Answers to the questions we hear most.

It depends on how you use it. Researchful is built on the principle that AI should empower your effort, not replace it. The Effort Balance Index, contribution labels, and compliance gates ensure your intellectual work remains central and visible. Every paragraph is labeled — Student-Authored, AI-Assisted, or Quoted — and your supervisor can see exactly what you wrote. We recommend consulting your institution's academic integrity policy before using Researchful for graded work.

Researchful is for anyone doing research: undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students; independent researchers and post-docs; supervisors and faculty; institutions and departments; research-focused organizations and labs; and anyone else who needs to back their claims with sources. The platform adapts to your role — students get the guided lifecycle, supervisors get the audit trail, institutions get the admin dashboard.

The Free plan is free forever: one active project, 50 AI agent calls per month, 100 ResearchLib searches, basic compliance, and watermarked PDF export. Student Pro is $4.99/month for unlimited everything. The Institution plan is custom-priced per seat per year and includes centralized admin, SSO, custom thresholds, and a dedicated success manager. See the Pricing page for full details.

No. Researchful runs entirely in your browser, mobile-native first. It works offline with queued operations that sync when you reconnect, as a PWA you can install to your home screen. Native iOS and Android apps are on the roadmap.

Yes. Every paragraph carries a contribution label, and the full audit trail records which agent touched what, when, and with what input. You can export an integrity report alongside your final submission that documents your effort-balance ratio and the sources behind every claim.

No. The Drafting Agent is effort-locked: it expands your bullet points into paragraphs rather than generating chapters from a prompt. You provide the structure, the argument, and the interpretation. The AI helps you articulate, never replaces your thinking.

A weighted measure of student vs AI contribution, displayed per chapter so your effort stays visible. It is calculated from contribution labels (Student-Authored, AI-Assisted, Quoted), word counts, and agent activity. The ratio updates in real time as you write and edit.

Similarity (against published sources and your own prior work), originality (AI-generated content detection), bias (flagging paragraphs with one-sided framing), and fabricated-citation detection (validating that every citation resolves to a real source). The gate blocks finalization until all checks pass or you explicitly override with acknowledgment.

Each agent has explicit guardrails: the Research Agent does not make external claims without sources; the Drafting Agent will not generate chapters from a single prompt; the Analysis Agent requires student interpretation before inserting results; the Editing Agent always previews changes; the Compliance Agent blocks finalization until integrity passes; and the Orchestrator logs every action with input and output hashes.

APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and IEEE. Citations are auto-generated from your ResearchLib sources and synced to your in-text references. You can switch styles at any time and the entire bibliography regenerates instantly.

Curate sources from ResearchLib or the open web. The Research Agent extracts metadata, clusters themes, and fact-checks every claim. Every source is verifiable, deduped, and citation-ready. You can also verify any source with a single click — the Source Verifier fetches the URL, validates metadata, and applies corrections.

Yes. Both PDF and DOCX exports are supported, with covers, table of contents, figures, and bibliography in your institution template. The Free plan exports with a watermark; paid plans export without watermark.

Yes. We use TLS 1.3 in transit, AES-256 at rest, bcrypt password hashing, secure cookies with HttpOnly, Secure, and SameSite=Lax flags, CSRF protection, and rate limiting. Your projects are scoped to your account and never shared without explicit permission. We are GDPR-compliant and never sell your data. See our Security page for full details.

No. We never train models on your private content. AI agent calls are sent to the configured provider (OpenAI-compatible or Gemini) for inference, but your data is not used to train any model. Provider configurations are visible to admins in the admin panel.

Yes, at any time. Go to /app/settings → Export my data to download everything in open formats (Markdown, DOCX, BibTeX, RIS, CSV, JSON). To close your account and delete your data, use the same settings page; deletion is permanent and takes effect within 30 days.

Yes. The mobile apps and PWA support offline mode with queued operations. You can write, take notes, and annotate sources offline. When you reconnect, changes sync automatically with conflict resolution and sync banners.

Yes. Share with read or comment permissions. Your supervisor can leave inline annotations, resolve threads, view the audit trail of agent actions, and join live meeting sessions with recording and host controls. The integrity report is exportable alongside your final submission.

A research-focused social platform with 50+ communities, Q&A threads with peer-reviewed best-answer marking, direct messaging with file sharing and LaTeX rendering, and saved posts for building a personal knowledge base. It is included with every Researchful account.

Yes, with ResearchLab. Calendared, audited booking for shared instruments with maintenance windows and conflict detection. The lab module also tracks experiments with versioned protocols, manages samples with chain-of-custody, and pushes datasets directly into ResearchFlow for analysis.

Yes. The Institution plan includes everything in Student Pro, plus centralized admin dashboard, custom integrity thresholds, institution branding and templates, SSO, audit log export, onboarding training, and a dedicated success manager. Contact partnerships@researchful.app for a quote.

Yes, when deployed by an institution. Researchful can act as a "school official" with legitimate educational interest under FERPA. The institution controls student data and is responsible for notifying students. See our Compliance page for full details.

Yes. Cancel from /app/settings → Billing. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period; you retain access until then. If you cancel within 14 days of a charge, contact support for a full refund.

Yes. You can share a read-only or comment link with your supervisor.

Researchful is an agentic AI platform that guides final-year students through their entire research project lifecycle.

Every AI output is grounded in sources you provide. The Compliance Agent flags unsupported claims and fabricated citations.

Yes. Drafts, notes, and sources are cached locally with queued sync.