lens.org
The Lens
Who runs The Lens, what it tracks and what it costs, and the 20 closest patent and scholarly search alternatives.
- Who’s behind it
- Not stated
- Online since
- Unknown
- Trackers
- Prices
- No pricing page
- Last price change
- –
- Closest alternative
- OpenAlex
Measured from The Lens’s own pages, the Internet Archive and public records. Hover a dotted value for its source and date.
Visit The Lens01 · Who’s behind it
Who runs The Lens
The Lens lens.org
The Lens serves all the patents and scholarly work in the world as an open and secure digital public good, with user privacy a paramount focus.
Wikidata: online article and patent search facility and knowledge resource
- Company
- No imprint we could read
- Online since
- Not in the Internet Archive
- Audience
- In English
02 · Privacy
What The Lens tracks
What the homepage loads before you accept or decline cookies. A cookie banner should hold most of it back until you agree, and a tag manager can load more that we don’t see.
tracker that follows visitors
6 of the 14 alternatives below have fewer, 2 have more.
Privacy-friendly alternatives →- Cookie banner
- None found
- US company
- 1 tool
03 · Alternatives
Alternatives to The Lens
Thumbs up if it’s a real alternative to The Lens, thumbs down if it isn’t.
20 of the 60 sites closest to The Lens match.
- 01
OpenAlex: The open catalog to the global research system
OpenAlex indexes half a billion scholarly works, with their authors, institutions, sources and topics, and makes them free to search, analyze and reuse through our web app, API and bulk download.
Very close - 02
Client Challenge
non-profit educational organization
Very close - 03
PostgreSQL: The world's most advanced open source database
The official site for PostgreSQL, the world's most advanced open source database
Very close - 04
Home | LibreTexts
open access educational resource collection
Very close - 05
Making sure you're not a bot!
legal database
Very close - 06
Client Challenge
distributor of eBooks and other digital media
Very close - 07
Search the CPAN - metacpan.org
open source search engine for the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN)
Close - 08
OpenStax
OpenStax offers free college textbooks for all types of students, making education accessible & affordable for everyone. Browse our list of available subjects!
Close - 09
Wikidata
free multilingual online knowledge graph
Very close - 10
MusicBrainz - the open music encyclopedia
online music metadata database
Very close - 11
Wikibooks
free multilingual online collection of textbooks
Very close - 12
Swift Programming Language
Swift is a general-purpose programming language built using a modern approach to safety, performance, and software design patterns.
Close - 13
Frontiers | Publisher of peer-reviewed articles in open access journals
Open access publisher of peer-reviewed scientific articles across the entire spectrum of academia. Research network for academics to stay up-to-date with the latest scientific publications, events, blogs and news.
Close - 14
MediaWiki
free and open-source wiki software, developed by the Wikimedia Foundation
Close - 15
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, created and edited by volunteers around the world and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
Close - 16
UpToDate
medical software company
Close - 17
Wikiversity
online multilingual collaborative project for learning materials
Close - 18
The Australian National University
Embark on an exceptional academic journey at ANU, Australia's world-leading university. Renowned for research excellence, we foster a vibrant learning environment that inspires and challenges.
Close - 19
Wikisource
online multilingual library that collects open-content source material
Close - 20
Learn to Code for Free
Close
Closest first, by how much each site’s offer resembles The Lens’s. Trackers are counted the same way as above. Highlighted technologies are ones The Lens uses too. Votes and comments come from visitors and don’t change the order.
04 · History
What changed
Price and policy history →No changes yet. Each new crawl is compared with the last one, and what The Lens adds, drops or rewrites shows up here.
05 · Details
How we measure
Alternatives are matched by what sites actually offer, from their homepages, Wikidata and a summary by Claude, in any language. Trackers and the rest of the stack come from the homepage’s code and DNS records.
The full technology stack, the competitor map and search numbers · 12 technologies
- Neighbours
- k = 60
- Sites searched
- 9,216
- Vector
- 384-d
- Query
- 35 ms
Competitor map
Each alternative by how close its vector is to The Lens’s (x) and how much traffic it gets, how much of the stack it shares, or where it sits in the embedding space itself (y). Hover for the numbers, click to jump to it in the list.
similarity × popularity
Built with
- JavaScript frameworks
- AngularJS page source: ng-app="
- JavaScript libraries
- jQuery asset https://static.lens.org/lens/9.10.3/jquery.min.js
- Analytics
- Matomo page source: _paq.push(
- Live chat & support
- Zendesk TXT v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:mail.zendesk.com include:amazo…
- Security
- Cloudflare Turnstile page source: challenges.cloudflare.com/turnstile
- Web servers
- nginx header server: nginx
- Video
- Vimeo page source: player.vimeo.com/video
- Email hosting
- Google Workspace MX aspmx.l.google.com
- Microsoft 365 TXT MS=ms10896640
- Email delivery
- Amazon SES TXT v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:mail.zendesk.com include:amazo…
- DNS hosting
- Amazon Route 53 NS ns-1722.awsdns-23.co.uk
- SaaS tools (verified in DNS)
- Google Search Console TXT google-site-verification=q5jhjotPiZfs1BSXWUut3MvFAI9mmBh0zp2Xzy_JSEs
What competitors use
Across the 20 closest sites.
- Google Search Console 12/20
- Google Workspace 12/20
- Cloudflare · not on lens.org 8/20
- Amazon Route 53 6/20
- Cloudflare DNS · not on lens.org 5/20
- GlobalSign · not on lens.org 5/20
- Meta Business Suite · not on lens.org 5/20
- Google Fonts · not on lens.org 4/20
- Google Tag Manager · not on lens.org 4/20
- jQuery 4/20
- OneTrust · not on lens.org 4/20
- Microsoft 365 4/20
- Vue.js · not on lens.org 3/20
- PHP · not on lens.org 3/20
- Google Analytics · not on lens.org 3/20
- Font Awesome · not on lens.org 3/20