Scholar Inbox alternative
Scholar Feed: a Scholar Inbox alternative you can query, not just skim
Scholar Feed and Scholar Inbox both help you keep up with new arXiv CS/AI/ML work, but in opposite styles. Scholar Inbox is a polished personalized digest you read (web and email), learned from papers you rate. Scholar Feed is an MCP server you query and direct from inside Claude Code or Cursor: define structured watches, trace citations, pull full text, and filter by an LLM novelty score. If you want a curated digest delivered to you, Scholar Inbox is great. If you want to interrogate the literature inside your workflow, that’s Scholar Feed. Install with npx scholar-feed-mcp init.
Why people search "Scholar Inbox alternative"
Scholar Inbox does the personalized-digest job well. People look for an alternative when:
- They want research that’s actionable in their agent, not just readable in an inbox. A digest tells you what’s new; an MCP tool lets your assistant search, compare, and pull the results section in the same session.
- They want control over the filter — a structured watch on a specific lab, technique, author, or citation scope — rather than a learned recommendation they can’t fully steer.
How Scholar Feed compares
| Comparison axis | Scholar Inbox | Scholar Feed |
|---|---|---|
| Style | Personalized digest (web + email), learned from ratings | Queryable + watchable from inside your AI assistant |
| You read vs you ask | Read what it sends | Ask, then act on it |
| Keep-up control | Recommendation tuned by likes | Structured watches you define explicitly |
| Per-paper signal | Relevance to you | LLM summary + 0–1 novelty score |
| Beyond keep-up | Digest | Citation tracing, full-text extraction, BibTeX, author graphs |
| Coverage | arXiv CS/ML focus | 600,000+ CS/AI/ML papers |
What you actually do with it
Rather than skimming a morning digest, you ask "anything above 0.5 novelty on test-time compute this week?" mid-task, then "trace what cites the top one" and "pull its experiments section", without leaving your editor. The keep-up is a watch you set and check on your terms, not a feed you have to open daily.
When NOT to use Scholar Feed
- You want a zero-effort digest curated for you and delivered by email. Scholar Inbox is purpose-built for that and does it well; Scholar Feed is pull-based and lives in an MCP client.
- You don’t use an MCP client (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.). Then a web/email digest fits your workflow better.
Frequently asked questions
Is Scholar Feed a good Scholar Inbox alternative?
It depends on the style you want. Scholar Inbox is a polished personalized digest you read by web and email, learned from papers you rate. Scholar Feed is an MCP server you query and direct from inside Claude Code or Cursor, with structured watches you define, citation tracing, full-text extraction, and an LLM novelty score. If you want a curated digest delivered to you, Scholar Inbox is great; if you want to interrogate the literature in your workflow, Scholar Feed fits.
Does Scholar Feed send a daily email digest?
No. Scholar Feed is pull-based: you set structured watches and check new matches on your terms from inside your AI assistant, rather than receiving a daily email. If a zero-effort email digest is what you want, Scholar Inbox is purpose-built for that.
Do I need an account or API key to try it?
The core search and read tools work anonymously at 100 calls per day. Watches read and write your account, so they need a free API key, which also raises your limit to 1,000 calls per day; Pro raises it to 10,000. Install with npx scholar-feed-mcp init.
Try it
npx scholar-feed-mcp initFree anonymous access is 100 calls/day (no account); a free key raises it to 1,000/day. Open source (MIT): scholar-feed-mcp on GitHub.
More setup options on the developers page.