# SciSpace vs Side Reader

SciSpace records 4,464,111 monthly visits with +8.6% month-over-month growth and Freemium pricing. Side Reader records 355 monthly visits with -36.5% growth and Freemium pricing.

| Metric | [SciSpace](https://openaitools.app/tool/scispace) | [Side Reader](https://openaitools.app/tool/side-reader) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://scispace.com | https://www.side-reader.com |
| Categories | AI Chatbot, AI Research Tool, AI PDF Summarizer, AI Copilot | AI PDF, AI Reader, AI Chatbot, AI PDF Summarizer |
| Pricing Model | Freemium | Freemium |
| Monthly Visits | 4,464,111 | 355 |
| MoM Growth Rate | +8.6% | -36.5% |
| Primary Market | United States | Vietnam |
| Direct Visits | 1,315,134 | 149 |
| Review Score | 4.6 | 2.4 |
| Saved Count | 54 | 0 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Website |

## SciSpace

SciSpace began as a typesetting and paper-formatting service called Typeset and has since grown into a broad AI research platform. Its core promise is that a researcher can move from finding a paper to understanding it to citing and writing about it without leaving one workspace. The platform indexes scholarly content from sources such as Google Scholar, PubMed and arXiv, and layers AI agents on top for reading, extracting data and synthesis.

The signature capability is conversational reading: you upload or open a PDF, then ask questions, highlight confusing sentences for plain-language explanation, or request structured summaries of methods, results and limitations. Around that sit task-specific tools — Literature Review, AI Writer, Paraphraser, Citation Generator, AI Detector, AI Humanizer, Extract Data and a Plagiarism Checker — plus a Chrome extension that adds the same assistant on top of publisher pages and a mobile app for reading on the go.

Access follows a freemium model: exploring and limited usage are free, while paid Premium, Advanced, Max and Enterprise plans raise model quality, credit limits and parallel agent capacity. The company is registered as PubGenius Inc. in Milpitas, California, and markets the product to individual researchers as well as universities and enterprises with SSO and admin controls.

**Pricing & Plans:** Freemium. A free tier with limited usage sits alongside paid Premium (~$12/month billed annually), Advanced (~$70/month) and Max (~$160/month) plans; monthly billing is higher. Enterprise pricing is custom. All plans advertise a 24-hour money-back guarantee, and annual billing carries a discount.

- **Chat with PDF:** Open or upload a paper and ask questions, get plain-language explanations of highlighted passages, and pull out methods, results and limitations conversationally.
- **Literature Review and paper search:** Search a large scholarly index spanning Google Scholar, PubMed and arXiv, then generate structured literature reviews and related-work sections from what you find.
- **Writing, paraphrasing and citations:** An AI Writer for drafts, a paraphraser for academic tone, and a citation generator that formats references in popular styles.
- **Extract Data and AI Detector:** Turn tables and results in a paper into structured data, and check whether a manuscript reads as AI-generated with a built-in detector.
- **Chrome extension and mobile app:** Use the same assistant on top of publisher sites and PDF pages via the browser extension, or read and query papers from the mobile app.

**Strengths:** Combines paper discovery, reading, writing and citation tools in one place instead of five separate subscriptions; Conversational explanations of difficult passages are genuinely useful for non-native English readers and cross-disciplinary work; Covers widely used scholarly sources such as Google Scholar, PubMed and arXiv; Free tier plus a Chrome extension make it easy to evaluate before paying

**Limitations:** Credit-based limits can be confusing, and heavy users report hitting caps on the cheaper plans; Model access varies by tier, so the cheapest paid plan does not get the strongest reasoning models; AI-generated reviews and paraphrases still need careful human checking for accuracy and citation integrity

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/scispace.md)

## Side Reader

Side Reader exists to remove the friction of working with documents and AI chatbots at the same time. Normally you either paste chunks of a PDF into a chat window or juggle two tabs and lose your place. Side Reader is a Chrome extension that renders the PDF in the sidebar of ChatGPT, Claude or DeepSeek, so the document and the conversation sit side by side.

Once a PDF is open you use built-in action buttons to summarize, translate or explain content, and you can customize those button prompts so the AI answers in your preferred format. For content that cannot be selected — charts, infographics, scanned images — a screenshot question lets you ask about a region of the page directly. The reader itself supports zoom, page navigation and width adjustment, so it behaves like a normal PDF viewer rather than a stripped-down preview.

