Litmaps

What is Litmaps and who sells it?

Litmap Limited, based in Wellington, New Zealand, sells Litmaps. Axton Pitt is the CEO, and he founded the company in 2016 with Kyle Webster, according to the NZ Herald. The company's About page says Litmaps changes how researchers search for papers and run literature reviews, and it lists citation networks, advanced search, alerts, research-gap identification and team collaboration.

Funding has been small. A May 2025 round of about US$1M was led by Scholarly Angels, and the press release said annual recurring revenue had doubled to US$1M. A later report puts the closed round at NZ$1.4M, and PitchBook totals differ again, so treat every figure as approximate.

In the same May 2025 announcement Litmaps said it had bought ResearchRabbit, a US competitor, and that the combined user base exceeds 2 million (company press release).

What does it do well?

You start from one or more papers, and Litmaps builds a map of the citation network around them. Advanced search sits on top of that, along with literature alerts and shared workspaces for teams. Per the pricing page, the free plan sends a monthly summary of new papers, while Pro offers daily or configurable alerts.

Several 2026 roundups credit Litmaps with more customisation and monitoring than ResearchRabbit. Those are blog comparisons by their authors.

Where does it fall short?

The free tier is tight. The pricing page lists basic search, up to 20 inputs, 100 articles and a single Litmap, and one comparison roundup names the map count and the 100-article cap as the practical limit. The page also contains two tables that disagree: one shows weekly alerts and 2 Litmaps, the other daily alerts and 1 Litmap. Check the plan on the day you buy.

Coverage has gaps for some specialty journals and venues outside Medline, according to the same roundup. Press coverage names open metadata sources (Nature, Lancet, PubMed, arXiv per IT Brief), but the official pages do not say which databases back the search, and that may have changed since the ResearchRabbit merger. The official pages also do not mention export to reference managers such as Zotero.

What does the evidence say?

No peer-reviewed study evaluates Litmaps. Five PubMed papers are tagged to it, among them a 2025 MethodsX systematic review of integrated care in diabetes (PMID 41080431) and a 2024 Discover Oncology bibliometric analysis of AI in oncology (PMID 39406991). Neither tests whether Litmaps finds the right papers. A 2026 Clinical Spine Surgery article on AI as a research companion (PMID 41886484) is a general overview.

So there is no data on recall, on missed papers, or on whether a map-based search beats a plain PubMed query.

How much does Litmaps cost?

Free costs $0. Pro is $10 per month billed annually, which the pricing page states as $120 per year with a 20% saving (as of October 2026, litmaps.com/pricing). The page has Education and Commercial toggles, and the Education rate needs an academic email address. A country-discount page exists for lower-income regions. Team and Enterprise plans are quote only, and the page gives no trial or refund terms.

The verdict

Use the free plan first and see whether 100 articles and one map cover your project. If they do not, $120 a year is cheap for a review that runs for months. If you only want to browse a topic and pay nothing, ResearchRabbit is the free alternative to try next.