About Papertrail

Papertrail is a modern research tool that helps you explore, organize, and understand academic literature. Search across 250M+ papers, build citation graphs, annotate papers, and collaborate with your lab.

Open Science

Built on open data sources like OpenAlex. We believe research should be accessible to everyone, not locked behind paywalls.

Researcher-First

Every feature is designed around how researchers actually work — from citation graphs to paper annotations to lab collaboration.

Privacy

Your research interests and saved papers are yours alone. We don't sell data or track your reading habits for advertising.

Community-Driven

Papertrail is shaped by its users. Vote on features, submit feedback, and help us build the tool researchers deserve.

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Plans & Pricing

Start free. Upgrade when you need unlimited searches, AI summaries, and collaboration.

Explorer
Discover papers and build your first collection.
$0forever
  • 50 searches/day
  • Paper details & metadata
  • Basic citation graph (1-hop)
  • View existing AI summaries
  • Up to 50 saved papers
  • 1 collection
  • On-demand AI summaries
  • Export (BibTeX, CSV)
Most Popular
Researcher
For active researchers, grad students, and postdocs.
$8/month
  • Unlimited searches
  • Paper details & metadata
  • Full multi-hop citation graph
  • On-demand AI summaries
  • Unlimited saved papers
  • Unlimited collections
  • Export (BibTeX, CSV)
  • Advanced filters
Lab
For research groups. All Researcher features plus collaboration.
$8/member/month
  • Everything in Researcher
  • Shared collections (coming soon)
  • Pinned lab collections (coming soon)
  • Lab library feed (coming soon)
  • Member management
  • Admin dashboard (coming soon)
  • Lab notes on papers (coming soon)