Litmaps
Visual citation maps that show how papers in a field connect and what you have missed.
why this verdict
Downgrade — pay for the workflow, not the AI
Connected Papers and Research Rabbit cover the headline feature free, so the $10/mo is now paying for the workflow around it.
- A named launch, not a vibe named, unlinked
- Deep research agents assembling and explaining a field's key papers in one pass. OpenAI, April 2, 2025 — no announcement link recorded yet.
- How much of the job it covers headline only editorial call
- The headline feature, but not the workflow, data or integrations around it.
- Is there a free way to do it? yes
- 2 of 3 listed replacements have a usable free tier: Connected Papers and Research Rabbit.
- What the call is worth $120/yr
- $10/mo at the entry paid tier — $120 a year per seat.
- Threatened by
- OpenAI
- Since
- April 2, 2025
- List price
- $10/mo
- Per year
- $120
The backstory
Litmaps builds an interactive graph from a seed paper, surfacing the citation neighbourhood and alerting you when relevant new work appears. Deep research agents can now produce a readable narrative of a field in minutes, which is what most people actually wanted from a map. Litmaps holds on because the visual graph exposes structure and gaps that prose summaries flatten, and the monitoring alerts keep working after the search ends.
Escape hatches
switching could free up $120/yrSimilar citation graphs, generous free tier
connectedpapers.com open_in_newFree discovery and collection mapping
researchrabbit.ai open_in_newAgent that reads and reports instead of mapping
undermind.ai open_in_new2 of 3 replacements have a usable free tier.