--- title: ReadCube Reviews meta\_title: 'ReadCube Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta\_description: Filter 174 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how ReadCube works for a business like yours. aggregate\_rating: rating\_value: 4.4 review\_count: 174 scale: '5' date\_modified: '2026-08-07' parent\_category: name: Education url: https://www.g2.com/categories/education --- # ReadCube Reviews & Product Details Claimed ###### Profile Status This profile is currently managed by ReadCube but has limited features. Are you part of the ReadCube team? [Upgrade your plan](https://my.g2.com/readcube/upgrade?utm_campaign=s3&utm_medium=claim-popup&utm_source=g2) to enhance your branding and engage with visitors to your profile! ReadCube is an all-in-one research management software designed to empower researchers, academics, and professionals in organizing, accessing, and analyzing scientific literature more efficiently. With advanced AI-powered tools, ReadCube transforms literature workflows, improves discoverability, and streamlines literature management, enabling researchers to focus on critical analysis and breakthrough findings. Built for research-driven individuals and organizations, ReadCube's intelligent features support comprehensive literature review and seamless reference management. The platform's AI-enhanced search and personalized literature monitoring keep users updated on relevant studies, significantly reducing manual work and saving valuable time. Key features include: - Reference Management: Organize and sync references across devices, making it easy to access sources anytime and anywhere. - AI Assistant: Interact with individual PDFs or entire libraries to clarify complex terms, identify research gaps, translate content, and more. - AI-Driven Literature Recommendations: Discover relevant articles specific to your research interests, streamlining the discovery process. - PDF Reader: Annotate, highlight, and share insights within PDFs for collaborative research and review. - Literature Monitoring: Receive personalized alerts and notifications to stay updated on the latest publications in your field. -SmartCite: A user-friendly citation tool that connects your library to your writing platform, enabling seamless citation as you write. ReadCube's AI-enhanced literature management solutions support thousands of organizations and millions of researchers worldwide, helping them get back to the breakthrough work that matters most. * * * Seller [ReadCube](https://www.g2.com/sellers/readcube) Discussions [ReadCube Community](https://www.g2.com/products/readcube/discuss) Languages Supported English Solution Type Best-of-Breed Overview by Rachel Segal Show More ## Pricing Pricing provided by ReadCube. ### ReadCube Starting at $65.00 Per Year ### ReadCube Enterprise Contact Us [ View More Pricing Information ](https://www.g2.com/products/readcube/pricing) ## Top-Rated Alternatives [ ![Mendeley](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Mendeley") Mendeley 4.3/5(250) ](https://www.g2.com/products/mendeley/reviews) [ ![EndNote](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "EndNote") EndNote 4.1/5(183) ](https://www.g2.com/products/endnote/reviews) [ ![EasyBib.com](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "EasyBib.com") EasyBib.com 4.6/5(153) ](https://www.g2.com/products/easybib-com/reviews) [ View All Alternatives ](https://www.g2.com/products/readcube/competitors/alternatives) ## User Insights Average based on 174 real user reviews. Perceived Cost $$$$$ Typical contract price $0k - $0k [Sign in to view](/login) Per Year [Log in to unlock pricing and user insights](/login) ## ReadCube Integrations (1) What do users say about integrations? Integration information sourced from real user reviews. [ ![Product Avatar Image](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Product Avatar Image") Microsoft Word ](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-word/reviews) Show More IM Iain M. Senior Clinical Safety Specialist Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 3/20/2026 "Unreliable Desktop and Web Apps: Key Reference Features Keep Breaking" 0.5/5 What do you like best about ReadCube? The search functionality is effective, both within my own library and across external data sources. Importing references is straightforward, and the library of reference styles is extensive. It’s also easy to categorise references, and the display can be configured to suit my preferences. Overall, it provides very effective reference management while working on a manuscript. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about ReadCube? Neither the desktop app nor the web application is reliable, and key features repeatedly stop working. For example, the preferred reference style and the display of articles often fail. There is also a limited selection of reference types, and the PDF markup tools are very poor and not very usable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you? Unfortunately, there are very few (if any) alternative applications that can manage large reference databases (I have \>6,500 in mine) and still be as effective at handling references within a manuscript. Adding or removing citations, and switching citation/reference styles, is extremely easy. That said, this used to be an absolutely fantastic product before the original developers sold out. