Systematic Review Software in 2026: Covidence, Rayyan, Elicit, and Littview Compared

Choosing review software comes down to one question: which stages of your review does it cover, and how? This guide answers that stage by stage, from what each tool documents today. No scores, no opinions in the cells.

We build Littview. Every fact about Covidence, Rayyan, and Elicit below comes from their own help centers and pricing pages, checked on 3 September 2026.

Legend: ✓ documented · ◐ partial or plan-gated · — not offered · n/d not in the vendor's public docs.

The four in one line

1.Getting references in

Covidence, Rayyan, and Littview all carry the duplicate count into the PRISMA diagram, so that number is never re-typed.

2.Screening

The AI column is where the four differ most. Covidence ranks and tags; Rayyan ranks on every plan and, on Business/Academic, adds an AI Reviewer that votes like a member; Elicit screens for you and lets you override. Littview's AI reads each paper against your criteria, learns from the project's past decisions once enough papers are resolved, and hands you a suggestion with its reasoning.

Also in Littview: an assistant who is not screening can resolve conflicts, so an owner who also screens is not judging their own votes. AI can be switched on or off per member.

3.Data extraction

Covidence, Rayyan, and Littview all support double extraction. In Littview, you assign the included papers to two or more collaborators. Each paper then goes to one person to extract and to a different person to verify, and the pairs rotate so the workload is balanced across everyone.

4.Risk of bias

Rayyan is the only one of the four with RoB 2 built in today. Covidence ships RoB 1 as standard and handles RoB 2 as a custom template. Littview handles appraisal inside the extraction template: MMAT 2018 ships ready-made, with a section per study design and each item rated Yes, No, or Can't tell, so appraisal is recorded alongside the rest of the data, and any other checklist can be added as custom questions. Elicit has no risk-of-bias support.

5.Reporting

Two tools draft the write-up. Elicit generates a cited report from what it screened and extracted. Littview builds the flow diagram, the evidence table, and the Methods and Results drafts from the same project records, so the numbers match everywhere and nothing is re-entered at submission time. Covidence's strength is the other direction: a documented path into RevMan for meta-analysis.

6.Platform and people

Elicit is the only one that searches. The other three start from your own database searches, whether PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, or open indexes such as OpenAlex (478 million work records, per its homepage on 3 September 2026), and take the exported file.

7.Plans and pricing (3 September 2026)

*Billed annually. †Elicit's Academic pricing; Industry is $49 and $169. Pricing pages change; treat this as a snapshot.

What the free tiers hold

• Covidence: a 500-record trial.
• Rayyan: 3 active reviews, 2 free reviewers, duplicate detection, AI predictions.
• Elicit: unlimited search, summaries, and chat; limited AI usage.
• Littview: 1 project, 2 invited members, 200 references, 500 MB of PDFs, the full workflow. No time limit; AI not included.

What the entry paid tiers hold

• Covidence Single Review: one review, unlimited collaborators, 12 months.
• Rayyan Essential: 5 free reviewers, PRISMA, auto-resolve duplicates, mobile app. ResearchPilot needs Business/Academic.
• Elicit Pro: the Systematic Review workflow up to 5,000 papers, 20 extraction columns.
• Littview Pro: 9 projects, 9 invited members per project, 2,500 AI credits a month for the whole project, every AI feature.

One review, five people, one year

Assumes every reviewer needs a login where the vendor bills per user. Three billing models sit behind these numbers. Covidence bills per review, so one review with many collaborators is cheapest there. Rayyan and Elicit bill per person: Rayyan's free Reviewer role can screen, but anyone who uploads, deduplicates, exports, or uses ResearchPilot needs a paid seat, and the AI plans start at five licenses, so the bill grows with the group. Littview bills the project owner once; every member and the AI credits come with that one plan.

8.Which tool for which review

Three questions settle it.

Is the search still open? If so, Elicit is the only one of the four that searches. The other three start from your export.

Do you need RevMan, or a risk-of-bias tool built in? RevMan and RoB 1 point to Covidence. RoB 2 today points to Rayyan. In Littview, MMAT is ready-made inside the extraction form and any other checklist is custom questions.

Where do you want the tool to stop? If neither question applies, you are choosing between Rayyan and Littview, and the difference is where each one stops. Rayyan is built around screening, with extraction, risk of bias, and a PRISMA diagram added around it, billed per seat with AI on Business/Academic and above. Littview carries the same records from screening through extraction to the diagram, the evidence table, and the drafted Methods and Results, with an AI suggestion at each stage, on one plan for everyone.

Every tool above does the job it was built for. The question is which job yours is.

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