Atlas vs Elicit: Which AI Knowledge Tool is Right for You?

Overview

Atlas and Elicit represent two different approaches to AI-assisted research. Atlas focuses on visual knowledge synthesis, transforming documents into interactive mind maps and knowledge graphs that help you see connections between concepts. Elicit, developed by Ought, is an AI research assistant designed specifically for literature reviews and systematic data extraction from academic papers.

While Atlas excels at helping you understand and visualize complex information from any type of document, Elicit is purpose-built for academic researchers who need to quickly review large volumes of scientific literature. Elicit can search across 200 million academic papers, extract key findings into structured tables, and help answer research questions with properly cited sources.

Both tools leverage advanced AI capabilities, but they serve different stages of the research workflow. Elicit helps you find and process academic literature at scale, while Atlas helps you synthesize and visualize the knowledge you've gathered.

Key Differences

The fundamental difference lies in their core purpose. Elicit is optimized for literature discovery and systematic review, featuring powerful tools for searching academic databases, extracting structured data from papers, and organizing findings into tables. It's particularly valuable for researchers conducting meta-analyses or comprehensive literature reviews who need to process dozens or hundreds of papers efficiently.

Atlas takes a visual-first approach to knowledge management. Rather than presenting information in tables and lists, Atlas generates interactive mind maps and knowledge graphs that reveal relationships between concepts. This makes it ideal for understanding complex topics, brainstorming, and seeing the big picture of your research area.

Another key distinction is document versatility. While Elicit focuses exclusively on academic papers, Atlas works with any document type including reports, books, articles, and personal notes. This makes Atlas more suitable for interdisciplinary research or projects that draw from diverse source materials.

Who Should Use Atlas?

Atlas is ideal for researchers and knowledge workers who think visually and want to see connections between ideas. Choose Atlas if you need to synthesize information from diverse sources, want to generate mind maps to understand complex topics, or prefer interactive visual exploration over linear text. It's particularly valuable for brainstorming, concept mapping, and building a personal knowledge base that grows over time.

Who Should Use Elicit?

Elicit is the better choice for academic researchers conducting systematic literature reviews or meta-analyses. If you need to search academic databases, extract specific data points from multiple papers, or build evidence tables with citations, Elicit's specialized features will save you significant time. It's particularly powerful for PhD students, postdocs, and professional researchers working with large volumes of scientific literature.

The Bottom Line

Atlas and Elicit serve complementary roles in the research workflow. Elicit excels at the discovery and extraction phase, helping you find relevant papers and pull out structured data. Atlas shines in the synthesis and understanding phase, helping you visualize connections and build a coherent mental model of your research area.

Many researchers find value in using both tools together: Elicit to efficiently survey the literature and extract key findings, then Atlas to visually synthesize those findings and explore relationships between concepts. Consider your primary research needs and workflow to determine which tool, or combination of tools, will best support your work.