Consensus

Consensus is a specialized AI search engine for scientific research that goes beyond finding papers to answering the underlying research question: given a question, it analyzes 100+ relevant peer-reviewed papers and tells you what percentage of studies support, contradict, or find mixed results for the claim. The Consensus Meter — a simple yes/no/inconclusive summary — provides an instant evidence-based answer to empirically testable questions.

The platform indexes 200+ million papers from PubMed, Semantic Scholar, and other academic sources, and uses AI to understand the research question each paper addresses and what conclusion it reaches. This makes Consensus uniquely useful for health and lifestyle questions where scientific consensus exists but is buried in thousands of papers: "Does caffeine improve exercise performance?", "Is intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction?", "Does mindfulness meditation reduce anxiety?" — all return immediate evidence summaries.

The free tier allows basic searches with limited features and a free account provides 20 premium searches per month. Paid plans start at $8.99/month for unlimited premium searches, AI-generated summaries, and the GPT plugin integration. The primary limitation is scope: Consensus works well for well-studied empirical questions where a substantial literature exists, but produces unreliable results for emerging topics, social science questions with contested methodology, or areas where scientific consensus is actively debated. It is not a substitute for expert review of the underlying papers.