (AI research chatbot), Search (full-text discovery), Reports (citation analysis), Collections (research monitoring), Reference Check (manuscript evaluation), and a Developer API for programmatic access. Smart Citations serve as the foundation, with all other products built upon or integrating the 1.6B+ citation statement index and 280M+ full-text article database.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- Smart Citations The foundational citation intelligence capability of the Scite platform; Smart Citations classify each citation as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning using a deep learning model that analyzes 1.6B+ citation statements with surrounding context extracted from full-text articles. Used by researchers to determine whether findings have been supported or contradicted by subsequent literature.
- Scite Assistant
Quantifiable outcome
- Over 2,000,000 researchers, students, and industry experts use the platform worldwide
- +2 more outcomes
Companies that use scite
Customer profileNamed customers11 records
Segments4 records
Ideal customer profiles4 records
scite technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration5 records
AI capability3 records
Feature7 records
scite partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
16 partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.
- Anthropic (Claude)coreScite Claude Connector integrates Scite's AI-powered research platform with Smart Citations and access to 250+ million scientific articles directly into Anthropic's Claude AI assistant. Enables researchers to verify whether claims are supported, contrasted, or mentioned by peer-reviewed literature without leaving their Claude workflow.
- WileycorePublisher partner with indexing agreement providing full-text article access for Scite's Smart Citations platform. Wiley is one of 35+ publishers in Scite's network, enabling Scite to access and index Wiley's scholarly content.
- SAGE PublicationscorePublisher partner with indexing agreement for full-text scholarly content access, part of Scite's publisher network spanning 35+ publishers.
- Royal Society of ChemistrycorePublisher partner providing indexing agreements for full-text content from Royal Society of Chemistry journals.
- Cambridge University PresscorePublisher partner with indexing agreement for Cambridge University Press scholarly content.
- IOP PublishingcorePublisher partner providing full-text content access through indexing agreements.
- ElseviercorePublisher partner for Smart Citations indexing, providing access to Elsevier's extensive journal portfolio.
- Springer NaturecorePublisher partner with indexing agreement for full-text scholarly content.
- FrontierscoreOpen access publisher partner providing content for Scite's Smart Citations platform.
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)corePublisher partner with indexing agreement for Science and AAAS journal content.
- American Chemical SocietycorePublisher partner for chemistry literature indexing agreements.
- 35+ Additional PublisherscoreAdditional publisher partners include: American Academy of Neurology, American Medical Association, American Physiological Society, American Psychological Association, American Society for Microbiology, BMJ Publishing Group, Karger AG, PNAS, APS, Rockefeller University Press, SLACK, Spandidos Publications, SPIE, Thieme, TransTech, Wolters Kluwer Healthcare, and others.
- OpenAI (ChatGPT)coreExisting ChatGPT integration extending Scite's 'headless' SaaS strategy of embedding research infrastructure within existing AI tools. Followed by the Claude Connector expansion.
- ZoterocoreIntegration partnership with Zotero reference management software, allowing Scite functionality within users' existing citation management workflows.
- Purdue UniversitycorePurdue University acquired Scite.ai and uses the platform as one of its AI research tools for accelerating research and increasing supercomputing prominence. Purdue has adopted Scite for research support alongside Microsoft Copilot and Rohan.
- GoogleminorCollaborates with Google on climate-focused AI research as part of Purdue University's AI research initiatives.
Scale indicators9 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
scite competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Elicit: Elicit is an AI research assistant that searches and summarizes peer-reviewed literature using LLMs, targeting the same academic/researcher segment with literature review and citation analysis workflows.
- Consensus: Consensus is an AI search engine for scientific research that draws answers directly from peer-reviewed studies. Comparable to Scite Assistant in grounding LLM responses in scholarly literature for researchers and students.
- Semantic Scholar: Semantic Scholar is an AI-powered academic search engine indexing 200M+ papers with citation context and AI-generated summaries. Overlaps directly with Scite's full-text search and citation intelligence features.
- Connected Papers: Connected Papers builds graph-based visualizations of academic papers related by similarity, serving the same researcher persona with discovery and literature mapping features.
- Litmaps: Litmaps visualizes citation networks and helps researchers discover and monitor literature, targeting the same academic workflow with citation chaining and alerting features.
- Scite (original/standalone): The anchor company itself is included only as a self-reference; in valuation work, the standalone Scite pre-RSSS-acquisition is a useful comparable for transaction precedents.
- Scholarcy: Scholarcy uses AI to summarize academic articles and extract key findings, serving researchers and students with literature triage and reference analysis workflows.
Broad incumbents
- Research Solutions: Research Solutions (NASDAQ: RSSS) is the publicly traded parent of Scite and a broader research workflow platform serving academic and enterprise customers with article management and scientific content access.
- Perplexity: Perplexity is an AI answer engine with citation grounding across the web; while broader than Scite, its Pro Search features increasingly overlap with citation-backed research retrieval.
Emerging players
- Zotero: Zotero is a reference management tool with which Scite already integrates. It represents both a partner and adjacent workflow owner for citation management among academic researchers.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
scite social profiles
Digital presencescite compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance2 records
scite financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
scite leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles3 records
scite funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds5 records
Investors3 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
scite M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about scite
What does scite do?
Scite operates an AI-powered research platform that uses natural language processing and a proprietary deep learning classifier to analyze how scientific papers cite one another. Its Smart Citations classify each of 1.6B+ citation statements as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning, going beyond traditional citation counts. The platform includes Scite Assistant (AI research chatbot), Search (full-text discovery), Reports (citation analysis), Collections (research monitoring), Reference Check (manuscript evaluation), and a Developer API, all backed by 280M+ full-text articles from licensing agreements with 35+ publishers.
Is scite a public or private company?
scite is a private company. It is classified as corporate owned and is currently operating.
When was scite founded?
scite was founded in 2018. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is scite based?
scite is headquartered in Brooklyn, United States, in the North America region.
How does scite make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. SaaS Subscription is the primary driver. The others are API Access and enterprise Licensing.
Who are scite's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Elicit, Consensus, Semantic Scholar, Connected Papers, Litmaps, Scite (original/standalone) and Scholarcy. Broad incumbents are Research Solutions and Perplexity. Zotero is listed as an emerging player.
Does scite have an API?
Yes. Scite offers API access for teams building their own tools. The API provides programmatic access to Smart Citations data and full-text article content. Developers can use the API to integrate citation intelligence into custom applications. Developer documentation is at scite.ai.
What industry is scite in?
scite's product category is Research Intelligence Software. Its primary akta.pro industry code is EDAGAFAA, STEM & Engineering Scholarly Publishing, with a secondary code of EDAGAGAG, Scientific & Laboratory Reference (Chemistry, Biology, Physics; Methods & Protocols). Its NAICS code is 5132 and its SIC code is 8731.