Doing research can feel overwhelming. You’re juggling search engines, academic papers, PDFs, and tools that don’t always give you what you need. It’s easy to lose time just trying to find a clear answer or pull useful info from a long article.

AI research assistants help students find answers, summarize sources, and organize information faster. These tools use AI to simplify the research process and reduce time spent reading or searching.

Liner AI is one tool that tries to help with this, but it’s not perfect—and not every feature is free. If you’re looking for a better or simpler way to handle research tasks, there are other tools worth trying.

In this article, we'll list out the 5 best free Liner AI alternatives students can use for research in 2025. Let's dive in!

What is Liner AI?

Liner AI is a tool that helps users highlight, summarize, and search information across the web. It's often used by students and researchers looking to organize sources and speed up their workflow.

Though, it may not work for everyone. Some students needs cheaper options, or just require a tool with different features.

Is Liner AI Free?

Liner offers a free plan that only includes the Liner Basic model and 0 reasoning answers & file uploads. To get access to these features, you have to upgrade to a paid plan.

If that doesn't work for you, don't worry, there are plenty of other AI research tools out there that offer free plans with less limits.

What Does Liner Do?

Liner offers a few key features that are useful for students trying to save time and stay organized during research. It combines multiple tools into one interface to help with reading, searching, and note-taking.

Here are a few things that Liner offers:

• AI search engine - Gives short, AI-generated answers from the web when you type in a question.

• AI research - Helps you explore topics by pulling relevant summaries and related info.

• AI summarizer - Shortens long articles, papers, or websites into quick, digestible takeaways.

• Answer questions - Lets you ask follow-up questions for clarity without needing to search again.

These features can make research easier, especially when you're working with limited time or juggling multiple sources.

What to Look for in Liner AI Alternatives

Not every research tool offers the same features. Some are more like search engines where you enter a prompt in the website, and others work across all websites.

If you're looking for a Liner AI alternative, make sure it checks these boxes:

• Accurate answers - The tool should give clear, helpful responses to research questions.

• Summarization - It should shorten articles, papers, or PDFs into easy-to-read summaries.

• Citation-friendly - You should be able to trace the original source for academic work.

• Organized workspace - It helps if the tool lets you save or organize your research.

• Free access - Check to see if it offers a free plan for students.

Using AI tools for research helps you save time, and if you find the right tool, you'd be surprised how helpful they can be.

5 Best Free Liner AI Alternatives

If you’re looking for a tool that can help you research faster, summarize sources, or get clear answers without switching tabs, you have options.

Here's our list of the 5 best free Liner AI alternatives:

AI Blaze

First up on our list of the best free Liner AI alternatives is AI Blaze.

AI Blaze is your personal AI research assistant that helps you quickly generate citations, summarize text, articles, and PDFs, and streamline the writing process!

With AI Blaze, you can answer questions and generate summaries on any website (no file uploading necessary)!

Features

• Use AI to answer questions - Answer questions and get detailed explanations on any page or website. No need to upload files or copy/paste!

• Take notes & generate summaries with AI - AI Blaze helps you summarize PDFs & articles and take notes using AI!

• Streamline research with AI - AI Blaze helps you answer questions, improve your writing, check for mistakes, and even generate citations!

• AI Blaze works on any website! - Get help with homework on any website on Chrome.

Price

• AI Blaze is free! - Forget about annoying licenses or subscriptions. AI Blaze is free for students!

Elicit AI

Elicit AI focuses on helping students and researchers ask better questions and get answers from real academic papers. When you search for a topic, it brings up summaries, citations, and related points from published research.

It also organizes the responses into clean tables to make comparing sources easier. This tool is most useful for literature reviews or building research arguments.

Price

• Includes a free plan. Paid plans starting at $12/month.

Scite AI

Scite AI helps students verify the credibility of research by showing how papers have been cited—positively, negatively, or neutrally. You can search for a topic and see which studies are widely supported or debated.

It also gives AI-generated answers based on published academic work. If you're writing a research paper and need trustworthy sources, Scite helps you decide what to rely on.

Price

• Personal plan is $20/month.

Sider AI

Sider adds a collapsible sidebar to your browser that follows you around the web. It can summarize articles, answer questions about the text you’re viewing, and even chat with PDFs.

Students working with academic sources can upload documents directly and get help breaking them down. Tools like Sider AI keep your research session in one place so you don’t have to keep jumping between apps.

Price

• Basic plan is $10/month, Pro is $20/month, Unlimited is $40/month.

Research Rabbit

Research Rabbit is built for exploring connections between academic papers, authors, and fields of study. It shows how different research is linked, helping you discover related work or track how a topic has developed over time.

The visual maps make it easier to see which papers are central to a subject. It’s best for students doing deep research or starting a new project from scratch.

Price

• Free, but they do accept donations.

Example AI Prompts for Research

Using clear and specific prompts can help you get better results from any AI research assistant.

Here are some example prompts designed to help with summarizing sources, answering questions, or comparing information while studying.

Find an AI Research Tool That Actually Works for You

Liner AI has useful features, but it’s not the only option. Whether you need faster summaries, more accurate answers, or tools that fit into your workflow, there are solid free alternatives worth trying.

We recommend exploring the options above to see which one actually helps you study smarter.

To recap, our suggestion for the best free Liner AI alternative is AI Blaze. AI Blaze is your personal AI research assistant that helps you do research, summarize content, and answer questions on any website. Plus, AI Blaze is 100% free for students.