Research reviewed October 2026. This is a research-based review — we analyzed published specs, pricing, and user feedback.

Liner Review 2026: The Cited-Search Research Agent

Liner is an evidence-first AI research agent built around cited search: Liner Scholar digs into academic papers and Liner Write helps draft from sources, all under one subscription. Its standout pitch is unlimited AI search even on the free tier, which makes it easy to evaluate before paying a cent. Agent-heavy tasks like hypothesis generation and peer review consume credits, so the paid math depends on how much Scholar work you actually do.

Bottom line: A strong choice for students and professionals who need clickable, sentence-level citations instead of chatbot guesswork. The free tier is a real evaluation tool for search; upgrade to Pro when Scholar agent credits become the bottleneck.

Liner describes itself as an evidence-first AI research platform for people who need answers they can verify. The product has three faces: cited web search for everyday questions, Liner Scholar for academic papers (with a citation recommender, peer-review checks, and hypothesis generation), and Liner Write for turning sources into drafts. Paid plans unlock a model switcher spanning GPT, Gemini, and Claude variants, plus Deep Research and image generation. In September 2026 the company also launched a Liner Model API for developers, priced around $1 per million input tokens, positioning its model-routing approach as a cheaper alternative to calling frontier models directly.

Key features

Cited web search: Answers carry sentence-level citations you can click through to the source.
Liner Scholar: Research agents for papers — citation recommendations, peer-review analysis, and hypothesis generation.
Liner Write: Drafting tools that turn researched sources into written output.
Model switcher (paid): Choose between GPT, Gemini, and Claude-class models per task on paid plans.
File uploads: Analyze uploaded documents, with larger daily file allowances on paid tiers.
Deep Research and image generation: Longer autonomous research runs and image creation on paid plans.
Cross-platform apps: Browser, desktop, and mobile apps, plus MCP/API access for developers.

Who it’s for

Liner fits students and academics doing literature reviews, journalists who need verifiable sources fast, and knowledge workers making decisions they may have to defend. If your workflow is “search, verify the citation, then write,” Liner’s Scholar-plus-Write combination maps to it directly. Casual question-answerers may find the free cited search alone worth keeping installed. Teams and developers get a separate API track, but that’s a different buying decision from the consumer product reviewed here.

What to watch out for

Free-tier answers carry ads, which some users will find distracting in a research tool. Scholar’s agent actions burn credits — third-party walkthroughs report roughly 50 credits for a citation recommendation and 60 for a peer review, so a Pro plan’s 1,000 monthly credits can drain faster than expected on heavy paper work. Liner is not a reference manager: if you need Zotero-style libraries and citation syncing, you’ll still need one alongside it. And “zero hallucination” style marketing is a goal, not a guarantee — always open the cited source and confirm the claim yourself.

Pricing

Free: unlimited Advanced Search (ad-supported), one 25MB file upload per day, no agent credits. Pro: $17.99/month ($14.99/month billed annually) with 1,000 agent credits, 20 files per day up to 100MB, the full model switcher, and no ads. Max: $35.99/month ($29.99/month billed annually) with 2,500 credits and bigger uploads. There’s also a Team plan at $26.99 per seat. Pricing verified September 2026 — check current pricing on liner.com before subscribing.

Pros and cons

Pros

Sentence-level citations make every answer auditable in one click.
Scholar and Write in a single subscription covers the research-to-draft loop.
Unlimited AI search on the free tier is genuinely usable for evaluation.
Model switcher on paid plans avoids locking you into one AI family.
Developer API and MCP support extend it beyond the browser.

Cons

Free answers carry ads, which undermines the clean-research feel.
Scholar agent actions consume credits quickly; heavy users may need Max.
Not a full reference manager — no replacement for Zotero or EndNote.
Citation accuracy still requires human verification on important work.
Team pricing is per seat, which adds up for larger groups.

Frequently asked questions

Is Liner free?

Yes — the free plan includes unlimited Advanced Search with ads and a small daily file upload allowance. Agent credits for Scholar features require Pro ($17.99/month, or $14.99/month billed annually) or Max.

What is Liner Scholar?

Scholar is Liner’s academic research mode: agents that recommend citations, run peer-review style checks on papers, and generate hypotheses from the literature. These actions consume agent credits on paid plans.

Can Liner replace Zotero or a reference manager?

No. Liner finds and explains papers with citations, but it doesn’t manage reference libraries or sync with word processors the way dedicated reference managers do.

Which AI models does Liner use?

The free tier uses Liner’s basic model. Paid plans unlock a switcher across GPT, Gemini, and Claude-class models so you can pick the best fit per task.

Is Liner’s cited search trustworthy?

The citations make verification much easier than with a plain chatbot, but you should still open the sources and confirm key claims — especially for academic or published work.