Google Scholar
Search academic literature across disciplines, and see who has cited what.
Cost
Completely free
Free to search without an account. Access to full papers depends on the publisher; many are paywalled.
Open source
No
The code is private. You depend on the company that makes it.
Your data
Goes to their servers
Your files and text are sent to the company running the service.
Use it for this
Checking whether a claim traces to real research, and finding review papers that already compared conflicting studies.
Do not use it for this
Current events, product comparisons, or anything where recency matters more than peer review. Many results are paywalled.
A moment where you would reach for it
Checking whether a statistic quoted in a news article traces to an actual study, and reading what that study said its limitations were.
How hard is it to pick up?
Straightforward, but expect an hour of figuring it out.
Worth knowing before you use it
Searches are associated with your Google account if signed in.
About this entry
Checked on 1 Sept 2026. Prices and free limits change without warning, and often quietly. Treat everything above as a starting point and confirm on the official site before you rely on it.
Nothing here is sponsored. A tool appears because it solves a real problem, not because someone paid for it to be listed.