Paperpile 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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On this page

Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
Integrations
User Reviews

Overview

Paperpile

4.8

(122)

Pricing

Starting at $2.99 per month

About Paperpile

Paperpile is a knowledge management solution that helps businesses access, read and annotate texts across the research library. The platform enables administrators to add bibliographies and citations across Google Docs.

Managers can access documents in PDF format via mobile applications on Android and iOS devices. Additionally, Paperpile allows teams to import data from Google Scholar, PubMed and other publisher sites on a unified interface.

Paperpile lets businesses integrate the system with several third-party applications including Google Docs and Google Drive.

Paperpile Screenshots

Paperpile Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $2.99 per month

Free Trial

Free Version

Free

$0.00

flat rate

No plan information available

Academic

$2.99

flat rate, per month

No plan information available

Business

$9.99

flat rate, per month

No plan information available

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Paperpile Features

Popular features found in Knowledge Management
Access Controls/Permissions
Catalog Management
Collaboration Tools
Commenting/Notes
Content Management
Data Import/Export
Discussions/Forums
Document Management
Self Service Portal
Text Editing
More features of Paperpile
Activity Dashboard
Content Library
Full Text Search
Knowledge Base Management
Multi-Language
Third-Party Integrations

Paperpile Integrations

Google Docs

Google Drive

Paperpile User Reviews

Overall Rating

4.8

Ratings Breakdown

77%

21%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

4.7

Value for money

4.7

Customer support

4.7

Functionality

4.5

Robert B.

Verified reviewer

Research

10000+ employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2021

Worth the price

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I like this software because it is browser-based and also has an app. I often work on multiple computers and I don't want to have to install new software everywhere I go. It's great for citations, but I like it even more for managing my pdf library. The main reason I got it was to work with Google Docs.

Cons:

There are a few quirks about exporting bibtex files and other minor details, but nothing really problematic.

Reasons for switching to Paperpile

I wanted something that worked with google docs.

Vendor Response

Thanks for the nice feedback, Robert! Please don't hesitate to reach out via chat or email (support@paperpile.com) if you ever find these quirks affect your workflow or have any other observations to share.

Replied September 2021

Rahul K.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

5001-10000 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed August 2021

A one stop solution for your paper collection and reference management

I have been using it since after my graduate studies. I've happily stayed due to features introduced later. It has made my workflow pretty smooth.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I have stayed with Paperpile more many different reasons but, most importantly the promptness with which your team listens to our feedbacks and problems. I like annotations, hand-written notes on pdf.

Cons:

Lack of desktop app is very much desired. I have a general suggestion for the design and aesthetic team. Currently with Apple pencil and other handwriting devices with or without e-Ink are capturing a major fraction of students, faculties as well as researchers in both academia and engineering such as computer science, manufacturing. If you can include some slid features in handwriting and manipulation of PDF, that would attract almost any student with an iPad/Microsoft/Samsung/Android tablet. I think your handwriting is already a very improved version and captures it well in the summary export. With few additions such as these below, your app can also cover the different userbase where people don't care much about handwriting app nuances but, still require to have it. * add page: notes/texts on the added page can be exported page as text via OCR. * export in Docx, * highlighter A nice desktop app will easily integrate generated export files into other workflows -- GoogleDoc, Latex. I have currently two different apps, one for doing full handwriting work on pdf and the other for reference and notes management, Paperpile. I would like to have both capabilities in one. Apps to watch when you expand the Paperpile userbase -- Goodnotes5/Notability, Liquid Text, and Tiddlywiki. Tiddlywiki is a general knowledge management concept that takes into account non-directed graphs and multiple relationships I think this is directly applicable to reference management system.

Reasons for switching to Paperpile

Because Paperpile allowed me to manage my references manageable locally in addition to pdf annotation and hand-written notes on pdf. Later, with the addition of Overleaf and Latex integration justified that decision.