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerSource: G2 invite ![Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education") UP Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 5/24/2024 "Much worse than Papers 2 and older versions of Papers 3" 1/5 What do you like best about ReadCube? It's a functioning paper management software... It can help organizing large collections of research articles, book chapters, and so on... Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about ReadCube? The software is missing key features that were present in Papers 2 and 3, making it much less competitive to other paper management programs such as Mendeley. I started using Papers 2 when I was in grad schol (~2013). It had everything that a researcher needed! Ability to download articles from journal websites; parse the metadata; store pdfs for each paper; find duplicate papers, journals, authors; add and modify journal abbreviations; easy ways to manage citekeys and create bibtex files for referencing. I was extremely satisfied with it back then. Few years after, Papers 3 was introduced. Earlier versions were not great with many key features missing and lots of bugs. But the software got eventually better, with many features listed above restored or fixed. Papers ReadCube is a complete departure from the previous versions. Despite several years in production, the program still lacks the basic features that the earlier versions had! For example, it is not possible to find duplicate papers, journals, or authors. Modifying journal abbreviations for batches of papers cannot be done, one has to do that one paper at a time. Try doing this when you have ~10000 papers in your repository! There is no easy way to collect papers for individual authors, other than searching for their names in the search field. What the developers do not realize is that many authors have the same last names and that finding their papers with a simple search does not help. Also, every now and then, one has to modify authors' names. In Papers 2 and 3, one could collect papers written by the same author together, which would automatically correct their name spellings. This feature no longer exists in Papers ReadCube. Another huge issue is supporting special symbols in titles or author names. In Papers 2 and 3, those special symbols would be recognized and converted to the Latex math format, allowing for seemless conversion into the bibtex format. This is no longer the case: Papers ReadCube would simply include the special symbols in the bibtex files without converting into the Latex math format, which would break every Latex compilation. I have found many complaints online with researchers requesting the features described above. However, it is clear that the developers are not listening to these requests. Papers ReadCube is an example of a software that is developed by programmers with complete disregard of their customer needs. The only reason why I kept my subscription in the last two years is that I have a large papers database that would otherwise be difficult to port over. However, with the help of tools like Mendeley and JabRef I will soon be able to stop using Papers ReadCube for good. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you? Other than allowing me to download new papers and find the ones I downloaded, none. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerSource: Organic ![Verified User in Higher Education](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Higher Education") UH Verified User in Higher Education Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 5/24/2024 "Newer versions made the app worse" 0/5 What do you like best about ReadCube? The ability to read and (mostly) highlight in the app, both using a desktop, laptop, or tablet. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about ReadCube? Mainly, how they eliminated many of the great options that the Papers 3 app provided and that made it unique and useful, including: 1. The cumbersome process to add an intext citation in Mac. 2. How difficult it is to create a book or book chapter reference or ciatation. 3. The lack of option to differentiate authors' first and last names. When an author has more than two last names (which is often), one of those is automatically included as a first name. 4. Having to pay annually. 5. The app is slow and complicated. I have to use the web-based option. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you? Managing and using references Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerSource: Organic ![Pablo A.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Pablo A.") PA Pablo A. Principal Investigator Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 1/3/2022 "Cumbersome, slow, very limited software" 0.5/5 What do you like best about ReadCube? 1- Automatic download of supplementary information (well, part of it). 2- Tech Support is friendly and helpful, although they are online less than 4hs a day. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about ReadCube? 1- It does not recognize Acrobat PDF editions. If you highlight, make notes, write words or signs (simple edition tools that ReadCube does not have) on a PDF you need to import it again otherwise any edition will be lost. 2- It takes forever to import and synch, meanwhile the app is frozen and you can do nothing wiht it. E.g., a 2MB PDF file takes 60-120 secs to get into the library, to be uploaded to the cloud and to get "synch" between the cloud and your desktop app. Imagine you need to import 10 PDFs in different lists: will take 15-20min just to do it. 3- Unlike previous versions (Papers 1, 2 and 3) that you paid just once, this one has a year suscription (USD 60/year) 4- Migration of my library to ReadCube failed for 15% of my PDFs, Tech Support has no idea why. I have to import manually 138 PDFs (still doing it) 5- On average, I have to ask for help to Tech Support (nice people) once a week. Something that never happened over nine years of continuous use of Papers 1, 2 and 3. 