Compare AI tools

	GitHub Copilot B	Elicit S	OpenRouter S	Fathom S
Tagline	Microsoft/GitHub's autocomplete. Deep VS Code + JetBrains integration.	AI research assistant for academic literature.	One API, every model. Pay-as-you-go, no subscriptions.	Meeting notes, free forever for individuals.
Category	coding	research	dev platform	meeting
Pricing	Free (limited) + $10/mo Pro + $19/mo Business	Free + $12-$42/mo	Pay per token — model-dependent	Free for individuals + $15-$29/user/mo teams
Best for	Teams with GitHub already. Devs who don't want to change IDEs.	Grad students, researchers, anyone doing literature reviews.	Developers experimenting across models. Apps that want fallback logic.	Solo operators, freelancers, small teams on a budget.
Strengths	Great enterprise story Works in your existing IDE Chat + autocomplete	Searches 125M+ papers Extracts + synthesizes findings across papers Systematic review workflow	300+ models from one endpoint Automatic fallbacks between providers No subscription — just pay what you use	Unlimited free tier for solo use Strong summaries + action items Works in Zoom, Meet, Teams
Weaknesses	Less agentic than Cursor/Claude Code Model quality varies	Academic-only Can hallucinate citations — verify everything	Slight markup over direct API Some provider features not exposed	Bot-joining model Team features gated
Kai's verdict	B-tier. Solid for autocomplete but the category moved past it. Pick Cursor unless you can't.	S-tier for academic research. Nothing else comes close for systematic reviews.	S-tier for model-shopping. I use this for every prototype before committing.	S-tier for solo + free. The best free option, hands down.
Link	Open →	Open →	Open →	Open →