# Lune vs Scira

Scira is open-source AI search that spans the web, X, Reddit, videos and research papers, free to use. Lune indexes one of those and reads it in full. The comparison is really about what you want in the index.

Competitor site: https://scira.ai.

## Choose Scira if

- You want one free search box for the web, social and papers.
- Open source matters and you want to read or host the code.
- Fact-checking across mixed sources is the job.

## Choose Lune if

- You cite papers, and a Reddit thread is not evidence.
- You want the paragraph inside the paper, not a link to it.
- You need the tools available to your agent through MCP.

## From a question to a citation

Scira: Search web and social -> Rank the sources -> Cited answer.
Lune: Search top-tier venues -> Read the full text -> Quote with a locator.

Everything in one index, or one thing indexed properly.

## Line by line

| Dimension | Lune | Scira |
| --- | --- | --- |
| What it searches | Peer-reviewed papers from top-tier venues. Nothing else. | The web, X, Reddit, videos, papers and fact-checks. |
| Who filters quality | Peer review, before anything is indexed. | The ranking model, at answer time. |
| How deep a citation goes | A verbatim quote and its locator, per claim. | Cited answers linking to the sources used. |
| How you run it | Hosted. Install a connector and go. | Hosted, and the code is on GitHub. |
| Price | Free for 10 requests a day, then $4.99 a month or $47.90 a year. | Free to use. |
| Agent access | MCP and a CLI, on every plan. | No MCP server listed on their site. |

## One index for everything

Scira's scope is its pitch: ask once and it looks at the web, social posts, videos and papers together. For a question where the answer might be in any of those, that is exactly right, and being open source means you can check how it works.

For a scientific claim it is exactly wrong, because the model has to decide between a peer-reviewed paper and a confident forum post. Lune removes that decision by never holding the forum post.

## Free, and what it does not include

Scira costs nothing, and Lune's free tier is ten requests a day. On price alone this is not close.

What the price buys is full text: parsing accepted papers at ingest so a tool can return the ablation table or the stated limitation, and so verify_claims can answer a sentence with the line that supports it.

## Pricing

- Lune Free: $0, 10 requests a day, every tool
- Lune Pro: $4.99, a month or $47.90 a year, 300 requests a day
- Lune Max: $9.99, a month or $95.90 a year, 600 requests a day
- Lune Credits: $0.99, 300 extra requests, no expiry
- Scira Free: $0, open source, no card

Scira publishes its source on GitHub.

## Questions

### Is Lune a Scira alternative?

For scientific questions, yes. For general web and social search, no, and Lune has no index for those.

### Is Scira free?

Yes, and open source. Lune's free tier is 10 requests a day with every tool enabled.

### Can I use both?

That is a sensible setup: Scira for the open web, Lune for anything you will cite.

## What we read

- [scira.ai](https://scira.ai)