The ultimate research AI copilot
for researchers, PhD students, librarians, reviewers and readers

Search ten academic databases, interrogate hundreds of PDFs, and draft with real citations, every claim traced back to a real sentence in a real source.

  • You own your data
  • We never process it
  • Free app · 7-day AI trial
  • Online or fully offline
Ask one question across hundreds of documents. Every cell links back to the exact passage it came from.
Seamlessly syncs with
Zotero EndNote Mendeley Bookends More coming
The principle

An AI that writes your paper for you is worthless.
One that helps you read three hundred of them changes everything.

Most AI writing tools Sciwand
Writes your paper from a prompt
Reads only what you point it at
Invents citations that look plausible
Cites the exact sentence, in your PDF
Answers from the open web
Answers from your library
Hands you finished text
Suggests; you accept, edit, or bin it
How it works

Three stages. One window.

Searching, reading and writing up are one continuous job. Sciwand stops treating them as three different apps.

02 / Analyse the PDFs

Read three hundred papers in an afternoon.

Ask a question once and Sciwand answers it against every document independently, laying the results out as a grid. Free text, yes/no screening, or a 1–10 score on any dimension you can define. Then click any cell and land on the sentence it came from.

  • Built for literature reviews, screening, and systematic extraction
  • Every answer opens the source PDF at the right page, sentence highlighted
  • Grounded in your own library, so there is nothing to hallucinate
  • PDF, Word, EPUB and plain text, in one library
03 / Write the publication

Draft in your own voice, with your own sources at hand.

A proper editor with an AI sidebar that may only quote what is in your library. It suggests; you accept, rewrite, or ignore. The argument is yours, and the references are real.

  • Over 10,000 citation styles, including APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Nature, Vancouver and BibTeX
  • Export to Word, Markdown, or plain text
  • Microsoft Word add-in for citing as you write Coming soon
Everything in the app

The full picture.

Every capability that ships today, under the stage it belongs to.

01 Search

  • Ten academic databases queried from inside the app
  • Live citation graph: references, citing papers, related work
  • Saved searches you can re-run as the literature moves
  • Paste a DOI, PMID, arXiv ID or ISBN and it resolves the record
  • Drop in a single file or a whole folder

02 Analyse

  • Ask one question across hundreds of documents at once
  • Yes / no screening columns for literature reviews at scale
  • 1–10 score columns on any dimension you define
  • Library chat that synthesises across your whole collection
  • Built-in PDF reader and annotator, one click from any answer
  • Every answer cited to a highlighted sentence in the source

03 Write

  • Markdown editor with an AI sidebar grounded in your library
  • Over 10,000 citation styles
  • Export to Word, Markdown or plain text
  • Run a local model, or bring your own API key
  • Microsoft Word add-in Coming soon
Fits where you already are

Nothing to migrate. Nothing to give up.

Sciwand works standalone or beside the tools you have. Imports are one-way, so your reference manager stays exactly as you left it.

Your reference manager

Seamless sync with Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley and Bookends, and more on the way. One-way, so your other apps stay untouched.

Any document you have

PDF, Word, EPUB and plain text. Drop a file, a whole folder, or paste a DOI, PMID, arXiv ID or ISBN.

Microsoft Word Coming soon

An add-in that inserts citations and keeps a live bibliography while you write in Word itself. Export to Word works today.

The model you choose

Bring your own API key, or run a local model so your text never reaches a third-party provider. Your call, per project.

Your data, your call

Your library, annotations and notes live on your own disk. Cloud sync is optional, and you pick category by category what syncs.

Every desktop

macOS, Windows and Linux, built from the same codebase. Free app, one-time purchase for AI, no subscription.

How it compares

Where Sciwand differs.

Jenni is a capable writing tool and ChatGPT is a capable generalist. The differences worth knowing are about where your library lives, what the AI is allowed to read, and what you pay.

Feature comparison of Sciwand, Jenni and ChatGPT
Capability Sciwand Jenni ChatGPT
Every claim cited to the source passage Yes Yes No
Over 10,000 citation styles Yes Yes Manual formatting
Reference manager sync Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley, Bookends Zotero, Mendeley No
Searches academic databases 10 databases Yes General web
Screens hundreds of PDFs into a comparison grid Yes No No
Runs as a desktop app, not a browser tab Yes Browser, cloud Cloud
Bring your own key, or run a fully local model Yes No No
One-time purchase, no subscription Yes Subscription Subscription

Compiled from each product's publicly documented features, checked August 2026. Jenni and ChatGPT are trademarks of their respective owners and are not affiliated with Sciwand. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.

Questions

The things researchers ask first.

Will it hallucinate citations?
That is the failure mode Sciwand is built around. Answers are generated against the documents in your library rather than from model memory, and each one carries a badge that opens the source PDF at the page with the sentence highlighted. If a claim cannot be anchored to a passage you own, you will see that rather than a confident-sounding reference to a paper that does not exist.
Does my work leave my computer?
Only if you ask it to. Your library, annotations and notes are stored on your own disk, and cloud sync is optional — you choose which categories sync, if any. If you use a hosted model, the text needed to answer a given question goes to whichever provider's key you supplied, and nowhere else. Run a local model and nothing goes to a provider at all.
Is this going to write my paper for me?
No, and that is deliberate. The editor suggests continuations grounded in your own sources, and you accept, edit or dismiss each one. It is designed to remove the mechanical parts of writing up, such as finding the passage you half-remember or formatting a reference, while leaving the argument entirely to you.
Do I have to abandon Zotero or EndNote?
No. Sciwand syncs seamlessly with Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley and Bookends, with more reference managers on the way. The sync is one-way, so nothing is written back and your existing library is never modified. Plenty of people run it purely as a reading and analysis layer on top of what they already have.
What does it cost?
The app itself is free. The AI features are free to try for 7 days, after which they need a one-time purchase — lifetime updates, and never a subscription. On top of that you bring your own AI key and pay your provider directly for what you use, or run a local model and pay nothing extra. See pricing and education for academic options.
Which databases can it search?
Ten academic databases from inside the app, including PubMed, Google Scholar, arXiv and Semantic Scholar. Results can be screened with the same AI columns you use on your own documents, so discovery and screening are a single pass rather than two.
Get started

Your next review does not have to take a month.

Free on macOS, Windows and Linux. AI features are free for 7 days, then a one-time purchase — no subscription, ever.

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