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 cost 1 credit, list queries cost 10 credits per page, content downloads cost 100 credits per file, and semantic search costs 1,000 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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