R Discovery vs Nerdi: which research app fits you?
By Koray Özcan · Updated November 7, 2026
Both apps help you read new research on your phone, but they are built for different readers. R Discovery is a large, personalised feed, with millions of AI summaries and, with its paid Prime plan, audio and translation. Nerdi is deliberately small: three papers a day from the fields you choose, always shown with the authors' original abstract. Pick R Discovery if you want breadth and institutional access, and Nerdi if you want a short daily reading habit you can actually keep.
At a glance
| R Discovery | Nerdi | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get each day | A feed, including a "Daily Top 100" | Three picks a day, plus a feed |
| Catalogue | "300M+ research papers" (its App Store subtitle) | A curated selection across 20 fields, from OpenAlex |
| Summaries | AI summaries ("8M+") | A short AI summary on many papers, labelled, above the original abstract; can be turned off |
| Full text | Open-access papers; paywalled ones with institutional credentials | Free PDF in the app when a legal open copy exists |
| Paid plan | Prime: collaboration, translation, audio | Plus: unlimited library, notes, offline PDFs, BibTeX/RIS export, add papers by link, sync |
| Account | Yes | No |
| US App Store rating | 4.8 from 926 ratings | New (November 2026) |
R Discovery's numbers come from its App Store listing in November 2026. They change, so check the current page.
Choose R Discovery if
- You need coverage: you follow a niche topic and want every new paper in it.
- Your university gives you institutional access, and you want paywalled full texts on your phone.
- You like listening to papers, or reading them in another language, and are happy to pay for Prime.
Choose Nerdi if
- Your problem is not finding papers but reading them: a feed of hundreds a day is what you are escaping.
- You want the authors' own words in front of you, with any AI summary clearly marked and optional.
- You don't want to create an account before you can read anything.
- You read across fields, and want a few good papers a day rather than everything.
Can you use both?
Yes. Some readers keep R Discovery for alerts in their own subfield and use Nerdi for a few papers a day from a wider range of fields. If you write a thesis, add a reference manager too; Nerdi Plus exports your saved papers to Zotero or Paperpile as BibTeX or RIS.
Further reading
- The best apps for reading research papers on iPhone in 2026
- Zotero, Paperpile or Nerdi: which do you need?
Written by the developer of Nerdi, one of the apps mentioned.
Nerdi is free to read. No account needed.