6- In summary, beyond the money, with this bad quality "upgrade" you will WASTE MUCH MUCH TIME, DO NOT BUY IT. Stay with Papers 3: simple, versatile and reliable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering ReadCube: Do not buy it, it is a huge waste of time. Stay with Papers3. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you? No single problem solved, just the opposite, new and completely unexpected issues arose with this version of Papers. Papers 3 is simple, versatile and reliable. Readcube Papers4 is cumbersome, unpredictable and outrageously time consuming Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerSource: Organic ![Verified User in Research](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Research") UR Verified User in Research Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 4/1/2021 "So much worse than the original Papers App" 0/5 What do you like best about ReadCube? I could transfer my library from the original Papers App to Papers Readcube Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about ReadCube? Every single aspect of the app is markedly worse than the original Papers App, ranging from the mark-up features, to the lack of narrating functionality, to just reading documents in the app. Just to take two examples: If I highlight a something in a book-length document, close it, and then try to open it again, the app simply doesn't generate the pages again. And regularly when I try to read book-length documents, the words on the pages simply disappear and are replaced by a never ending loading circle (on every single page!!!). It's just inexplicable that Readcube would buy up the rights to the original Papers App, yet apparently use none of the features than made it superior to Readcube's own document reader. I'm incredibly disappointed and will not be renewing my subscription. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you? None. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerSource: Organic ![Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness") UH Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 2/24/2021 "Constant nag to upgrade from existing software to ReadCube" 0/5 What do you like best about ReadCube? syncing..................................... Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about ReadCube? Nag screen on Paper 3 attempts to bother existing paid users into upgrading. No way to disable it, just get nagged all the time, over and over. If they will do this to a long-time paying customer, they will do it to you. So, just anticipate that when the company wants your money they will find a way to bother you and not stop until you give the what they way. They have basically taken hostage the peaceful, known work flow that all existing users paid for and have come to depend on and refused to give it back. This is the epitome of selfishness and greed and should not be rewarded. Cannot recall in 30 years of using Apple computers a software that did this until now. Reprehensible behavior. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering ReadCube: Look elsewhere..................................... Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you? None. I have used ReadCube on numerous occasions. It repeatedly fails to work with our organizations proxy, where numerous other products work fine. It has taken actions that were a single click with the previous version of Papers 3 and turned them into 3, 4, and 5 step actions. So, you pay more money in order to get to do more work?!?!? There are a variety of features that have also been removed. Apparently a part of their business model is the less for more approach. It's no wonder they are nagging people to death to upgrade. Who would actually pay to upgrade of their volition? Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerSource: Organic ![Verified User in Chemicals](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Chemicals") UC Verified User in Chemicals Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 11/20/2020 "Avoid this app as of December 2020" 0/5 What do you like best about ReadCube? Convenient with paid version if using Chrome (in theory) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about ReadCube? Features don't work well in chrome and work even less in Firefox. Overpriced compared to how Papers was, and the unpaid version has been rendered useless - so if you decided to stop paying subscription your app is not usable for future work and there is no way to export to use different app. They trap you. We need to disincentivize these business models or we'll be stuck paying out the nose to many small companies in the future to do any work at all. Bring back a Papers model that is supported and a one time purchase. They even admit the desktop version of the app isn't worth using. The browser is the reason to use it and it is not ready. