Consensus Pricing Explained (2026): Pro at $12 a Month, Billed Annually

Consensus Pro is $20 a month, or $144 a year ($12 a month). Deep is $65 a month, or $540 a year ($45 a month). Free includes unlimited paper searches, 10 Pro messages a month, 3 Deep reviews a month, and 30 API and MCP calls. Teams and university plans exist. This page does not print a Teams dollar amount, because the directory card we used does not list one.

The product page is Consensus review. The two-tool workflow is how to research with Elicit and Consensus. The extraction invoice, when the output is a table, is Elicit pricing explained.

Prices are US list prices excluding tax from Consensus’s pricing page and help center as recorded in the directory on October 16, 2026. A live fetch of the pricing page returned HTTP 401 on October 24, 2026, so these figures stay on the directory record. Published October 24, 2026. We did not score how often a citation supports the sentence. You still open the paper.

The card

Plan	Price	What the directory recorded
Free	$0	Unlimited paper searches, 10 Pro messages, 3 Deep reviews, 30 API and MCP calls a month
Pro	$20 a month, or $144 a year ($12 a month)	Unlimited Pro messages, 15 Deep reviews, 500 API and MCP calls
Deep	$65 a month, or $540 a year ($45 a month)	Pro’s analysis, plus 200 Deep reviews a month, 2,000 API and MCP calls
Teams and universities	Custom, until your quote says otherwise	Teams includes 500 API and MCP calls per user a month, on the help text we recorded. No public seat price on this page

flowchart TD
  q{"What are you asking the literature?"}
  q -->|Find papers| free["Free search"]
  q -->|A cited analysis, a few times a day| pro["Pro at 12 USD a month, annual"]
  q -->|Many multi-paper Deep reviews| deep["Deep at 45 USD a month, annual"]
  q -->|A campus or a lab contract| quote["Teams or university. Ask for the price"]
  pro --> click["Open the paper before you quote it"]
  deep --> click

A Deep review is a longer synthesis across many papers, closer to a mini literature review than a one-line answer. Fifteen of those a month is the Pro cap on the card. Two hundred is the Deep cap. If your protocol needs a screening table with columns you define, you are describing Elicit, not a larger Consensus tier.

What you are buying

Free is a real search tier. Ten Pro messages and three Deep reviews are enough to see the shape of an answer. They are a poor plan for a semester of questions. When the cap hits, the upgrade is Pro, not a second account.

Pro at $144 a year is the default paid seat for a student, a clinician, or a journalist who wants unlimited Pro analysis and a modest number of Deep reviews. The monthly sticker is $20. Annual is the discount the card states by printing both numbers. API and MCP calls are included: 500 on Pro. A script that pulls more papers than you will read is not a savings.

Deep at $540 a year is the power-user row: 200 Deep reviews. Buy it when you are actually running those reviews. “We might do a thorough search someday” is Pro until the 15-review cap is the complaint.

Teams is the admin conversation. The directory records 500 API and MCP calls per user per month on Teams, and it does not record a public per-seat price here. Ask. A university plan is the same kind of conversation. Do not email a department a $12 quote if procurement is on a different contract.

Other ways to read

Elicit Plus is $11 a user a month billed annually when you need columns, exports, and a screening workflow. Consensus answers a question with papers attached. Elicit builds the table. Pro at Elicit, $39 billed annually, is the systematic-review seat on that card. Use both only when you will use both outputs.

Perplexity Pro is $17 a month billed annually when the source is the open web, a market page, or a news report. It is the wrong corpus for “what do randomized trials say,” and Consensus is the wrong corpus for a product’s pricing page. The invoice is Perplexity pricing explained. The market-research split is Perplexity vs Gemini for market research.

Gemini Notebook is free with a Google account when the PDF is already yours. It does not search Consensus’s index. The file comparison is Gemini vs Claude for long PDFs.

A sentence you will quote needs the passage, not the badge. That check is what AI groundedness is. The failure mode is what an AI hallucination is.

FAQ

Is Consensus free?

Yes. Unlimited paper searches are on the free tier, with 10 Pro messages, 3 Deep reviews, and 30 API and MCP calls a month. Free is for finding and for a light taste of the analysis. It is not unlimited synthesis.

Why do people say Pro is $12 and also $20?

Both are on the card. $20 is the monthly price. $144 a year is $12 a month when you pay annually. Quote the billing period with the number.

What is a Deep review?

A longer, multi-step synthesis across many papers on your question. Pro includes 15 a month. Deep includes 200. A Deep review is still not a systematic review you can file without reading the papers.

Does every plan include the API?

The directory says API and MCP calls are included on every plan: 30 on Free, 500 on Pro, 2,000 on Deep, and 500 per user on Teams. Calls are not a waiver of the click-through check.

Last verified

October 16, 2026, from consensus.app/pricing and the Consensus help center, as recorded in the directory. Live fetch on October 24, 2026 returned HTTP 401. Published October 24, 2026.

Sources: Consensus pricing, Consensus subscription plans, Elicit pricing.

Published by Andrew for AI Tools Optimizer.

Consensus is in the research and search directory. Directory pages may use affiliate links. A purchase through them may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you.