01 2:14 am
Thursday, 2:14 am. Yep, that's you.
The synopsis is due tomorrow and the page is empty. Forty-seven tabs, notes to self, and a PDF read to page eleven.
Yep. That's you.
2:14 am. Synopsis due tomorrow. Zero words.
AI research platform for PhD students and academics
Read, cite and write your research in one place
Ask a paper anything, and every answer cites the page it came from. Bring your own PDF, or start on one of ours.
Have a paper? Drop it here
PDF up to 50 MB. Private to you, and never used to train AI.
No paper? Try a sample
No card needed. You start on a sample paper from your field.
Book a 15-min call with the founder
Bhushan built Alfred Scholar and will show you round.
How it works
02 The week
The week without.
Monday the supervisor asks for the synopsis. Tuesday the sentence you read will not turn up. Wednesday a chatbot cites a paper that does not exist. Thursday at 2:14 am the question that matters arrives, and the page is still empty.
Monday. 47 papers for the lit review. Synopsis due Friday.
Tuesday. You know a paper said it. Ctrl+F finds nothing.
Wednesday. A chatbot hands you a perfect citation. It doesn't exist.
Thursday. Supervisor meeting. One question, and no answer.
03 Rewind
Rewind. Same week, with Alfred.
Same deadline, same papers, same supervisor. Monday, again.
Rewind.
Same week. This time, with Alfred.
04 Ask
Monday and Tuesday: ask.
Drop in the papers you need. Ask the question that cost you a night, and the answer comes back with its page.
Monday. Drop in your papers.
Tuesday. Ask the question that cost you a night.
Seconds later, the answer, cited to the exact page.
05 See
Wednesday: see the gap.
Telescope lines the papers you pick up against your one question, every cell cited to its page, and the column no paper answers is your gap.
Wednesday. Telescope compares your papers, column by column.
Not one follows people past a year. That empty column is your gap.
Your supervisor's question? Answered first.
06 Send
Thursday, 6:12 pm: send.
The synopsis is written, cited and checked, and goes out a day early. The supervisor replies: that gap is your paper.
Thursday, 6:12 pm. Not 2:14 am.
Written, cited, and sent a day early.
07 Your turn
Same week. Same papers.
Start with one paper and the question that has been keeping you up.
AI research platform for PhD students and academics
5.0 Rated by the researchers who use itRead, cite and write your research in one place
Drop a paper. Ask it anything.
PDF up to 50 MB · never used to train AI
No paper handy? Try Pro free for 7 days
7 days of Pro, free No card needed Cancel any time
Same week. Same papers. Which Thursday do you want?
Made for the people who do the reading
- PhD students The dissertation years, organized Every paper you read in one searchable library, questions answered across all of them, and a plagiarism check before anything leaves your desk.
- Professors and supervisors Guide more, chase less Assign manuscripts to reviewers, collect structured feedback in one place, and keep each student’s draft moving without another email thread.
- Research labs One library, the whole lab The Lab plan seats 5 people, a PI and 4 researchers, in shared workspaces with roles, so the lab’s reading lives in the lab and not on one laptop.
The whole desk
Reading, comparing, citing and writing happen in one workspace, so nothing gets copied between five tabs.
Ask your papers, check every answer
Alfred answers from the papers in your library and cites the page each claim came from. Click a citation and the PDF opens there.
Compare papers and find the gaps
Pick a set of papers and Telescope compares them side by side, every cell cited to its page, then lists the gaps the set leaves open.
Every paper you have read, in one place
Drop in PDFs and Alfred reads the title, authors, journal and DOI for you. Search by meaning, not only by words.
References that format themselves
Look up a DOI, import BibTeX or RIS, and cite in APA, MLA, Chicago, IEEE, Harvard or Vancouver. Export whenever you like.
Write the draft next to the reading
A manuscript editor that saves as you type, checks your draft against a journal’s submission rules and takes dictation.
New papers find you every week
Give Loops your keywords and it emails a digest of new work on your schedule, saved in the workspace for later.
Why not just ask a chatbot?
Most researchers already do. The trouble is what it answers from, and what it does when it does not know. Here is the same question asked of both.
An example exchange, shortened.
You ask: What sample size did the trials in my library use?
A general chatbot
Trials like these usually enrol 100 to 300 participants.1 A 2019 multicentre study reported 240 (pp. 211-219).2
- Note 1: Answered from training memory, not your library.
- Note 2: Looks like a reference. There is no page to open.
Alfred
Your two trials enrolled 120 and 86 participants. p. 4 p. 9
Page 4 of your PDF
“A total of 120 participants were randomly assigned to the two arms.”
