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Top 3

Top 3 AI apps for research

Answers with sources, answers from your own documents, and deep reading of long reports.

Tested by hand, updated today, 2 min read

AI assistants are good at sounding right. For research you want ones that show their working. These three each solve a different part of the job.

1Answers with sources

Perplexity

Free; Pro subscription

Ask a question and get a short answer with a numbered source for each claim, so you can check it.

  • Citations on every answer, fast, good free tier.
  • Less suited to long writing.
2Your own documents

NotebookLM

Free; higher limits with paid Google plans

Upload papers, notes or PDFs and ask questions that are answered only from them, with citations.

  • Grounded in your sources, audio overviews, free.
  • You have to bring the material.
3Deep reading

Claude

Free plan; Pro and Max plans

Strong at reading long reports, comparing documents and reasoning through them step by step.

  • Handles long documents, careful reasoning.
  • Free plan has usage limits.

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