Best AI Search Engines: 8 AI Search and Research Tools
AI search engines that answer with citations, plus research tools that search academic papers or answer only from your sources. Sources, accuracy and availability compared.
How to choose
- For English sources use Perplexity or Felo; for Chinese sources use Metaso, Nano AI Search or Zhihu Zhida.
- For academic questions, Consensus and Elicit search only the research literature.
- AI search can cite weak sources too — open the originals for anything important.
AI search
8PerplexityAI search with citations — every claim traces back to a sourceMetasoAd-free Chinese AI search that answers directlyNotebookLMA research notebook that answers only from your sourcesConsensusA search engine that finds answers in academic papersFeloCross-language AI search that can also produce mind maps and slidesZhihu ZhidaAI search over Zhihu's Q&A archive, best for experience-based questionsNano AI Search360's AI search with a choice of models and many ways to askElicitAI research assistant for papers, strong at extracting data in bulk
Head-to-head comparisons
Other categories
These are external services we do not operate. Pricing and features change often — the official site is the authority. Mainland China reachability is based partly on testing and partly on public information; it can change and may differ on your network.