BibGenie is a native AI research assistant built for Zotero, targeting researchers and students who need to read, organize, and reason across literature. It runs directly within Zotero, with no need to migrate work to a separate AI application.
Purpose BibGenie is designed to assist researchers in completing literature management, search, analysis, and reasoning within Zotero. It is suitable for scenarios such as daily literature reading, multi-paper comparison, literature reviews, and academic discovery.
Key Capabilities
- Built into Zotero: BibGenie is fixed in the right sidebar of Zotero and moves with the user between the literature library and the reader. It can automatically use the current active item and current page as context, with no need to manually upload files or switch applications.
- Introduce any Zotero context into the chat: Users can type @ or use "Add Context" to add items, notes, tags, and collections; they can also select "Add to Chat" in the literature library or reader to introduce selected items, attachments, annotations, PDF pages, EPUB chapters, and selected passages. Multiple sources can be combined in a single prompt.
- Search the literature library and expand: It supports searching a personal Zotero literature library by keyword or semantics, and can discover related papers even when different wording is used. When broader coverage is needed, it can discover 250 million+ scholarly works worldwide through OpenAlex, with real citation context.
- Traceable citations: Generated content places citations next to the paragraphs that support it. Users can select a citation to return to the relevant PDF, EPUB, snapshot, note, or Zotero item, and examine the supporting evidence in context. Each generated statement is anchored to a precise sentence-level location in the PDF, making it easy to verify instantly in Zotero's native reader.
- Safely organize the literature library: BibGenie can be asked to organize collections, manage tags, and review or update metadata. Before write or batch operations run, users see the proposed changes and affected items and choose whether to approve them.
How to Use BibGenie is used as a Zotero plugin or extension; specific installation steps are not currently provided. In daily use, users converse with the assistant in the Zotero sidebar and introduce context via @ or the right-click menu. When searching, the personal literature library is the starting point, with the option to expand using OpenAlex.
Data and Models All content remains on the user's machine by default. Chat history, literature library indexes, and vector embeddings are stored on disk and are not uploaded unless the user chooses to do so. Model requests are sent directly from the user's machine to the provider API,It does not go through a BibGenie server proxy. Users can choose to run the model locally, connect with their own API key, or use the official hosted service. Supported model providers include OpenAI, Claude, DeepSeek, Gemini, and local Ollama. The official hosted service requires no API key or developer setup. Chat history and prompts are not stored on the official servers.
Pricing BibGenie offers multiple plans:
- Free: 200 credits per month; each successful call to OpenAlex and web tools costs 1 credit.
- Pro: Includes all Free features, 10,000 credits per month, and OpenAlex, web search, and web extraction do not consume credits. Suitable for regular research, paper reading, and external discovery.
- Max: Includes all Pro features, 35,000 credits per month. Suitable for intensive reading, multi-paper comparison, and literature reviews.
- Pro Lifetime: One-time payment, lifetime access, no recurring subscription. The official page shows an early-bird price of $199.
- Extra credits: 5,000 credits can be added for $6.99. All plans include core BibGenie capabilities, such as native Zotero chat, adding context, PDFs/notes/snapshots/images and traceable citations, keyword and semantic library search, saving answers back to Zotero notes, OpenAlex academic discovery, multi-source metadata review/cleanup and difference approval, web search and web extraction, BYOK, custom models, Ollama, and LM Studio, etc.
Use cases Suitable for researchers and students for literature reading, organizing, comparison, and review, especially for users who already use Zotero.
Limitations The official page mentions several common questions, such as the free plan, the differences between Pro and Max, how many credits papers consume, how to cancel a subscription, what Zotero context can be added, secure access to papers, integrating your own models and APIs, supported Zotero versions, whether it searches the literature library, whether it searches the web by default, where chat history is stored, and whether metadata will be modified without your knowledge. However, the specific answer text is not yet provided.
