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Explainpaper

Highlight a confusing passage in a paper and get a plain-language explanation, with math and figure support on Pro

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freemiumDR 56Free is $0 per month, free for everyone forever, with unlimited highlight explanations, follow-up questions, Zotero library import and basic AI models. Pro is $16/month with a 7-day free trial, adding advanced AI models, Math Explain for formulas and figures, whole-paper summaries, saved highlights and explanations, and questions about the paper. Yearly billing saves 25%. Teams is quoted on request and adds team management, priority support and volume discounts. All plans bill through Stripe.View full pricing →

About Explainpaper

Explainpaper does one thing: you upload a research paper, highlight the passage that lost you, and it explains that passage in plain language. The interaction model is the point — rather than summarising a paper top to bottom and hoping the summary covers your confusion, it works at the granularity of the sentence or paragraph you actually got stuck on, and lets you ask follow-up questions about the explanation until it lands. That makes it a reading aid rather than a summariser, which is the right shape for anyone who needs to genuinely understand a method section instead of skim its conclusion. Highlight explanations and follow-up questions are unlimited on the free tier, forever, which is unusually generous for the category; the free tier is powered by basic models. The paid tier changes three things that matter for serious reading: advanced models behind the explanations, Math Explain for formulas and figures — the part of a paper where plain-text summarisers are least useful — and whole-paper summaries alongside the passage-level work. Paid also persists your highlights and explanations so a paper you fought through in March is still annotated in June. Zotero library import works on both tiers, so it fits an existing reference workflow rather than asking you to re-upload everything, and a Teams tier adds management, priority support and volume discounts.

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Key Features

✓Passage-level explanations triggered by highlighting text
✓Unlimited highlight explanations and follow-ups on the free tier
✓Math Explain for formulas and figures on Pro
✓Whole-paper summaries on Pro
✓Saved highlights and explanations that persist across sessions
✓Zotero library import
✓7-day free trial on Pro and 25% off annual billing

Explainpaper Pros & Cons

✅ Pros

  • +Passage-level explanation is a better fit for real reading than whole-paper summarisation
  • +Free tier is unlimited rather than credit-capped
  • +Math Explain covers the part of a paper that text summarisers handle worst
  • +Zotero import means it slots into an existing workflow

⚠️ Cons

  • −Free tier runs on basic models, so hard passages may need the paid tier
  • −Saved highlights are Pro-only, which limits the free tier to one-off reads
  • −Narrow scope — it reads papers, it does not help you find them

Tags

research-papersacademiczoterosummarizationmathreading-assistant
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