- Only from the papers you uploaded.
- Every claim cites the page it came from.
You ask: And how many dropped out?
A general chatbot
About 12 percent, which is typical for this design.3
- Note 3: Not in any source, so it wrote something plausible.
Alfred
Neither of your trials reports how many participants dropped out.
- Says so when the answer is not in your papers.
Underneath, each question runs a full-text and semantic search across your library, and only the passages Alfred finds become the answer.
In their words
Researchers who use Alfred, with the line that stayed with us marked the way you would mark a paper.
“I highly recommend Alfred Scholar to anyone doing serious academic research. It has streamlined my literature reviews, and its AI chat gives exact page citations, so I never have to worry about hallucinations. It has saved me hours of manual work.”
“What I love most about Alfred Scholar is that everything is in one place: manuscript writing, literature review support, citation checking, and plagiarism checking. My favourite feature is the AI Chat because it makes understanding research papers and literature so much easier compared to any other app. It has also made my research life more organized and systematic.”
“Alfred Scholar has made manuscript writing much easier for me. It helps ensure proper formatting, offers plagiarism checking, supports multiple citation styles, and includes an excellent AI Chat feature for extracting notes and insights from PDFs. It's a valuable tool for researchers looking to improve productivity and writing quality.”
Also written by researchers at Parks College, N. L. Dalmia Institute of Management Studies and Research, Institute of Internal Diseases, NRC, Teerthanker Mahaveer University, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, and Dr.APJ.Abdul Kalam Technical university. Reviews shared from inside the app earn their authors 7 days of Pro once approved. Read every review
On camera
Researchers on Instagram showing how they use Alfred. Their accounts, their cameras, their words.
See more on Instagram-
@poojamishra_2602 A literature review moved out of fifty PDFs and twenty tabs, with every answer traced back to its page. -
@a_neuron_at_heart Part one of a PhD researcher trying the workspace instead of a stack of tabs. -
@a_neuron_at_heart Part two of the walkthrough: the main features, for anyone who is not a fan of manuscript writing. -
@lit._maheart A PhD scholar at the University of Calcutta walks through the newest features in a daily-life series. -
@the_jet_lagged_scholar Moving papers, citations, writing, and plagiarism checks out of twelve open tabs. -
@phdwithpoorva Literature review, manuscripts, citations, and research notes, kept in one place. -
@researchdairies One place for literature review, manuscript writing, citations, and plagiarism checks. -
@pratikshpatel A researcher makes the case for running PhD work from a single platform. -
@missdoctorate Uploading a paper and letting Alfred pull the citations out of it automatically. -
@the.phd_chronicles A PhD researcher tries the workspace against a week of ordinary work. -
@thejrfgirl What changes when reference management and PDF analysis stop living in separate tabs. -
@scholar_manisha A short walkthrough of reading and searching papers on a tablet. -
@hills_her_research_era Fifty PDFs open, and still hunting for the one paragraph that mattered. -
@the_jet_lagged_scholar Dictation, AI rewrite, and the AI writing check, used on a real draft.
14 reels
Your research stays yours
We are a subscription business. We make money when you pay for a plan, not from your data.
- Only your workspace sees it
- Your research is scoped to your workspace. Only you and the colleagues you invite can open it.
- Never used to train AI
- We do not use your documents to train AI models. What you upload informs only your own work.
- Your references leave with you
- Export citations as BibTeX or RIS whenever you like. If you stop paying, your data stays yours, and we never delete it without notice.
- Saved as you go
- Every edit to your manuscripts and library saves as you type, so a closed tab never costs you work.
- Sign-in you control
- Two-factor authentication with recovery codes, or a passkey with Face ID, Touch ID, Windows Hello or a security key.
Read the privacy policy, or ask us about data handling.
World-class research, affordable for every researcher
You have seen the whole desk. Alfred exists so a workflow like this is within reach of every researcher on the planet, not a luxury reserved for well-funded labs. That is why Basic costs nothing, and a month of Plus costs less than a single paywalled article.
