vust

Consensus Alternative

We Don't Search 220 Million Papers. We Explain the One You Have.

Consensus is a research search engine. VUST helps you understand a specific PDF with a structured summary and up to three questions grounded in its extracted text.

Different jobs. Honest comparison.Not a literature-search replacement
Open @vustSummaryBot
PDFs up to 50 pagesUp to 3 document questionsNo fake paragraph citations

Comparison basis

Consensus corpus, modes and plans

Corpus size, Deep review capabilities and current plans were checked against the official Consensus Help Center. VUST claims apply only to a PDF the user already selected.

Unless a separate method is stated above, this page does not claim a head-to-head product-quality benchmark.

Checked: 2026-07-20

Product boundary

No corpus search and no paragraph citations

VUST accepts one PDF, extracts up to 50 pages and 5,000 words, then summarizes it. Follow-up answers use the extracted text, but this is prompt grounding, not a technical citation system.

Open the original PDF before citing.

Consensus vs VUST

Choose by research job, not the broad AI-research label.
ToolCorpus searchYour PDFFollow-upsParagraph anchorsAccess
VUSTNoYesUp to 3NoTelegram, action-based
Consensus220M+ papersSearch / Snapshot workflowPlan-dependentPaper links$0 / Pro $20 / Deep $65

Consensus facts checked July 20, 2026 against its official Help Center; plans and limits can change.

Specimens

Three different research jobs

Do not flatten different products into one feature.

Discover research

Task

Find papers on a question and inspect the direction of the evidence.

Best fit

Consensus: search across 220M+ scientific papers, synthesis modes and Deep review for a broader evidence scan.

Understand your PDF

Task

Break down a paper you already found: methods, results and limitations.

Best fit

@vustSummaryBot: send a text-based PDF, get a structured summary, then ask up to three questions within 30 minutes.

Verify the answer

Requirement

You need an exact quotation with a page or paragraph anchor.

Honest limit

VUST does not provide that anchor. Compare the answer with the original PDF before citing it.
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does VUST search papers like Consensus?

No. VUST has no proprietary research index. You provide a text-based PDF; the bot extracts and summarizes its text.

Can I ask questions about a PDF?

Yes, after a PDF-file summary: up to three questions within 30 minutes, each with its exact price shown before you confirm. Answers are constrained by the extracted document excerpt.

Do answers cite the page and paragraph?

No. The bot does not retain page or paragraph anchors, so precise citations are not guaranteed. Verify the original passage manually.

Do scanned PDFs work?

Only when the file already contains a text layer. An image-only scan needs OCR before you send it.

Which should I use for a literature review?

Consensus for discovering many papers; VUST for understanding specific PDFs you already collected. Neither replaces a systematic-review method.

Where next

PDF workflows

PDF SummarizerUpload a text-based PDF and get a structured summary.Chat with PDFThe exact limits of grounded follow-up questions.Document AnalysisLong-document workflow and current capability limits.All tools