Vendor Response

Glad to read you as usual, Rahul, and to include your sensible feedback in our tracker for the team to consider. We intend to continue improving / expanding our annotation features across platforms. A full desktop app is a solid long-term goal for us.

Replied September 2021

Debby S.

Verified reviewer

Research

11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2021

Silver

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Functionality

Pros:

Access to papers on cloud and also on my laptop

Cons:

Search function is awful. Please fix and also fix glitches in highlighting.

Vendor Response

Thanks for the feedback, Debby! We are working on revamping our search features so you'll be seeing improvements soon. We'd be interested in hearing more about the glitches you've found in highlighting - if you're able to share examples, please send them via chat or email (support@paperpile.com)

Replied September 2021

Seyed Yahya S.

Verified reviewer

Research

10000+ employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2021

Indispensable, but needs improvement

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Paperpile is a cloud reference management system that keeps the papers and annotations organized. It also greatly makes collaborative writing easier. having the papers on Google drive and powerful extensions for Google Docs and Microsoft Word is a huge plus.

Cons:

There are certain cons that always bite me as a user: 1- The PDF files for IEEE papers are cannot be imported automatically, this is particularly hurting STEM researchers. I think having a robot for fetching the PDF is not a hard thing compared to the amazing work the Paperpile team has done so far. 2- An extension for Overleaf would be awesome. 3- Collaborative work over Micrisift Word is almost impossible, leaving the references broken.

Reasons for choosing Paperpile

I have the option to get EndnOte through my university but the benefits of Paperpile greatly outweigh having free access to EndNote.

Reasons for switching to Paperpile

Endnote is not as robust, and lightweight, and easy to set up.

Vendor Response

Thanks for the feedback, Seyed! The ongoing issue with IEEE papers is indeed a big pain we haven't been able to improve. Solutions for collaborative work in Word are also on our radar as other users have also requested it. We recently released a beta Overleaf integration (https://paperpile.com/h/overleaf-integration/), in case you hadn't come across it. Please feel free to share your thoughts about it.

Replied September 2021

Paul S.

Verified reviewer

Non-Profit Organization Management

2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2021

This is the most affordable and user-friendly way to organize our PDFs and related files

What was once a disorganized and frustrating experience with saving and organizing research papers, books, and PDFs has become a simple and straightforward process I can manage with the click of a button.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Functionality

Pros:

We began using Paperpile for the 1-click ease of use for saving and organizing files. We were delightfully surprised by how Paperpile works seamlessly with search engines to highlight pdf download options straight from the search page. It updates all the relevant info about the PDF with simple options for editing and organizing.

Cons:

We have yet to try to integrate files and folders with a CRM or data base so we could not say anything regarding this functionality.

Reasons for choosing Paperpile

The explicit focus of Paperpile on collecting, saving, organizing, and sharing files and the affordability made this the best option

Reasons for switching to Paperpile

Ease of use and organizing capacity

Diler H.

Verified reviewer

Research

2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2021

Paperpile makes citing easier!

Overall Paperpile is very useful in my day-to-day life. I just submitted a scientific paper with citations all managed by Paperpile! I will continue to use this.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I like the seamless in-text citation ability and the automatic bibliography creation feature.

Cons:

The Paperpile page is slow and takes up too many computing resources. Opening papers to annotate is quite slow and my computer has problems when too many Paperpile tabs are open.

Reasons for switching to Paperpile

I liked Paperpile's ability to seamlessly to in-text citation in Google Drive.

Matthew J.

Verified reviewer

Biotechnology

1001-5000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2021

Paperpile is the best citation and PDF library management option

Love it.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Functionality

Pros:

Paperpile's integration with Chrome and Google Drive is outstanding, and now with citation plugins for Google Docs and MS Word, it offers everything I need from a literature management software. In particular, the ease with which I can add citations and PDFs from any webpage to my library on the fly is great. I've used other softwares in the past -- both stand-alone (Papers) and browser-integrated (Zotero, Mendeley) -- and Paperpile beats them all hands down for ease of use, without sacrificing functionality. If you're a Chrome/Google Suite user, Paperpile is the way to go.

