Consensus Alternative

We Don't Search 200 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

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
Consensus200M+ papersSearch / Snapshot workflowPlan-dependentPaper links$0 / Pro $15 / Deep $65

Consensus facts checked July 12, 2026 against its official Help Center; plans and limits can change.

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: a 200M+ peer-reviewed-paper index, research search, and a Consensus Meter over 5–20 relevant results.

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.

Frequently asked questions

PDF workflows

PDF Summarizer

Upload a text-based PDF and get a structured summary.

Chat with PDF

The exact limits of grounded follow-up questions.

Document Analysis

Long-document workflow and current capability limits.