Why PI Finder?
Finding the right supervisor is the hardest, most time-consuming part of applying for a PhD or Postdoc. PI Finder does the research, writes the outreach, and keeps it organized — in about two minutes.
What makes it different
Every supervisor is checked live — never a stale database
Free chatbots invent plausible-sounding professors, dead emails, and labs that closed years ago. PI Finder runs a live web search for each professor at the moment you search, confirms a real lab page and recent activity, and drops anything it can't verify.
- A fresh search every time, never a stale saved list
- Made-up or unverifiable professors are dropped before you see them
- Every result dated so you know how fresh it is
SOPs & cold emails written from your CV, for one specific professor
The hardest part of outreach isn't finding professors — it's writing something worth reading. PI Finder drafts a tailored Statement of Purpose and a concise cold email grounded in your actual CV and that professor's work, so it reads as personal, not a template you have to rewrite.
- Grounded in your real CV and the specific professor
- Both a full SOP and a short, sendable cold email
- Specific and personal — not a generic AI draft
An outreach tracker so nothing slips through the cracks
Once you're emailing dozens of professors it's easy to lose track of who you contacted, who to follow up, who declined, and who invited you to interview. The built-in tracker keeps every professor on one board from first email to final decision.
- A simple board: contacted → replied → interview → decision
- Favorites and notes kept in one place
- Free for everyone, on every plan
New professors every time — not the same fixed list
Run the same field again next month and you get different, genuinely-relevant professors. We remember who you've already been shown and surface fresh ones, so repeat searches keep expanding your options instead of repeating them.
- Remembers past results across your searches
- Surfaces new professors on every repeat query
PhD and Postdoc searches follow different logic
They aren't the same job. PhD mode prioritizes labs with open positions and external funding; Postdoc mode targets professors with active grants, the right lab size, and a track record of placement. The two paths are tuned separately.
- PhD: open positions + funding signals
- Postdoc: active grants, lab size, placement
A structured report you can act on immediately
What takes 10–20 hours of manual hunting takes one short form and about two minutes — and you get a clean, downloadable report: lab link, department, summary, recent paper, email, and a match score for every professor.
- Under two minutes per search
- Clean, downloadable PDF report
How it compares
The honest picture against the alternatives applicants actually weigh — a free AI chatbot, a static professor database, and a paid application agency.
| Free chatbot | Static database | Application agency | PI Finder | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Real, current professors (not invented) | ~ | |||
| Verified live at search time | ~ | |||
| Fresh results each search | ~ | ~ | ||
| Choose your target countries | ~ | ~ | ||
| SOP & email grounded in your CV | ||||
| Outreach tracker built in | ~ | |||
| Minutes, not days | ||||
| Affordable (not agency prices) |
Simple, honest pricing
Start free with one verified search. Subscribe to Plus or Pro for monthly searches plus AI documents, or buy pay-as-you-go search packs and pay only for what you use.