What is PaperQA2?
PaperQA2 is listed under Academic Research, in the Research & Learning category on Flocci AI Tools. RAG over PDFs with in-text citations grounded in passages. It is free, with no paid plan attached, and it lives at github.com.
What PaperQA2 does
- RAG over PDFs with in-text citations grounded in passages
- Agentic search that iteratively refines evidence
- Integrates academic metadata for citation tracking
- Apache 2.0; calendar-versioned release Dec 2025
PaperQA2 — straight answers
Is PaperQA2 free?
PaperQA2 is listed as fully free — there is no paid tier attached to it in the catalog. That makes it one of the 397 entries on Flocci AI Tools with no upgrade path built in.
Can I use PaperQA2 in a browser, or is there an app?
PaperQA2 needs to be installed or self-hosted — it doesn't run in a browser tab. It is available on self-hosting and an API.
What can PaperQA2 do?
PaperQA2 does 4 things the catalog singles out: Rag over pdfs with in-text citations grounded in passages; agentic search that iteratively refines evidence; integrates academic metadata for citation tracking; apache 2.0; calendar-versioned release dec 2025.
What is the best free alternative to PaperQA2?
Ai2 Paper Finder (Asta) is the closest free alternative: it sits in the same Academic Research sub-category and is free. alphaXiv, ResearchRabbit and Semantic Scholar also start free. The full list is on the alternatives page.
See the full list →PaperQA2 alternatives
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