Migrate from Consensus to Scite.
2 documentation-derived translation patterns — what carries over and what to watch for. Cited to the Feature Parity Map; the audit tells you whether the move is worth it.
Both tools answer a natural-language research question by retrieving peer-reviewed papers and writing a synthesis with inline citations back to each source paper, so a team that uses Scite Assistant for literature-grounded Q&A can drop the paid Scite seat and run the same questions in Consensus. Re-ask the question on consensus.app: a Pro Search returns a synthesized answer above the paper list, and Pro Analysis (formerly Copilot) takes a follow-up command to draft or reorganise the findings while keeping citations attached. For the deeper Scite Assistant runs people use for literature reviews, use Consensus Deep Search, which screens up to ~1,000 papers and outputs a structured, cited literature-review report on the ~50 most relevant. Both ground their answers only in the retrieved papers rather than the model's open-web memory, so the core 'ask a question, get a verifiable cited answer' workflow carries over. Keep Consensus; cancel Scite.
- Warning: Corpus and access differ: Scite Assistant reads 280M+ full-text articles including paywalled full text from 30+ publisher partners, whereas Consensus retrieves over ~220M papers and works primarily from abstracts/metadata plus its own extractions - so answers that depended on Scite reading inside paywalled full text may be thinner or miss a source after the move; spot-check important claims.
- Warning: Scite's supporting/contrasting/mentioning Smart Citation signal does not exist in Consensus. If the Assistant workflow leaned on 'has this claim been supported or disputed by later papers', that evidence-classification read is lost; Consensus instead offers the Consensus Meter (a yes/no agreement gauge) and per-paper Study Snapshots, which are a different signal and must be re-derived per query.
- Warning: Scite-specific add-ons do not transfer: the Scite browser extension (right-click 'ask Assistant' on any page), the Zotero plugin, and the Scite MCP/API connector have no one-to-one Consensus equivalent for the same workflows - Consensus exposes a ChatGPT app integration instead. Re-create any extension-, Zotero-, or MCP-driven habit before cancelling.
- Warning: Plan/quota models are unrelated: Scite is a paid subscription (Personal ~$20/mo, no permanent free tier), while Consensus is freemium - the free plan gives unlimited basic search and the Consensus Meter but caps the premium AI actions (Deep Search and higher-volume Pro Analysis are gated to paid plans). A heavy Scite Assistant user will likely need a paid Consensus plan for equivalent synthesis headroom; confirm the live pricing-page allowances rather than assuming the free tier suffices.
- Warning: There is little to export from Scite Assistant itself (answers are generated on demand); the real migration cost is rebuilding saved Scite resources - Custom Dashboards, Collections, and Citation Alerts - as Consensus Collections and search habits before the Scite subscription lapses, since those saved artifacts disappear when the seat is cancelled.
Both products take a natural-language query and return a ranked list of real peer-reviewed papers with an AI relevance summary per result, so a team using Scite for scholarly discovery can drop Scite and search on Consensus instead. Re-run the same queries on consensus.app: Pro Search returns the most relevant studies with one-line AI summaries and links to each source, and you can narrow with filters (study design, sample size, recency) and save results into Collections - replacing Scite's filter-by-section/type/journal and saved-search habits. For exhaustive discovery comparable to a broad Scite Search sweep, use Consensus Deep Search, which reviews up to ~1,000 papers and reports on the ~50 most relevant. Keep Consensus; cancel Scite.
- Warning: The core differentiator does NOT carry over: Scite Search matches against citation statements extracted from full text (it surfaces papers by how a finding was actually used in later work and supports citation chaining), whereas Consensus searches paper abstracts/metadata and ranks by relevance. If the team relied on full-text citation-statement search or citation-chaining to find methods/claims that never appear in an abstract, that capability is lost in the move and has no Consensus equivalent.
- Warning: Coverage scope differs: Scite indexes 280M+ full-text articles plus preprints, books, and datasets (and, on the April-2026 Pro plan, patents/clinical trials/grants), while Consensus retrieves over ~220M papers focused on peer-reviewed science. Niche non-journal sources reachable in Scite Search (datasets, books, grants) may not be findable in Consensus; verify coverage for any specialised query before cancelling.
- Warning: Saved search infrastructure must be rebuilt: Scite Citation Alerts (auto-tracking of new matching results) and any saved Scite searches/dashboards do not transfer - re-create tracking as Consensus Collections/searches, and note Consensus does not offer an identical 'alert me on new matches' email feature, so recurring-monitoring workflows may need a manual re-run cadence.