If you've ever written a research paper, you know the drill: LaTeX handles equations and journal formatting properly, but it's just a text editor — any data analysis, code or notebooks live in a completely separate tool, and you copy results back and forth by hand. Overleaf became the standard for the writing half of that problem by making LaTeX collaborative and installation-free. Papers AI, built by the same team, is a bet that researchers today want writing, code notebooks and AI help in one workspace instead of switching between separate apps for the paper and the analysis behind it.
The short version
| Papers AI | Overleaf | |
|---|---|---|
| Made by | The team behind Overleaf, as a companion product | The original Overleaf team |
| Writing formats | Word-style, LaTeX, Markdown, Typst | LaTeX only |
| Code notebooks built in | Yes | No |
| AI assistance built in | Yes, with a generous free quota | No |
| Storage | Local-first by default, cloud sync optional | Cloud-based on Overleaf's servers |
| Collaboration | Real-time, with tracked changes across all formats | Real-time, LaTeX-focused |
| Pricing | Free with AI quota; £10/month for 5x more AI usage | Free; Pro plans from $15/month |
| Best fit | Researchers and data scientists mixing writing, code and AI | Anyone who just needs solid, no-frills collaborative LaTeX |
Papers AI — one workspace for writing, code and AI help
Papers AI lets you write in Word-style, LaTeX, Markdown or Typst, run code notebooks, and get AI assistance, all in the same project instead of juggling separate apps for writing and analysis. It stores your work locally by default with optional cloud sync, which is a real privacy plus compared to a cloud-only tool, and supports real-time collaboration with change tracking across every format it supports, not just LaTeX.
Who it's for: researchers, academics, data scientists and technical writers who need writing, code and analysis to live in one place rather than three.
Pricing: free with a generous AI usage quota; the paid tier is £10/month for roughly 5x more AI usage and longer AI conversations.
Honest limits: there's a learning curve to coordinating multiple formats and notebooks inside the same project, it leans on the broader Overleaf ecosystem to get full value out of it, and the free AI quota can feel limiting under heavy use.
Overleaf — the LaTeX standard, nothing more, nothing less
Overleaf is the established online LaTeX editor: no installation needed, real-time collaboration, and a large library of templates for papers, theses and journal submissions. It does one job — collaborative LaTeX writing — and does it as the option millions of researchers already default to.
Who it's for: students, researchers and professionals who need solid collaborative LaTeX editing and nothing more complicated than that.
Pricing: free tier available; Pro plans start at $15/month.
Honest limits: it can run into loading problems with heavy files, and the paid plans add real cost if you need the higher tiers — and unlike Papers AI, there's no code notebook or built-in AI help if your work involves more than the writing itself.
Pick Papers AI if…
…your research actually involves code and data analysis alongside the writing, and you want AI help without leaving the workspace or exporting between tools.
Pick Overleaf if…
…you just need reliable, template-rich, collaborative LaTeX for a paper or thesis, with no code notebooks or AI features to worry about.
Because the same team builds both, this isn't really an either/or rivalry — Papers AI reads more like that team's answer to "what if the workspace also handled the code and used AI," for the subset of researchers who were already outgrowing a LaTeX-only tool.