API Overview
The API is the primary way to get OpenAlex data. It's free but requires an API key (also free). Get yours at openalex.org/settings/api. With your free key, you get 100,000 credits per day.
Learn more about the API
OpenAlex offers four service types, each optimized for different use cases:
Get lists of entities — Learn how to use paging, filtering, and sorting
Get groups of entities — Group and count entities in different ways
Find similar works — AI-powered semantic search
Get content — Download PDFs and TEI XML
Each service type has a different credit cost. Single entity lookups are free, list queries cost 1 credit, search queries cost 10 credits, content downloads cost 100 credits per file, and semantic search costs 100 credits per query. See Rate limits and authentication for details.
See also:
Rate limits and authentication — Learn about credit costs and API keys
Tutorials — Hands-on examples with code
Client Libraries
There are several third-party libraries you can use to get data from OpenAlex:
openalexR (R)
OpenAlex2Pajek (R)
KtAlex (Kotlin)
PyAlex (Python)
diophila (Python)
OpenAlexAPI (Python)
If you're looking for a visual interface, you can also check out the free VOSviewer, which lets you make network visualizations based on OpenAlex data:
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