SciSummary – Features, Pricing, Reviews, & Alternative [2024 Guide]

AI document summarization has become a new way to consume lengthy documents, especially research papers. There are many AI summarizers available today that can instantly provide summaries of lengthy documents. SciSummary is one such AI scientific article summarizer tool that claims to offer an instant, web-based way to summarize articles. Therefore, this guide will uncover all about SciSummary and evaluate its performance efficiency. So, let's get started with our comprehensive SciSummary review.

Part 1. An Overview About SciSummary

SciSummary is one of the many AI summarizers you can use today to intelligently summarize articles and consume content faster.

What Is SciSummary?

SciSummary or Science Summary is an online AI summarizer that intends to make the digestion of scientific articles easier. It leverages GPT 3.5 and GPT 4.0 to summarize articles and quickly grasp key points without reading the full text.

With SciSummary, all you have to do is send/upload the documents and get a thorough summary of all parts within minutes. You can also customize how you want to summarize, i.e., complete summary, page-based summary, etc. On top of that, you can use its AI chat assistant to ask questions about the article.

Overall, SciSummary is a handy tool for scientists and students who don't have time to read lengthy scientific articles. According to SciSummary, it has summarized over 750,000 papers for over 330,000 users.

Is SciSummary Free?

No, SciSummary is not entirely free. It does provide a free plan but with the following limits:

Simply put, you can use SciSummary for free if your monthly word summarization is up to 10,000 words. For a higher word count, you can subscribe to one of its below plans:

• 1M Words: $4.99/month (1,000,000 words summarization per month).
• 2M Words: $8.99/month (2,000,000 words summarization per month).
• Lifetime: $299.99/one-time (10,000,000 words summarization per month).

Besides the above plans, SciSummary also supports document-based payment. You can pay per document, which can mostly cost less than $2.

How does SciSummary work?

SciSummary is a web-based scientific article summarizer. To use it, you first have to register an account.

Once registered, you can get a summary in multiple ways, i.e., you can send an email, upload a PDF file, add an article link, or insert raw text.

Upon uploading the PDF file of a scientific article (article from IEEE Access), you get a bunch of summarization options. There are different summary modes to choose from, such as summarize by section, summarize key points, summarize with area to focus, and much more.

Secondly, you can specify the summary length, language, and pages. Once you have specified the settings, click "Request New Summary".

Now, you have to wait for a few minutes until SciSummary completes the summary. Once done, you can read out the summary it generated.

Looking at the summary quality, SciSummary seems to do the job diligently. It has managed to provide a quality summary of the whole article.

At the bottom of the window, you will see the "Expand Upon" feature that allows you to expand the summary upon any specific term.

SciSummary also has a chat feature that allows you to have human-like chats about article content and clarify doubts. However, this feature is only accessible if you subscribe for $4.99/month.

Besides that, we have seen that the 10k word limit in the free plan is very limited. Most scientific articles are beyond the 10k word limit range. For instance, the article we summarized above was a 22.38k word article. This means that you can only summarize 1-2 articles in the free plan.

User Reviews of SciSummary

SciSummary has received mixed reviews from users. Some of the positive and negative reviews are as follows:

Positive Reviews

• “Great productivity tool for engineers, scientists to stay ahead of the field. Great work!”
• “I'm still testing the tool yet it looks very promising. I tested it with a 5.5k words Academic text that I had previously red. I tested the Key points feature, it does work!”

Negative Reviews

• “Good tool but be mindful: if you want it to expand on subjects that aren't covered in the inputed article, it can derail the summary and make some genuine leaps in logic, just to give the result you asked. Careful on your Expand prompts”

SciSummary is a great tool, but its subscription-locked chat feature and troubling expand-on feature can compromise the experience. In contrast, UPDF is another similar AI summarizer, but it has no such limits. It can summarize in any way you want and provide access to the chat feature for free for limited PDFs.

So, if you want to get a SciSummary similar experience without limits, then download UPDF and start using it for scientific article summaries.

Is SciSummary Worth Trying?

From the above SciSummary review, we can say that the tool is definitely worth trying to summarize scientific articles. Its different summary modes, expand-on features, and other options make it a handy tool for summarizing articles. You can easily summarize lengthy articles and get brief or comprehensive summaries quickly.

The downsides of SciSummary are its 10K words free limit, subscription-locked chat feature,  and inefficient expand upon feature. Besides that, there is no option to annotate the article for enhanced reading. So, if you want to eradicate all its limits, then you should opt for UPDF – a more powerful AI summarizer. Read the next part to learn more about UPDF.

Part 2. A Powerful and Better AI Document Summarizer than SciSummary

SciSummary is a great online AI summarizer that can quickly summarize articles with your set requirements. However, there is an even better alternative that can provide all SciSummary features and much more. This tool is known as UPDF.

UPDF is a reputed desktop-based PDF reader and editor tool that comes with a powerful AI assistant called UPDF AI. UPDF AI provides a convenient way to summarize scientific articles the way you want. It provides a select and summarize support with which you can summarize selective paragraphs.

Alternatively, you can use its AI chat box to ask for a specific summary, such as "summarize the article in 100 words with 5 points".

UPDF AI is capable of condensing 100-page articles and simplifying complex charts with its AI deep summaries. You can even ask it to summarize the details of the complex chart for free, which isn't possible in SciSummary unless you have a subscription.

Its "Chat" feature lets you ask questions beyond the scope of the article.

On top of that, UPDF AI has two other features that you don't find prominently in SciSummary:

• Translate: It can translate PDF into almost any language of your choice.
• Explanation: It can provide AI-powered explanations of complex concepts or phrases.

In terms of free plan benefits, UPDF AI can let you summarize 3 articles with up to 100 pages. So, it supports a higher word count than the SciSummary free plan.

In short, UPDF AI is a more advanced and feature-rich AI summarizer than SciSummary. Since UPDF AI is part of the UPDF toolkit, which means you also get access to other PDF-related features. With UPDF, you can annotate PDFs, edit text/images, convert PDFs to other formats, and do much more.

Overall, if you want to get a wholesome experience while summarizing scientific or other articles, then UPDF is a better choice than SciSummary. Don't think more! Download UPDF and test its AI assistant yourself to validate its dominance over SciSummary.

Part 3. Comparison Table: SciSummary vs UPDF

SciSummary and UPDF are both powerful tools for summarizing articles with AI. So, let's now create a comprehensive comparison table to make it further clear which tool to choose:

It is evident from the above comparison table that UPDF shines as the best and feature-rich alternative to Scholarcy. So, if you want the best AI summarization experience for scientific articles, then UPDF dominates as the best fit. Hit the below download button to get UPDF and summarize articles right away.

Conclusion

SciSummary simplifies the way researchers consume scientific articles by providing quick summaries. From the above SciSummary review, it is evident that its click-based interface, multiple summary modes, and other features make it a reliable tool for summarizing articles. However, its 10K words free limit and subscription-locked chat feature can hinder its experience without subscribing. In contrast, UPDF dominates as a better alternative because of its more powerful summaries, free access to the chat feature, and other PDF-related features.

The final choice is yours. If you want to get the best summarization along with other PDF annotating/editing features, then UPDF is the top pick. Otherwise, you can opt for SciSummary to get summaries.