Explainpaper

Explainpaper is an AI tool that makes dense academic research papers understandable: upload a paper, highlight any confusing text — a jargon-filled sentence, a complex equation, an obscure concept — and the AI explains it in plain language, at the level of detail you need. For students and researchers wrestling with papers written in impenetrable academic prose, it's like having a patient expert beside you who you can ask "what does this actually mean?" as many times as you want.

The workflow is simple and powerful: read the paper in Explainpaper's reader, highlight anything you don't understand, and get an instant, clear explanation — you can even ask follow-up questions to go deeper or request a simpler explanation. This lowers the barrier to reading primary research, which is normally written for experts and hostile to newcomers.

Explainpaper offers a free tier with basic explanations and limits, and paid plans (Plus and Pro) that unlock more advanced AI models, unlimited use, and features like uploading longer papers.

Strengths: genuinely makes hard papers accessible (highlight-to-explain is intuitive and effective), follow-up questions for deeper understanding, and it lowers the barrier to primary research. Weaknesses: AI explanations should be verified for accuracy on critical technical points (it can occasionally oversimplify or err), the best models are paid, and it aids understanding rather than replacing careful expert reading.

For students entering research, interdisciplinary researchers reading outside their field, and anyone who's ever felt stupid struggling through a paper that was simply badly written, Explainpaper removes that barrier — pairing well with NotebookLM and Scholarcy in a modern research-reading toolkit.