Explainpaper has an Explain Like I am 5 mode and I use it more than I want to admit

Engineering degree, third year. We read a lot of papers. Some of them are in adjacent fields where I do not have the background to follow the methodology properly, and some of them are in my own field but written in a way that assumes knowledge I have not quite built yet.

Explainpaper is the tool I use when I hit a section I genuinely cannot follow and I want to understand it rather than skip past it.

The Highlight-to-Explain mechanic is simple. You highlight the confusing sentence or paragraph and get a plain English explanation immediately. No copy-pasting to a chatbot, no switching tabs, no losing your place in the paper. The side-by-side layout keeps the original visible while you read the explanation.

The Multi-Level Simplification is the feature I did not expect to appreciate as much as I do. You can ask for an explanation at different levels of technicality. The simplest level gives you the stripped-down conceptual version. A more technical summary gives you something closer to the paper's own language but with the jargon unpacked. Having that choice matters depending on whether you need the intuition or the precision.

The Interactive Q and A for follow-ups is where I get the most out of it. Once I have the initial explanation I usually have a more specific question. "What would happen to the result if the sample size were smaller." "Why did they choose this method over the alternative." The AI answers using the paper as context rather than giving general answers.

PDF storage in a personal library means I am not re-uploading papers every time I come back to them.