Chai Discovery vs Recursion
A side-by-side comparison of Chai Discovery and Recursion, two Science tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
Chai Discovery
ScienceFoundation models for molecular structure and antibody design.
View Chai DiscoveryAt a glance
| Attribute | Chai Discovery | Recursion |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Science | Science |
| Pricing (differs) | FREEMIUM | PAID |
| License (differs) | Open core | Proprietary |
| Deployment | Cloud | Cloud |
| Platforms (differs) | Web, API | Web |
| Model support (differs) | — | Self-contained (on-device) |
| Vendor (differs) | Chai Discovery | Recursion Pharmaceuticals |
The honest brief
Chai Discovery
One of the few drug-discovery shops to ship open model weights plus a free in-browser server, rather than locking everything behind pharma partnerships.
- Free in-browser structure prediction
- Open Chai-1 weights
- SOTA protein-ligand accuracy
- OpenAI-backed
- Weights non-commercial only
- Chai-2 not open
- Young company (2024)
- Core IP still proprietary
Recursion
Runs a vast in-house automated wet lab generating millions of cell experiments weekly, feeding a 50+ petabyte dataset few rivals can match.
- Recursion OS with LOWE language layer
- Massive proprietary biology dataset
- Natural-language target and compound queries
- Public company with pharma partners
- No self-serve product or API
- Partner and internal use only
- Opaque pricing
- No approved drug yet