Cons:

The library search functionality is limited -- searching by journal or year published or first/last author should be a little more straightforward. Tab management is also a little buggy -- new tabs sometimes open in odd places, not adjacent to the current tab.

Reasons for switching to Paperpile

My new company offered Paperpile and its Chrome integration is smoother and easier to use than a standalone app.

Vendor Response

Thanks for the nice feedback, Matthew! We are actually very nearly implementing advanced search features in the library (targeted search, full-text search, phrase search), so there should be news soon. I've reminded the team about the tab opening in random places, which is a known thing they haven't been able to prioritize.

Replied September 2021

Bjorn W.

Verified reviewer

Hospital & Health Care

10000+ employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2021

Great for research

This is the easiest way I’ve found to collect and organize literature.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Paperpile is the easiest software I’ve used to manage PDFs and other documents for research. Running within chrome and using google docs or word for citations is more straightforward than endnote, mendeley, or zotero, without clunky app interfaces.

Cons:

The PDF viewer and annotations are great in iPadOS, but can be distracting if I share a paper with my team. Collaborative annotations has been a “coming soon” feature for a while, and development is overall pretty slow.

Reasons for switching to Paperpile

Mendeley was unstable and permanently corrupted itself, endnote was clunky, slow to load, and also frequently crashed. Neither was great at pulling metadata.

Vendor Response

We appreciate the earnest feedback, Bjorn! Indeed, our development has been slow and unpredictable as a small self-funded team, so there have been several unfulfilled promises/expectations over the years. Our team has grown recently and has been hard at work rewriting our entire UI and extension, so there should be novelties "soon" ;) Since I think you've already expressed interest for this feature, I'll add this feedback to the topic on our tracker as a +2 from you to bump up its priority.

Replied September 2021

Alissa G.

Verified reviewer

Research

Self-Employed

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2021

I literally recommend this to everyone.

Despite my issues with Chrome, I recommend Paperpile to all of my coworkers (I've gotten about half of my grad program on the Paperpile train). It's easily the most user-friendly citation manager I've ever used.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Best feature is that it is so easily integrated into my workflow. I use Google Drive for my cloud storage, and it's incredibly convenient to have all of my PDFs clearly labeled and easily findable.

Cons:

That it is ONLY easily integrated into Google Chrome. I hate Chrome as a browser, and I do wish that Paperpile were more easily integrated into other browsers or Chrome derivatives (e.g., Brave).

Reasons for switching to Paperpile

I wanted to be able to annotate PDFs, search, tag, and alter all meta data and I couldn't find that in any of the other citation managers that I tried, or there was too steep of a learning curve and I didn't have time to make the switch. Though there was a bit of upfront work in migrating all of my (1500+ at the time) papers, it was WELL worth it.

Vendor Response

Thanks for the wonderful feedback, Alissa, and for being an advocate of Paperpile <3 You can actually install the Paperpile extension in any Chromium-based browser (like MS Edge, Brave, Vivaldi) and have all our features available there. We also have short-term plans to support other browsers like Safari and Firefox.

Replied September 2021

Verified

Reviewer

Biotechnology

10000+ employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2021

Good for Google Drive Users

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Functionality

Pros:

I have been using paperpile for 3 years. This is a citation management tool which runs all in the web browser, unlike most similar software that runs as a desktop application. There are a wide selection of citation output formats that work with Paperpile and it has always been a simple process to use. It also saves a PDF of each paper you cite into Google Drive for later reference.

Cons:

Sometimes the Google chrome plugins crash randomly and you have to restart your browser to get it to recognize changes. Did not have an iPhone app until very recently.

Reasons for choosing Paperpile

It was more compatible with google drive and runs in a web browser.

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