Consensus

What is Consensus and who sells it?

Consensus calls itself "an AI workspace for scientific research" and says it draws on "250M+ research papers", with licensed content from leading publishers (Consensus website, October 2026). The company was founded in 2021 by Christian Salem and Eric Olson, and its About page says it is based in San Francisco.

A $11.5M Series A closed on 14 August 2024, led by Union Square Ventures, with Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross and Draper Associates. At the time the company had more than 400,000 monthly users and nearly $2M in annualized revenue (PRWeb). Reported funding totals range from $14.5M to $19.2M.

What does it do?

Deep Search builds a search strategy, expands key terms, looks for conflicting arguments and explores the citation graph. Medical mode covers about 50,000 clinical guidelines and 8 million articles from the top 1,000 medical journals. The Consensus Meter shows agreement for a yes or no question, and natural-language filters narrow results. Paid plans include API and MCP use, with 500 uses on Pro, 2,000 on Deep and $0.05 per extra use (Consensus pricing page).

The vendor's user counts disagree. The homepage says 10 million researchers, students and clinicians, and the pricing page says over 5 million. Consensus also claims more than 170 partner university libraries.

What does the evidence say?

Independent testing is thin. A 2026 JMIR study (PMID 42066286) tested nine tools on retracted articles, and the research-focused tools SciSpace, ScienceOS and Consensus produced no fully correct response set. A University of Maryland library guide describes a database of more than 220 million papers that does not cover all research, and says citations point to real papers. The review site aidiscoverywire.com reported in May 2026 that no PubMed-indexed validation study of the Consensus Meter exists.

On how the meter works, a secondary review says it measures the top retrieved papers and that the original 2023 version weighted every paper equally, per Consensus's own disclosure. Library guides recommend Consensus for orientation, and testimonials on the pricing page come from the vendor.

How much does Consensus cost?

Pro is $12 per month billed annually ($144 per year) and Deep is $45 per month ($540 per year). The Free tier includes 10 Pro messages and up to 3 Deep reviews a month. Students, faculty with a school email and US healthcare professionals with a valid NPI number can get up to 40% off. Monthly billing prices are not published, and Team and Enterprise carry no listed price (Consensus pricing page, October 2026).

Is Consensus safe for patient data?

Its pages say nothing about HIPAA, a BAA, SOC 2 or HITRUST, so any query should be a general question about the literature.

How does it compare?

Elicit, Undermind, Scite, SciSpace, Perplexity Pro, Semantic Scholar and Connected Papers sit nearby, and OpenEvidence is the clinical-answer option. Casrai's guide puts Consensus on yes or no synthesis and Undermind on recall.

The verdict

A resident preparing a journal club or a clinician checking whether a claim has support can get value from the free tier. The meter counts what the top retrieved papers say, so the papers behind any reading still need to be read. Paying $144 a year only makes sense after the free tier has proved useful on your own questions. A systematic reviewer needs a documented search elsewhere.