Kenkyu.ai review
A focused web assistant for summarizing, checking, translating, and exploring academic papers.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Kenkyu.ai is a web-based academic research assistant for students, researchers, professors, laboratories, clinicians, writers, and journalists. Its Paper Summarizer accepts research-paper PDFs, supported academic URLs, and DOIs, then produces structured summaries with claims linked to source passages. It also supports grounded follow-up questions, research-paper search, translation, citation-oriented source analysis, and anonymous processing with automatic file deletion. Users can try the summarizer without an account for an initial paper, making it suited to focused academic reading rather than broad document work.
The free tier is practical for limited research checks. The Free Plan costs ¥0 per month and includes unlimited search across 230 million papers, 10 AI chats, 10 file uploads, and a 25 MB file or translation size limit. It also sets a 200,000-character file or translation limit. According to the published monthly pricing, the Plus Plan costs ¥1,800 per month and adds unlimited AI chats, unlimited file uploads, a 100 MB file or translation size limit, and a 1,000,000-character limit. The Enterprise Plan includes everything in Plus plus prioritized support. The paid tiers fit users who regularly process papers or need larger files.
Kenkyu.ai’s strongest distinction is its academic focus and source-aware workflow. Support for arXiv, DOI, J-STAGE, CiNii, and Semantic Scholar helps connect paper discovery with summarization and source analysis. Researchers who need claims tied back to passages, paper translation, and grounded questions should find the feature set well aligned with literature review tasks. It is less suitable for teams seeking a broader cross-platform summarization tool, since the product is web-only and its emphasis remains research papers. Choose it for academic reading and checking; consider an alternative for general business documents or wider platform coverage.
Kenkyu.ai pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Links summary claims to passages in the source paper
- Searches across more than 230 million papers
- Supports PDF, URL, DOI, translation, and citation analysis
- Where it doesn't
- Available on the web only
- Free Plan limits users to 10 AI chats and 10 uploads
- Paid plans start at ¥1,800 per month
Kenkyu.ai fact sheet, pricing and score →
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