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering ReadCube: Don't use it. Wait until it is ready. They even admit it is not. Their business model is also shameful at the moment. Don't presume the unpaid version is usable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you? Papers Readcube solves nothing new. Endnote does the same thing as do some other free apps. Readcube papers is convenient but not necessarily moreso than those other apps. Academics should just choose endnote since it is included at most institutions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Response from Val Podbelski of ReadCube [Editedit](https://www.g2.com/survey_responses/readcube-review-4485829/official_response/edit) Hi there, thanks for the feedback, and we’re sorry to hear you are unsatisfied with ReadCube Papers. To clarify, we do not require a subscription to export your references from the app. If you decide to cancel your subscription, you can always export your PDFs and library as a .bib or .ris file type and use that to move to another app. We never lock you out of your library, so any articles already in Papers are available to download and read. We are continuously adding updates and features across our suite of apps to meet all our users’ needs. Validated ReviewerSource: Organic ![Andrew W.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Andrew W.") AW Andrew W. Senior Technical Advisor Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 4/3/2020 Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores. "I am moved to heavily dislike this app at present" 1/5 What do you like best about ReadCube? The nascent automated features - for importing papers into the library (I haven't tried the in-document citation functionality yet) - Papers 4 has potential... Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about ReadCube? This app is awful when it comes to manually importing PDFs and then entering the necessary meta-data. Bugs abound everywhere, and a recent update - Papers v4.0.12 has delivered another bug. I would say this is a prime example of a software development project that has become far too clever in what it is trying to do, or poorly executing great ideas, while forgetting or simply failing at the basics ... - copy / paste - for example fail repeatedly on trying to copy metadata across from the PDF document, and the smart menu of highlighting key meta data is buggy and also missing key fields. There is very little customisability on how one enters metadata and when one is trying to clean up and import 100s of pdfs, Papers 4 is quite simply a miserable experience. I STRONGLY suggest that the developers go back to Papers 3 and look at what Papers 3 did well (a fair amount) and RAPIDLY move this basic and pleasing functionality across to Papers 4. PLEASE ... Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering ReadCube: Readcube Papers (4) has lots of clever / useful ideas - but a number of bugs mean that the app can be very frustrating to work with, and in some areas is a retrogressive step from Papers 3 Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you? Thus far not well - let's hope that recurrent releases / updates address the myriad of bugs and lack of basic functionality - thanks. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerSource: Organic RG Richard G. Professor Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 12/4/2019 "Serious downgrade over Papers3 that makes everything more difficult than it should be" 0/5 What do you like best about ReadCube? There are no features in ReadCube Papers that I like in comparison to the features available in the old stand-alone version of Papers3. I used to like the ability of Papers3 to efficiently search for, download and sort references and associated PDFs, but the efficiency of this workflow is severely curtailed in this "upgrade" to ReadCube papers. Finding and downloading PDFs is more complicated than it used to be and it is not possible to easily open PDFs in an external viewer like Adobe Acrobat (in Papers3 this coudl be done by clicking a simple keyboard shortcut). After three weeks of using ReadCube papers on a daily basis I can report that it is quicker and easier for me to manually search for and download references rather than to continue using the software that I purchased to help me with this process. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about ReadCube? The new ReadCube Papers makes it significantly more difficult to find and download PDFs due to features that do not seem work (e.g., find PDFs button) and an overall effort to police access to documents that are owned by commercial publishers (like the owners of ReadCube Papers). I find the overall ReadCube papers experience a major step backwards for the Papers platform (which I have used successfully for around 10 years). I will not recommend this software to anyone because, at least for my uses, there are clearly better products on the market. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering ReadCube: My recommendation is that you look elsewhere for your reference management needs if you are primarily interested in efficiently finding, storing and sorting a library of academic references in PDF format. ReadCube Papers makes this process much more difficult and time consuming than it might be (even in relation to the previous version of the Papers software). After being a longtime user of Papers, I now recognized that his latest "upgrade" actually makes the software significantly worse than it was before; to the point that I no longer find it useful for my research purposes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you? I have not been able to solve the problems with access and readability with ReadCube papers. After 10 years of being a Papers users I am moving on to use