Is ResearchRabbit still free? Limits and free alternatives

Yes, ResearchRabbit is still free. As of November 2026, the free plan gives you unlimited searches, unlimited collections and up to 50 seed papers. A paid plan called ResearchRabbit+ (RR+) costs $12.50 a month, or $10 a month if you pay for a year.

Many students first used ResearchRabbit when it had no paid plan at all. That changed after the company joined Litmaps and released a new version of the app. This post explains what the free plan still gives you, what it does not, and which free tools can replace it. For a wider list of tools, read our guide to AI tools for literature review.

Is ResearchRabbit free in 2026?

ResearchRabbit is free for most student work. The official pricing page calls the free plan "Free $0, Forever!" and lists these limits:

• Searches: unlimited, across 310+ million articles.
• Library: unlimited library and collections.
• Sharing: you can share a collection with others.
• Seed papers: up to 50.
• Search settings: core settings only.

A seed paper is a paper you give ResearchRabbit so it can suggest related papers. Fifty seeds is a lot for a first literature review. A final-year project or a short review paper rarely needs more.

What does ResearchRabbit+ cost?

ResearchRabbit+ costs $12.50 a month on the monthly plan, or $10 a month on the annual plan. That is $120 a year if you pay yearly. The pricing page also says special country discount codes are available, so students in India should ask for one before paying the full price.

RR+ adds these features over the free plan:

• Seed papers: up to 300, for large reviews.
• Search controls: advanced settings for faster discovery.
• Projects: several separate projects, one per topic.
• Signals alerts: warnings meant to protect research integrity.
• Support: faster replies.

What do free ResearchRabbit users lose?

Free users lose access to big reviews, not to the core tool. You can still search, save, build collections and share them. The main things kept for paid users are:

• More than 50 seed papers in your work.
• Advanced search controls.
• Multiple separate projects.
• Signals alerts.

Our honest view: if you hit the 50-seed limit, first check whether your seeds are too broad. Ten strong, recent papers usually give better suggestions than 50 loosely related ones.

Did Litmaps buy ResearchRabbit?

Yes, ResearchRabbit is now part of Litmaps. The footer of the ResearchRabbit website reads "Copyright © Litmap Limited", the company behind Litmaps. The two tools still run as separate apps with separate plans.

The pricing of both tools now looks alike: both have a free plan and a paid plan near $10 a month. Paying for one does not pay for the other.

What are the best free ResearchRabbit alternatives?

The best free ResearchRabbit alternatives are Semantic Scholar, Litmaps Free, Connected Papers, Inciteful and tools built on OpenAlex. Each one does part of what ResearchRabbit does.

• Semantic Scholar: a free search engine for papers from the Allen Institute for AI. It shows citations, references and short summaries. You can save papers to a library and set alerts with a free account.
• Litmaps Free: up to 20 input papers, 100 articles per map, basic search and a monthly alert summary. The pricing page lists 2 Litmaps in one table and 1 Litmap in another, so expect 1 or 2 maps. Litmaps Pro costs $10 a month, or $120 a year, with an academic email.
• Connected Papers: draws a graph of similar papers from one paper. It has a free plan with limits on new graphs each month. We could not load its pricing page, so check the current number on the site.
• Inciteful: builds a citation network from one or more papers and finds the most important papers in it. We could not load its page today, so check its current terms yourself.
• OpenAlex: a free, open index of research papers that many tools use. Its API works without a key on a small shared daily budget, and a free key gives you $1 of use a day.

For a student in India, the simplest free setup is Semantic Scholar for search, ResearchRabbit Free for related papers, and Zotero to store everything. You do not need a paid plan to finish a good literature review.

Which free tool should you use for what?

• One key paper: use Connected Papers to see its neighbours fast.
• A few good papers: use ResearchRabbit Free or Litmaps Free.
• A topic search: use Semantic Scholar or Google Scholar.
• Code or big data: use the OpenAlex API.
• Finding classics: use Inciteful to rank papers in a network.

How to move your ResearchRabbit papers to Zotero

Keep your papers in a reference manager, so a price change in one tool never traps your work. ResearchRabbit has a Zotero importer that brings papers you saved in Zotero into ResearchRabbit. To be safe, follow these steps:

1. 1Install Zotero, which is free, and make a folder for your review.
2. 2Connect Zotero to ResearchRabbit with the Zotero importer from the ResearchRabbit guide.
3. 3Save every paper you plan to cite into Zotero, not only into ResearchRabbit.
4. 4Check each paper in Zotero against its DOI or publisher page before you cite it.

Exact export options inside the new ResearchRabbit app can change. Open the export menu of a collection to see the formats it offers today.

Step 4 matters more than any tool. AI tools sometimes show papers with wrong details, and a wrong reference can cost you marks. Our post on fake citations in AI research papers shows how to check each one.

Want help with your first literature review?

APJ-RAISE is a free research community for students aged 18 and above. Members review papers together and get feedback on their work. You can join APJ-RAISE for free.