Perplexity
Research
Education Pro $10/mo for students
AI answer engine with cited sources — great for research without the hallucinated citations. Runs student promotions on Pro.
View this deal →Zotero
The standard tool for collecting sources and generating citations. Free and open source, with AI plugins available.
Best for: Papers with real bibliographies
What you get
- Completely free, open-source citation manager — no premium upsell
- Browser connector saves any source in one click
- Word and Google Docs plugins generate citations and bibliographies
- Paid only if you want extra cloud sync storage (from $20/yr)
How students use it
- Save any source in one click with the browser connector
- Auto-generate citations and the bibliography inside Docs or Word
- Keep a shared group library for team research projects
More Research deals
Google Gemini
Research
Free tier + 1-month Pro trial
Google's AI assistant for writing, coding, and studying, with a Deep Research mode that pulls together and summarizes sources. Free with any Google account; paid plans add stronger models, higher usage limits, and more storage.
View this deal →Elicit
Research
Generous free tier
Elicit is an AI research assistant that searches academic papers, summarizes them, and answers questions with cited sources. The free tier covers unlimited paper search and summaries, which is genuinely useful for literature reviews and coursework.
View this deal →