# Semantic Scholar

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/semantic-scholar/

5 people recommended Semantic Scholar in Hacker News comments, 2 had mixed feelings and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 12 months, in 5 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free academic search with full-text search and citation graph browsing, recommended as a better all-round starting point than arXiv. Critics note it is slow and sometimes recommends loosely related papers.

Summary written by Claude from 10 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 8 of those comments still count.

## Why people recommend it

- Best all-round academic search (4 comments in the sample): "I'd say go on Semantic Scholar, Academia.edu, or some other academic search tool and start digging!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49305527)) "Semantic Scholar is actually still the best in the game. But even that is extremely slow." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48709777)) "I recommend something like semanticscholar to find actual relevant papers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49827369))
- Full-text search and citation graphs (1 comment in the sample): "doing great work in this area, making it easy to see who cites who" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46720837))
- Better than arXiv for finding papers (1 comment in the sample): "I don't see much added value for most arXiv extensions, except for SemanticScholar" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48099021))

## Other academic search engines people recommend

- [Google Scholar](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-scholar/): 12 recommend, 5 mixed, 12 criticize
- [PubMed](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pubmed/): 7 recommend, 1 mixed, 1 criticize

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.semanticscholar.org/)

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Semantic Scholar", https://hackerapproved.com/p/semantic-scholar/ (5 recommend, 2 mixed, 2 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 3 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.