Liner AI Review

What Liner Does

Liner is an AI research tool that answers a question by searching the web, reading the pages it finds, and writing back a structured answer with numbered citations tied to each claim. Unlike a chatbot that hands you prose and hopes you trust it, Liner keeps its sources visible, so you can check where every statement came from.

The brand splits into three products that share one account: Liner for everyday search, Liner Scholar for academic work, and Liner Write for professional drafts. A single workspace ties them together, with skill cards for finding related papers and formatting citations in a style you pick. Liner positions itself as the path from a research question to a finished, sourced draft without leaving the page, and it runs in the browser with a free tier that lets you sample before the paywall arrives.

What Happened When We Tested It

I signed up with a Google account, went through the full onboarding as a digital-marketing user, ran a real research query, and hit the upgrade screen. Here is every screen in order, with what held up and what did not.

Choosing a Product

Test 01 . Homepage

First impression: The homepage splits Liner into three products, each with a one-line job description and its own halftone illustration. The muted green palette and serif wordmarks look closer to a publishing brand than a typical AI startup, calm and premium. The catch is that all three buttons just say Get started, with no features, limits or prices, so I could not tell what each product adds. Nothing said the three share one account and credit pool either, which I only learned at the paywall.

Signing Up

Test 02 . Sign-up

What stood out: One-click Google sign-in got me in within seconds, no long form and no card. Terms and Privacy are linked right on the panel, and the layout is uncluttered with one obvious primary action. Two small snags: Continue another way and the email field sit on the same screen, which is redundant, and the greyed-out Continue button is so faint it looks broken until you type an email.

Onboarding, Built for Academics

Test 03 . Onboarding

Where it lands: Onboarding is three quick steps with big tiles and clear progress dots, and the free-text topic field means any niche fits. The problem is who it is built for. Every role tile is academic or medical, so as a marketer my only option was Other. The goal screen offers find papers, deepen understanding, run a literature review or write a draft, with nothing resembling market research or competitor analysis. For a brand that sells Liner Write to professionals, the setup has no seat for them.

The Workspace

Test 04 . Workspace

What clicked: The main screen is well organised. Skill cards spell out what each action does and what you get back, a table or a document, which helps a first-timer, and typing a slash pulls up skills for power users. Add Citations with a chosen style is the standout, practical for anyone writing papers or reports. Voice input and file attachments sit right in the prompt box. The rough edges: the Full text toggle is unexplained, the skill cards run off the bottom of the screen, and nothing shows how many credits you hold or what an action costs.

Running a Real Query

Test 05 . Live search

★ Query Used

"Latest digital marketing trends"

The real story: Liner showed its work as it went: thinking steps, a web search that found 26 or more pages, and the exact sites it opened. The answer led with a summary, then clear numbered sections with inline citation markers, and it surfaced concrete figures rather than vague generalities. Two caveats. The search line read "2025 marketing" although I tested in October 2026, so I checked how current the results were. And the sources were mostly vendor blogs and a consultancy, not academic papers, which is fine for everyday search but not what a Scholar workspace implies.

The Paywall

Test 06 . Upgrade screen

What this confirms: About twelve seconds after my first full answer, a "Get more credits to continue researching" pop-up appeared, so the free tier felt like a brief demo. The pricing itself is simple to read, two tiers with one plan covering all three and a one-time option for people who avoid subscriptions. The pressure tactics undercut it: a countdown timer that made me trust the discount less, and monthly-looking prices that are actually billed annually with the annual toggle on by default.

10-Point Feature Review

Pros and Cons

Pricing Breakdown

Where the surfaces disagree: Liner's two official price surfaces do not match, and the gap is worth knowing before you buy. The public pricing page lists Pro at $15 a month and Max at $30 a month, both billed annually, and meters usage in searches and research reports. The in-app upgrade pop-up I hit during testing showed something different: Pro at $10.99 and Max at $29.99, framed as 1,000 and 2,500 credits, wrapped in 45%-off and 40%-off badges and a 24-hour countdown. So the money metering you see depends on where you land, a feature table on the website or a credit promo inside the app. Across both, two things stay constant: one plan covers Liner, Scholar and Write, and the annual toggle is pre-selected, so a monthly-looking figure commits you to a year. There is also a one-time credit option for anyone who would rather not subscribe.

Pricing verified October 15, 2026 from the official pricing page and the in-app upgrade screen, which did not agree. Promotions and timers rotate, so check the current rate on the official site before you subscribe.

Liner vs the Top 2 Alternatives

Picking between them: Liner is the choice when you want cited answers and a place to turn them into a draft, with web and academic sources in one workspace. Elicit is the specialist for systematic literature review, pulling structured data from a library of more than 125 million papers, and it costs a little less. Consensus is the cheapest of the three and the quickest for a straight evidence-based answer from scientific papers, though it does less on the writing side. All three undercut Liner's standard Pro price, so Liner has to earn its premium on the breadth of its workspace rather than on cost.

What Users Are Saying

This is the sharpest split in the review. The product itself tested well, but Liner's independent reputation is weak where it counts: its Trustpilot profile sits at 2.6 out of 5, and the written reviews are dominated by one theme my walk-through never reached, billing. Surprise charges and trouble cancelling or getting a refund recur across the record. The quotes below, all from Trustpilot, show what happens after the polished free trial ends.