In this post, I‘ll review Paperguide AI. I tested it for AI-assisted, research-focused writing and will show you the results, and go through the pros and cons. In my reviews, I’ll only test free tools or tools with a free trial available.
Let’s dive in!
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How to Use It
Here is how to get started with Paperguide. Go to their website here.
Sign up with your email or Google account to access the free trial or purchase a plan. Set up your profile by answering some questions and get personalized research paper recommendations, etc.
This is the dashboard.
My Experience
Next, I’ll show you some of the key features of Paperguide and try them out. The UI looks very clean and simple.
For the sake of testing, I’ll use random articles and AI suggestions to demonstrate these features, not my own papers or articles.
AI Search: You can ask the AI research-related questions, and it’ll find an answer from the extensive library of over 200 million research papers. The AI works best with clear questions, instead of using a keyword. The answer will be supported by citations from relevant papers. The AI summarized an answer to my example question, “What are the risks and benefits of over-the-counter supplements?” from 10 top papers. I went through the references quickly, and all seemed to be legitimate articles from well-respected journals.
Deep Research: Based on your research question, the Deep Research will use semantic search and go through the research paper library. It extracts data from relevant articles and generates a full report with citations within few minutes.
The report is generated based on 5 steps, where you can modify the research question, filter out papers.
I used one of the example questions again, and Paperguide generated this report for me, complete with citations. You can use this report as a starting point when you write. Just click “Open in Writer” to move it directly into the Writer feature.
Writer: This feature helps you turn research into writing fast. It creates a structured draft with citations, organizes your sections, and lets you edit or polish the text for clarity and tone so you can move from research to a finished piece more easily. You can easily run Plagiarism Checker to get plagiarism score, or use Ask AI to generate a new paragraph or continue writing your text.
References: With this feature, you can import all your own reference library (PDFs, URLs, BibTeX/RIS files, DOIs) and organise them into folders. You get AI-generated summaries for each paper (methodology, findings, results), can annotate PDFs and share your library with others. Exporting in multiple citation styles is also a built-in tool. You can interact with the PDFs with “Chat with Paper”.
Pros
- Wide library of over 200 million research papers
- Best for literature review
- A selection of relevant features, including the Reference check and AI assistant
Cons
- Learning curve exists
- I recommend validating the citations by hand
- A solid tool, but it doesn’t stand out from other similar tools
Pricing
These are the current pricing plans of Paperguide, price is per month (billed annually).
- Free: $0 /month
- Plus: $12 /month
- Pro: $24 /month
To Take Home
Paperguide is an All-in-One research assistant that helps you analyze hundreds of research papers from its extensive library. You can import your own references and manage them, or improve your writing speed with AI. Paperguide doesn’t have an overwhelming amount of different features, only the key essential ones, so the UI is very clean and simple, and using it felt intuitive. On the downside, Paperguide doesn’t offer any features that truly set it apart from other research tools.
A little disclaimer that considers all of the AI tools, I have mixed feelings when using them in academic writing and research. For literature review and reference management, they are fine. But if your article is fully AI-generated, including the web search and citations, how reliable can it really be? The reports generated with the Deep Research feature might work as a base for your writing. I also recommend double-checking all the citations and facts, just to avoid accidental plagiarism or false information.
In my opinion, it’s best for managing your references and conducting literature reviews, especially when you don’t feel like going through dozens of papers manually.