Plus
For coursework and early research
₹499$12 /month
or ₹4,990$120/year (two months free)
Start PlusEverything in Basic, plus
- Unlimited documents
- 2x the AI messages of Basic, no daily ceiling
- 90 pages a month, about 3 papers
- 2 plagiarism checks a month
- A weekly Loops digest and Second Brain
- Zotero and Mendeley sync
- 1 peer reviewer
- Bring your own AI key
Pro
RecommendedFor your thesis and serious research
₹1,299$29 /month
or ₹12,990$290/year (two months free)
Try Pro free for 7 daysEverything in Plus, plus
- 4x the AI messages of Plus
- 200 pages a month, about 7 papers
- 1 Telescope analysis a month
- 1 viva prep a month
- 1 review by Alfred a month, checking up to 10 cited sources
- 5 plagiarism checks a month
- 3 peer reviewers
Lab
For labs and research groups
₹5,999$129 /month
or ₹59,990$1,290/year (two months free)
Start LabEverything in Pro, for the group
- 5 seats: 1 PI and 4 researchers
- 3x the AI messages of Pro, shared
- 1,000 pages a month, about 35 papers
- 4 Telescope analyses, 4 viva preps and 4 reviews by Alfred a month
- 25 plagiarism checks a month
- Unlimited peer reviewers
- A weekly Loop for every member
- Shared workspaces and supervisor review
Every new account starts with 7 days of Pro, free and with no card. When the trial ends, you keep everything and move to Basic, the free plan.
Enterprise is for universities, colleges and institutes: write to hello@alfredscholar.com.
Questions
What is Alfred Scholar?
Alfred Scholar is an AI research platform, a research tool for PhD students and academics that lets you upload papers, ask questions about your documents, manage citations, and write manuscripts, all in one workspace. Its built-in AI assistant, Alfred, answers questions about your papers with citations to the exact page.
What is the best AI research tool for PhD students?
It depends on the job. To find papers you have not read yet, a search tool such as Elicit, Consensus or Semantic Scholar is the better start. Once you have the papers, Alfred Scholar is the AI research tool for the rest of the work: it answers questions across your whole library with a citation to the exact page, manages your citations in any style, and keeps your manuscript in the same place.
How is Alfred different from ChatGPT?
General chatbots answer from training memory and can produce references that look real but point nowhere. Alfred answers only from the papers you upload, cites the exact page for every claim, and tells you when the answer is not in your library instead of guessing.
How much does it cost?
Basic costs nothing. In India, Plus is ₹499/month, Pro is ₹1,299/month and Lab is ₹5,999/month for up to 5 people (1 PI + 4 researchers). Everywhere else Plus is $12/month, Pro is $29/month and Lab is $129/month. Annual billing gives two months free on every paid plan, and universities can talk to us about Enterprise.
Can I try it before paying?
Yes. Every new account starts with 7 days of full Pro, wherever you are. It begins when you sign up, it needs no card, and there is one trial per person.
How does the AI document chat work?
Upload a research paper and ask questions in plain English. Alfred searches your document and gives you answers with references to the exact sections where the information was found. It does not guess: if the answer is not in the paper, it says so.
Can I use my own AI key?
Yes. On Plus, Pro or Lab, or during your trial, a workspace owner can connect a key from Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, OpenRouter, or Amazon Bedrock. One key is active at a time, and your chat runs on it with your message allowance lifted; pages, Telescope, reviews and plagiarism checks stay on your plan’s allowance. Embeddings and originality checks always stay on Alfred Scholar’s shared engine, so search and plagiarism detection keep working. You can remove your key at any time.
Can I dictate instead of typing?
Yes. Voice dictation works in both AI chat and the manuscript editor. It transcribes English speech, and an optional clean mode tidies up filler words and punctuation as you go.
What file formats are supported?
PDF files are supported right now. We extract text, metadata, and references automatically. DOCX and LaTeX support is on our roadmap.
Is my research data secure?
Your research is scoped to your workspace: only you and the colleagues you invite can access it. We never sell your data or use it to train AI models. The providers that run parts of the service, such as AI processing and hosting, handle it only to do that job. We are a subscription business, so we have no incentive to mine your research.
Can I export my data?
Most of it. Citations export as BibTeX and RIS, manuscripts as PDF or Word (.docx), which Google Docs also opens, originality reports as PDF, Telescope tables as CSV, and you can download any original file you uploaded. Export for annotations, notes and chat history is not available yet; write to hello@alfredscholar.com and we will send you a copy.
What happens after the trial ends?
You keep everything, and nothing is charged. After 7 days the workspace moves to Basic, the free plan: your library and citations keep working, with lighter limits on documents and questions. Upgrade to Plus or Pro whenever you are ready.
What happens to my data if I stop using Alfred?
Your data stays yours. You can export your citations at any time. We will never delete your account or data without notice.
Still have a question? Write to us, or book a call with Bhushan. A person reads every message.
Ask your own papers tonight
Upload the PDFs on your desk and ask the question you have been circling. Every answer shows its page.
7 days of Pro, free. No card, and you keep everything when it ends. Prefer to read first? Read the Docs.
Rather be shown? Book a 15-minute call with Bhushan, the founder .