Number of Seats/Users: Elicit offers discounts based on the number of users or seats. A higher volume typically leads to a better discount structure, especially for enterprise-level usage.

Commitment to a Long-Term Contract: Discounts are often provided to companies that commit to using the service for a longer period (e.g., 1-year or 3-year contracts). A longer commitment shows Elicit that the company is serious and willing to invest in the platform long-term.

No Active Discounts: Companies that are not already receiving other active discounts may have a better chance of qualifying for additional discounts from Elicit. Elicit reserves discounts for new customers or those not currently under promotional pricing.

Volume or Usage Commitment: Elicit offers discounts if you agree to a minimum amount of usage or transaction volume. This could be based on data storage, transactions, or other metrics tied to how much you will use the platform.

Enterprise-Level Negotiation: Companies that qualify as “enterprise” due to their size or complexity (e.g., having large teams, multiple departments, or geographical presence) may be eligible for additional discounts from Elicit. Such companies are often in a position to negotiate for better pricing.

Early Renewal or Prepayment: Elicit often offers discounts if you renew early or prepay for the entire contract period. This is a common approach to securing a lower price.

Here at Spendbase, our internal data shows that Elicit is highly valued by our clients, especially those in academic and research-heavy roles.

Overall sentiment
– Most Spendbase clients rate Elicit very highly, often 5/5.
– The tool is seen as a “must-have” for graduate school, exam prep, and course design.

Key strengths our clients highlight
– Time savings
– Automates reading and summarizing papers.
– Speeds up exam preparation and class planning.
– Ease of use
– Simple interface that lets users input a research question and quickly get relevant papers.
– Low learning curve; people get value almost immediately.
– Quality of summaries
– Summaries are described as:
– “Complete”
– “Reasonable”
– “Easy to understand”
– Helpful for quickly judging whether a paper is worth a deeper read.
– Research coverage
– Access to a very large database (around 200M papers) is consistently seen as a major benefit.
– Being able to find “similar papers” from one relevant hit is a strong plus.

Common pain points
Our internal data also shows a few recurring friction points:
– Layout and visual space
– Information can appear in a large format.
– Some clients feel it takes too much screen space and requires a lot of scrolling.
– Information density
– While summaries are helpful, the way they are displayed can feel overwhelming on smaller screens.

How this impacts Spendbase discount strategy
Based on what our Spendbase clients say, Elicit tends to deliver strong ROI when:
– Users handle a high volume of research papers.
– Teams need fast synthesis of literature for reports, classes, or exam prep.
– Organizations want to reduce manual reading time and improve research throughput.

When advising on discounts or plan optimization, we typically:
– Recommend higher tiers for research teams or graduate programs using Elicit daily.
– Suggest trial or lower tiers for individuals who only occasionally need literature summaries.
– Encourage clients to pair Elicit with good screen setups or layout workflows to offset the “large format” concern.

In short, our internal data shows that Elicit is a powerful, time-saving research assistant, with its main improvement area being the compactness and layout of the information it presents.