Everything you need to decide whether Litlas belongs in your research guide
What Litlas is, what a student needs in order to use it, what it costs, where its papers come from, and a description you can paste straight into your guide.
Litlas is a workspace for literature review that runs in a web browser. This page is for the person deciding whether to list it on a research guide, so it states what a student needs in order to use it, what it costs, and where its papers come from — and it links to the pages where each of those can be checked.
We are not going to tell you who else uses it. As of 2026-08-21 no library guide lists Litlas at all, and a claim you cannot verify is worth less than the space it takes up.
At a glance
What it is — A browser-based workspace that combines scholarly search, a citation graph, a reading library with notes and PDF annotation, and a one-click handoff to an AI assistant. There is nothing for the library to install, host, or license.
Who it is for — Students and researchers who are looking for papers on a topic, following citations backwards and forwards, and keeping track of what they have read.
What a student needs — A free account, created with an email address. Search, the library, and the AI handoff are behind sign-in. Individual paper pages and author pages are readable without an account, so you can link to a specific paper from your guide and it will open for anyone.
What it costs — There is a free plan and it needs no credit card. Paid plans raise the limits; the current figures are on the plans page rather than repeated here, because they change.
Where the papers come from — Named bibliographic sources — 19,379,997 papers as measured on 2026-08-21. Nothing is crawled from the open web, and every search result carries the slug of the source it came from.
Interface languages — English / 日本語. The same content is available under a language prefix in the URL, so you can link to whichever version suits your readers.
Where it runs — Any modern browser. A Chrome extension and an Android app exist for signed-in users, but neither is required to use the site.
What students and researchers use it for
Four things, in the order they usually happen. If your guide already has a section on citation chaining or on reference management, those are the two that overlap with it.
Finding papers on a topic
Free-text search over the index, with filters for venue and year and sorting by citation count. Each result shows its source and its BibTeX, so a student can check provenance and export a reference without leaving the result list.
Following a citation trail
Every paper opens into an interactive citation graph showing both what it cites and what cites it. This is the same backward-and-forward chaining that reference-tracing sessions teach, with the two directions in one view instead of two databases.
Keeping and annotating what they find
Papers are saved to boards, with notes, a read/unread state, PDF import and in-browser annotation, and BibTeX and RIS export. It is a reading queue rather than a full institutional reference manager.
Handing a paper to an AI assistant
One click opens the paper in the student’s own session with Gemini · Claude · ChatGPT · Gemini Notebook, with the PDF attached and a prompt filled in. The student uses their own account with that service — Litlas does not resell access to it, and no AI subscription is bundled.
Check it before you list it
The two questions a guide entry has to answer — what is behind the index, and what does it cost — each have their own page. They are the source of truth; this page only points at them.
Data sources and coverage
The full list of bibliographic sources, the size of the corpus, how often it is rebuilt, and a blunt account of what the index does not cover.
Plans and pricing
The free plan, what the paid plans add, and the current limits.
A description you can paste into your guide
Written to be copied. Both languages are shown on both versions of this page, because the guide you are writing may not be in the language you are reading.
Deliberately, none of it contains a number. Once it is in your guide we cannot correct it, so anything that changes — corpus size, limits, prices — is left on our pages where it can be kept current, and linked rather than copied.
English
Name — Litlas
Link — https://litlas.ai/en
One line
Litlas — scholarly search, a citation graph, and a reading library in one browser workspace. Free plan, no credit card required.
Paragraph
Litlas is a browser-based workspace for literature review: search a scholarly index, follow citations in a visual graph, keep what you find in a reading library with notes and PDF annotation, and hand a paper to an AI assistant in one click. Searching and saving need a free account and no credit card; individual paper and author pages can be read without signing in. The bibliographic sources behind the index, and the gaps in its coverage, are published on the site.
日本語
Name — Litlas
Link — https://litlas.ai/ja
One line
Litlas —— 論文検索・引用グラフ・読書ライブラリをブラウザひとつにまとめたワークスペース。無料プランあり、カード登録不要。
Paragraph
Litlas は、文献レビューのためのブラウザ上のワークスペースです。学術文献を検索し、引用関係をグラフでたどり、見つけた論文をノートと PDF 注釈つきのライブラリに残して、ワンクリックで AI アシスタントに渡せます。検索と保存には無料アカウントが必要ですが、カード登録は要りません。個々の論文ページと著者ページはログインなしで読めます。索引を支える書誌データソースと、収録できていない範囲は、サイト上で公開しています。
Corrections and questions
If something on this page is wrong, or your guide needs a detail that is not here, tell us and we will fix it. That includes asking us to describe a limitation more plainly than we have.