Privacy is handled simply: PDFs are stored locally in your browser and Side Reader does not keep your files. Because the AI work happens inside the ChatGPT, Claude or DeepSeek session you are already using, Side Reader adds document handling rather than a separate subscription to yet another model.

**Pricing & Plans:** Freemium. The core Chrome extension is available to install, with a paid upgrade for extended usage; check the extension listing for current limits.

- **Read PDFs beside the chat:** PDFs render directly in the sidebar next to the chat, so your document and the AI conversation are visible at the same time.
- **Summarize, translate and explain:** Summarize a whole document, translate it, or have passages explained in simpler terms using the AI you are already signed into.
- **Custom action button prompts:** Built-in buttons cover the common actions, and you can edit their prompts to make the AI respond in the format and tone you need.
- **Screenshot questions for non-selectable content:** Ask about charts, scans or regions that cannot be selected by taking a screenshot question instead.
- **Local storage and a proper reader:** Files stay local in your browser and are not stored by Side Reader, and PDFs keep zoom, page navigation and width controls.

**Strengths:** Keeps the PDF and the AI conversation visible in the same window; Works with ChatGPT, Claude and DeepSeek rather than locking you into one model; Local-only file storage — documents are not kept on Side Reader servers; Customizable action prompts for repeatable workflows

**Limitations:** Requires an active ChatGPT, Claude or DeepSeek session to do the AI work; Chrome only — no Firefox, Safari or Edge-specific edition; Very new/small product, so the feature set is still evolving

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/side-reader.md)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How do SciSpace and Side Reader compare in monthly traffic?

SciSpace has 4,464,111 monthly visits, while Side Reader has 355. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality.

### How do their growth rates compare?

SciSpace has a month-over-month growth rate of +8.6%; Side Reader has -36.5%.

### How does pricing compare?

SciSpace: Freemium. Freemium. A free tier with limited usage sits alongside paid Premium (~$12/month billed annually), Advanced (~$70/month) and Max (~$160/month) plans; monthly billing is higher. Enterprise pricing is custom. All plans advertise a 24-hour money-back guarantee, and annual billing carries a discount. Side Reader: Freemium. Freemium. The core Chrome extension is available to install, with a paid upgrade for extended usage; check the extension listing for current limits.

## Alternatives

| # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | [ChatGPT](https://openaitools.app/tool/chatgpt-4) | 6,048,022,723 | +2.2% | Freemium | Offers broad general reasoning and document upload capabilities, but lacks specialized academic indexing and citation databases. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/chatgpt-4.md) |
| 2 | [Semantic Scholar](https://openaitools.app/tool/semantic-scholar) | 8,198,672 | +5.8% | Free | Provides a massive free index of scholarly literature with citation graphs, but lacks built-in interactive paper reading assistants. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/semantic-scholar.md) |
| 3 | [Consensus](https://openaitools.app/tool/consensus) | 6,014,388 | -1.2% | Freemium | Provides evidence-based answers extracted directly from peer-reviewed papers, though less of an all-in-one reading workspace. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/consensus.md) |
| 4 | [PDFgear](https://openaitools.app/tool/pdfgear) | 2,845,280 | -3.4% | Free | A free, AI-powered PDF editor for every device | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/pdfgear.md) |
| 5 | [Sider](https://openaitools.app/tool/sider) | 2,644,740 | -10.6% | Freemium | AI sidebar and browser agent for reading, writing and research | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/sider.md) |
| 6 | [Immersive Translate](https://openaitools.app/tool/immersive-translate) | 2,392,414 | -9.4% | Freemium, Free Trial | Bilingual AI translation for websites, documents, video and images | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/immersive-translate.md) |
| 7 | [Elicit](https://openaitools.app/tool/elicit) | 1,751,507 | +3.1% | Freemium | Stronger automated data extraction and systematic review synthesis, but less focused on interactive PDF annotation than SciSpace. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/elicit.md) |
| 8 | [LightPDF](https://openaitools.app/tool/lightpdf-com) | 1,742,568 | -15.3% | Freemium | Free AI-powered PDF editor, converter and reader for every device | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/lightpdf-com.md) |
| 9 | [Jenni](https://openaitools.app/tool/jenni) | 1,498,133 | +5.2% | Freemium | Focuses heavily on assisted academic drafting and autocomplete, whereas SciSpace centers more on reading and analysis. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/jenni.md) |
| 10 | [Merlin AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/merlin-ai-plugins) | 1,382,634 | +13.1% | Freemium | One AI assistant that plugs ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini into every tab | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/merlin-ai-plugins.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/scispace-vs-side-reader

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