another reference management platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Response from Val Podbelski of ReadCube [Editedit](https://www.g2.com/survey_responses/readcube-review-3802603/official_response/edit) Hi Richard, thanks for the feedback and we're sorry to hear you are unsatisfied with ReadCube Papers. To find papers (both within the app and across the web and search engines), you need to have the browser extension installed. The ReadCube Papers browser extension will allow you to import articles you have access to automatically. If you don't have access to the article, due to a paywall, then it will still import all the metadata. Unfortunately, we cannot bypass publisher paywalls, but we do try and facilitate faster access to the PDF through the browser extension. There are multiple ways to download the PDF once it is in your library so you can read it in any 3rd party PDF reader. We offer live chat and private training tutorials that can help you navigate around ReadCube Papers. Current UserValidated ReviewerSource: Organic BB Brian Fisher B. Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 12/23/2019 "Import fail" 1/5 What do you like best about ReadCube? Interface is decent, company is independent (not owned by publisher) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about ReadCube? Import from ReadCube desktop fails, concerns about quality of cloud, expensive Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering ReadCube: Consider carefully how to transition your existing references and documents to the system, be careful about signing up for an annual license Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you? I had hoped to build a lab reference system for my students and me that was not based on a particular publsher's platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Response from Val Podbelski of ReadCube [Editedit](https://www.g2.com/survey_responses/readcube-review-3917273/official_response/edit) Hi Brian, have you reached out to our support team (support@papersapp.com). We can help troubleshoot a few reasons as to why your import failed and make sure your library is up and running properly. Current UserValidated ReviewerSource: Organic ## Questions about ReadCube? Ask real users or explore answers from the community Get practical answers, real workflows, and honest pros and cons from the G2 community or share your insights. [ Ask about ReadCube ](https://www.g2.com/products/readcube/discussions/new) GU Guest User What is ReadCube Papers used for? 0 Upvotes 0 [ Join the conversation ](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-readcube-papers-used-for) MS M S • Last activity almost 5 years ago How can I see pdf while editing bibliographic data? 1 Upvote 2 [ Join the conversation ](https://www.g2.com/discussions/40201-how-can-i-see-pdf-while-editing-bibliographic-data) [ View all Discussions ](https://www.g2.com/products/readcube/discuss) ## Pricing Options Pricing provided by ReadCube. ### ReadCube Starting at $65.00 Per Year ### ReadCube Enterprise Contact Us [ View More Pricing Information ](https://www.g2.com/products/readcube/pricing) ReadCube Comparisons ![Product Avatar Image](https://images.g2crowd.com/uploads/product/image/small_square/small_square_5a282d8d948142ab885657207e9c3426/mendeley.png "Product Avatar Image") Mendeley 4.3/5(250) [ Compare Now ](https://www.g2.com/compare/mendeley-vs-readcube) ![Product Avatar Image](https://images.g2crowd.com/uploads/product/image/small_square/small_square_10f1683f53cc35fb59cf660e80d6be20/zotero.png "Product Avatar Image") Zotero 4.4/5(99) [ Compare Now ](https://www.g2.com/compare/readcube-vs-zotero) ![Product Avatar Image](https://images.g2crowd.com/uploads/product/image/small_square/small_square_79d1e55423c4e496e5de32d1d55e2efb/endnote.png "Product Avatar Image") EndNote 4.1/5(183) [ Compare Now ](https://www.g2.com/compare/endnote-vs-readcube) ##### Categories on G2 [Reference Management](https://www.g2.com/categories/reference-management) ##### Explore More [Top-rated software for managing business expenses](https://www.g2.com/discussions/top-rated-software-for-managing-business-expenses)[Is Adobe Audition worth the subscription for a small podcast or video team?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-adobe-audition-worth-the-subscription-for-a-small-podcast-or-video-team)[What are the most reliable M&A software platforms based on reviews from long-term enterprise users?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-are-the-most-reliable-m-a-software-platforms-based-on-reviews-from-long-term-enterprise-users) [What are the most trusted automotive digital retailing platforms by dealership managers whose teams need integrated tools to close more deals?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-are-the-most-trusted-automotive-digital-retailing-platforms-by-dealership-managers-whose-teams-need-integrated-tools-to-close-more-deals)[Which theater venue management platforms are most trusted by theater directors based on user reviews?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/which-theater-venue-management-platforms-are-most-trusted-by-theater-directors-based-on-user-reviews)[What are the most reliable endpoint security services based on reviews from enterprise security teams avoiding vendor lock-in?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-are-the-most-reliable-endpoint-security-services-based-on-reviews-from-enterprise-security-teams-avoiding-vendor-lock-in%20) [Show MoreShow Less](javascript:void(0);)