Illustrative workflow · reviewed 21 Oct 2026

Turn research notes into a presentation

A draft slide deck whose claims you have checked against their sources.

You provide: Your notes or question, and a topic where sources exist.
You get: A draft deck. Accuracy and citations remain your responsibility.
Tools: One per step: 2 tools, chosen below from the options we researched.
Integrations: None documented between these steps. All 1 handoffs are manual.
Review checkpoints: 2 steps need a person to check the output, marked "Check by hand".
Status: Illustrative. Built from vendor documentation, not from a test. Methodology

Step 1 Find and check sources
Search for papers or web sources and note what each one says.
- Elicit · shown first, not ranked
  Searches 138 million papers and lets you view the sources behind each answer, according to its vendor page.
  Free access, price and licence terms
  - Free access: Free plan. Limited Research Agent and Reports usage; unlimited search across 138 million papers, summaries and chat with full-text papers; Zotero import
  - Paid entry: From $49/user/mo (currency not named), billed annually
  - Commercial terms: Not verified
  Elicit overview
- Consensus
  Searches peer-reviewed research and gives cited analysis; some analysis is limited to paid messages.
  Free access, price and licence terms
  - Free access: Free plan. Basic paper search; 10 Pro messages a month; up to 3 Deep reviews a month
  - Paid entry: From $12/mo (currency not named), billed annually
  - Commercial terms: Not verified
  Consensus overview
- Scite
  Shows citation context in Smart Citation reports. No free plan is listed on its vendor page.
  Free access, price and licence terms
  - Free access: Free trial
  - Paid entry: From $12/mo (currency not named), billed annually
  - Commercial terms: Not verified
  Scite overview
- Perplexity
  Answers with inline citations from web sources, so claims can be checked.
  Free access, price and licence terms
  - Free access: Free plan. The page lists Pro as "everything in Free and" more; the free plan's own limits are not stated
  - Paid entry: From $17/mo, billed annually
  - Commercial terms: The page says Pro and Max are for personal use only and subject to Perplexity's policies. Enterprise is a separate plan.
  Perplexity overview
Check by hand. Open every cited source and confirm it says what the summary claims. Citations make checking possible; they do not make an answer correct.
Manual handoff: Collect your checked findings in a document, then use them as the prompt or source in the next step. No integration between these tools is documented in the sources we read, so moving the file or text between them is manual.
Step 2 Build the draft deck
Turn your checked notes into slides, then edit them.
- Gamma · shown first, not ranked
  Generates presentations from prompts, imports PDF and PPTX, and exports PDF, PPTX, PNG and Google Slides.
  Free access, price and licence terms
  - Free access: Free plan. 400 credits at signup; up to 10 slides per prompt; import PDF and PPTX; export PDF, PPTX, PNG and Google Slides
  - Paid entry: From ₹400/seat/mo, billed annually
  - Commercial terms: Not verified
  Gamma overview
- Pitch
  Uses AI credits to speed up slides and imports PowerPoint files. Exports are branded on the Free plan.
  Free access, price and licence terms
  - Free access: Free plan. 100 one-time AI credits; 5 members and 2 guests; unlimited presentations; branded PDF exports and embeds; 10 GB storage
  - Paid entry: From €10/mo, billed annually
  - Commercial terms: Not verified
  Pitch overview
- Beautiful.ai
  Builds from 300+ Smart Slide layouts and imports and exports PowerPoint. No free plan is listed on its vendor page.
  Free access, price and licence terms
  - Free access: Free trial
  - Paid entry: From $14.50/mo (currency not named), billed annually
  - Commercial terms: Not verified
  Beautiful.ai overview
Check by hand. Check each slide against your notes. Generated text can add claims you did not supply. We have not tested slide quality.

Your selection

Elicit, Gamma

Compare these tools View saved tools

Comparison shows at most three tools. Tools doing different jobs are warned about on the comparison page.

Before you rely on this route

This workflow is illustrative. It is built from vendor documentation, not from a test.
Gamma documents importing PDF and PPTX files. We found no documented direct link from the research tools in step one to any deck tool.

Guides for this workflow

Web research vs document research tools: How to choose between answer engines that cite the web and tools built for academic papers, with the limits and prices each vendor states.
Free plan, trial or credits: which is it?: Ongoing free plans, free trials and one-time credits are different offers. How to tell them apart, with examples, and how to decide whether free is enough.

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