BenchRank
#10 in AI Search & ResearchUpdated 2026-08

Scira

by Scira · AI search across web, Reddit, X and academic sources with citations

BenchRank score

22.8 — BenchRank score out of 100

Screenshots of Scira

Homepage · Scira

Homepage of Scira

Overview

Scira is an AI search engine that answers questions with cited sources across the web, Reddit, X, YouTube, academic papers, GitHub, stocks and prediction markets. Paid plans add deep research, connectors for Drive and Notion, memory, PDF analysis, voice mode and over 100 MCP apps. It is also available as an iOS app and a command-line tool.

Best for
Researchers and students who want AI search that cites sources across web, Reddit, X and academic papers.
Pricing
Free tier with 3 searches a day, then Pro at $15/month or Max at $60/month, with Pro at $9/month for verified school email addresses.
Runs on
Web

Strengths and trade-offs

Strengths

  • Free tier with 3 searches a day, no credit card asked
  • 18 search modes: academic, GitHub, Reddit, X, YouTube, stocks
  • Pro at $15/mo gives unlimited searches and all base models
  • Also runs as an iOS app and a terminal CLI

Trade-offs

  • Free plan is 3 searches a day, with no deep research or memory
  • Pro caps the heavier models: Sonnet 150/mo, Opus 30/mo
  • Gemini 3.1 Pro, Qwen and image generation need the $60/mo Max plan
  • Scira Agent is a limited preview and only on Max

Pricing

Published plans and prices from Scira’s own pricing page.

How this score is made up

Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.

  • MCP support

    Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.

  • API quality

    Public API surface: machine-readable spec, official SDKs, documented auth, errors, rate limits and versioning.

  • Documentation

    Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.

  • Agent friendliness

    How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.

  • Pricing transparency

    Whether real prices are published, self-serve signup exists, and usage costs are knowable without a sales call.

  • Changelog

    A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.

  • Marketing site structure

    Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.

  • Page speed

    How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.

  • Operational trust

    Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.

Measured, but not part of the score

Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.

  • Openness

    Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.

  • Maintenance

    Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.

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Where this comes from

The Scira pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.

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