Free APIKnowledgeAPI keyOfficial
OpenAlex API
Open catalog of 250M+ works, authors and institutions, free key, $1/day free
OpenAlex is a fully open index of the global research ecosystem: hundreds of millions of works, authors, journals, institutions and topics, openly licensed (CC0). The REST API is all GET requests you can paste into a browser. As of 2025 it requires a free key, and every key gets $1 of usage credit per day, which covers large free volumes.
Free tier
Free key; each key gets $1/day free credit (~100,000 credits/day, covering large free volumes). Full dataset is CC0 and free to bulk-downloadRate limits
Free key: up to 100,000 credits/day. No key: hard-capped at 100 credits/day, for testing onlyAuth
API keyBase URL
https://api.openalex.orgWhat you'd build with it
- Build a free alternative to commercial citation databases
- Map an institution's or author's full publication output
- Filter works by topic and year for a research-trends automation
- Enrich DOIs with open-access status and citation counts
Key endpoints
- GET
/works?search={q}Search the index of scholarly works - GET
/works/{id}Full metadata for one work (DOI, OpenAlex ID, etc.) - GET
/authors?search={name}Find authors and their disambiguated profiles - GET
/works?filter=concepts.id:{id}Filter works by topic, year, institution and more
Members
Members get the runnable recipe
Sign in free to copy the example request, see a sample response, and read the gotchas.
Tags
knowledgeresearchpaperscitationsreference