Explainpaper

Explainpaper (explainpaper.com) is an AI tool built for a universal frustration: trying to read a technical academic paper and hitting a paragraph so dense with jargon, acronyms, or mathematical notation that you have to stop and look up a dozen things before you can continue. Explainpaper turns that friction into a one-click interaction.

**How it works**

Users upload a PDF paper (or paste a link to arXiv). The paper is displayed in a split-screen view — paper on one side, AI explanation panel on the other. Highlight any text in the paper and the AI immediately generates an explanation tailored to the surrounding context. It knows what field the paper is in, what the surrounding sections are about, and explains the highlighted passage in relation to the whole.

For mathematical notation, the AI translates equations into plain language. For technical terminology, it defines the term and explains why it matters for the paper's argument. For dense methodology sections, it unpacks what the authors actually did in accessible terms.

**AI chat**

Beyond the highlight-and-explain feature, Explainpaper includes an AI chat interface where users can ask questions about the paper in free-form natural language: 'What is the main finding?', 'What are the limitations of this study?', 'How does this compare to the 2021 transformer paper?' The AI generates answers grounded in the paper content.

**Who uses it**

Explainpaper is used by undergraduate and graduate students reading outside their specialty, researchers encountering adjacent-field papers, and practitioners reading technical AI, medical, or scientific papers. It's particularly popular among AI/ML practitioners trying to understand recent papers.

**Frequently Asked Questions**

Is Explainpaper free? There's a free tier that allows a limited number of explanations per day. The Plus plan ($12/month) removes limits and adds priority AI access. Can it handle math? Yes — mathematical notation is one of Explainpaper's strongest use cases. The AI explains the intuition behind equations rather than just restating the notation. Does it work for all paper types? It works best for papers in English from established academic fields. Coverage is strongest for CS, biology, medicine, and economics.