If you are starting a systematic review, someone has almost certainly recommended Rayyan to you — and for good reason. It is one of the most widely used screening tools in the world, it has a free plan, and it solves the central problem of the selection phase well: deciding, article by article, what stays in and what goes out.
This article compares Rayyan with Latvs, a Brazilian platform that covers the entire review workflow — from search to writing. Since Latvs is our product, let’s be upfront: the goal here is not to “beat” Rayyan at everything (we don’t), but to make clear who each tool makes more sense for.
What Rayyan is
Rayyan is a tool specialized in reference screening. You import your search results, and the review team marks each article as included, excluded or maybe. Its strengths are real and deserve to be stated plainly:
- Maturity and adoption: used in thousands of published reviews. If your advisor or co-author already knows a screening tool, it is probably this one.
- A free plan that works for the basic screening workflow.
- Blind screening: reviewers assess the same articles without seeing each other’s decisions — essential for reducing bias in reviews with two or more reviewers, and a common protocol requirement.
- AI-powered ranking: as you screen, the system learns and reorders the remaining articles by likelihood of inclusion.
- A mobile app, handy for screening abstracts on the bus.
And the limitations, equally real:
- Scope restricted to screening. Database searching, data extraction, synthesis, article translation and manuscript writing all happen outside of it — in other tools, spreadsheets and scattered documents.
- More advanced features sit behind paid plans.
- English-only interface — not an issue for English-speaking teams, but a real friction point for many researchers in Brazil and other non-English-speaking countries.
What Latvs is
Latvs was born from a simple observation: screening is just one step. A real review involves searching multiple databases, deduplicating, screening, synthesizing findings, often translating material, and finally writing. Latvs brings all of that into one place:
- Integrated multi-database search: OpenAlex, Crossref, PubMed, Europe PMC, arXiv, Semantic Scholar and CORE, with an AI-assisted query builder that adapts your question’s syntax to each database.
- Reference databases with screening: import via CSV, RIS and BibTeX, include/exclude decisions with recorded criteria (if you are still defining yours, see our guide on screening criteria, in Portuguese).
- AI-assisted synthesis over the full texts of included articles.
- Academic translator with field-specific glossaries — technical terms translated consistently, not the way a generic translator would.
- File drive, manuscripts and an AI assistant that knows your project’s context.
- Interface and support in Portuguese and English, LGPD compliance (Brazil’s data protection law) with data hosted in the European Union.
- A free plan with no credit card required; paid plans starting at R$ 39/month, billed in Brazilian reais.
And the weaknesses, because we promised honesty:
- Latvs is new and in beta. Rayyan has years of track record and validation across thousands of published reviews; we don’t have that history yet.
- No mobile app.
- No blind screening between reviewers yet. If your protocol requires blind screening with conflict resolution, Rayyan does that better today.
- Smaller community and documentation — you will find fewer third-party tutorials and forum threads about Latvs.
Side-by-side comparison
| Criterion | Rayyan | Latvs |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Reference screening | Full workflow (search → screening → synthesis → translation → manuscript) |
| Interface language | English | Portuguese and English |
| Maturity | High, thousands of published reviews | New, in beta |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes, no credit card |
| Paid pricing | Paid plans for advanced features | From R$ 39/month, billed in reais |
| Blind screening between reviewers | ✅ | ❌ (not yet) |
| AI support in screening | ✅ (relevance ranking) | ✅ (criteria + AI assistant) |
| Integrated scientific database search | ❌ (imports from outside) | ✅ (7 databases + AI query builder) |
| AI-assisted synthesis | ❌ | ✅ |
| Academic translator with glossary | ❌ | ✅ |
| Manuscript writing | ❌ | ✅ |
| Mobile app | ✅ | ❌ |
| LGPD / data in the EU | — | ✅ |
Where Rayyan wins
Let’s be specific. Rayyan is the safer choice if:
- Your protocol requires blind screening with two independent reviewers and conflict resolution. That is the case for many reviews following Cochrane/PRISMA-style standards to the letter. Rayyan has done this for years; Latvs doesn’t yet.
- You only need screening. If searching, synthesis and writing already have their own workflow (or belong to someone else on the team), free Rayyan does the job without asking anything of you.
- Your team is international and already works in English.
- You want to screen on your phone. Rayyan’s mobile app has no Latvs equivalent.
Where Latvs wins
Latvs makes more sense if:
- You (or your team) work better in Portuguese. It is the only one of the two with an interface and support in Portuguese — for those supervising undergraduate and master’s students in Brazil, this tends to flatten the adoption curve considerably.
- You want the whole workflow in one place. Instead of searching PubMed, exporting RIS, importing into Rayyan, screening, exporting again, building an extraction spreadsheet and writing in Word, Latvs chains search, screening, synthesis and manuscript in the same project. Less manual exporting = fewer versioning mistakes.
- Translation is part of your work. Anyone who publishes in English but thinks in Portuguese knows the pain: the academic translator with field glossaries keeps your discipline’s terminology consistent.
- Pricing in reais matters. A fixed R$ 39/month is different from a dollar-priced plan whose cost in reais shifts with the exchange rate — relevant for scholarship holders and labs with budgets in local currency.
- LGPD is a requirement. Data in the EU and compliance with Brazilian law matter for institutional projects and stricter ethics committees.
What about using both?
It is a legitimate combination, and many teams will prefer it: blind screening in Rayyan (which does it very well), and the rest of the workflow — multi-database search, synthesis, translation and manuscript — in Latvs. The import/export formats (RIS, CSV, BibTeX) move smoothly between the two tools. If your research material currently lives scattered across folders, emails and spreadsheets, it is worth reading why you should organize your research before deciding on your project’s architecture.
Conclusion
Rayyan is an excellent screening tool — mature, free for the essentials, and with blind screening that Latvs does not offer yet. If your need begins and ends at article selection, especially with multiple independent reviewers, it remains an easy recommendation.
Latvs bets on a different thesis: that Brazilian and Portuguese-speaking researchers gain more from a single platform in their language that covers the entire review — from search string to manuscript draft — than from the best isolated tool for each step. If that is your case, the free plan asks for no credit card: create a project and test it with your own review. The most honest comparison is the one you run with your own data.