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Pricing

A dash (—) means we didn’t find a paid option in that provider’s documentation as of November 2026.

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How Consensus counts calls

  • One call covers up to 100 papers returned, rounded up, with a minimum of one call per request. A request for 20 papers is 1 call. A request for 150 papers is 2 calls.
  • The API and the MCP server share one monthly pool.
  • Usage resets on the 1st of each month.
See plans and access for page sizes and features by plan.

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Rate limits

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Interfaces and code samples

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Data privacy: what happens to your queries

What you search for can reveal your pipeline: drug targets, materials, competitor products. Check what a provider does with your queries before you send them.

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Consensus

  • SOC 2 Type II compliant, hosted on Google Cloud.
  • Customer data isn’t used to train AI models. The LLM providers Consensus uses keep no data from requests.
  • Zero data retention and a data-processing agreement are available on Enterprise contracts.
  • API keys are shown once, and can be named, revoked and rotated from the dashboard.
See Security and data handling for encryption, infrastructure and access controls.

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Other providers

The free APIs publish data licences and usage terms rather than enterprise privacy commitments:
  • PubMed asks every caller to identify themselves with tool and email parameters8.
  • Europe PMC serves open-access content and metadata, and doesn’t allow automated bulk download of other content11.
  • OpenAlex releases all its data under CC0. API keys are tied to an account4.
  • Semantic Scholar’s licence says AI2 uses the data you send to call the API “for the purpose of providing and improving the API”. Its data is licensed CC BY-NC or ODC-BY, and attribution is required14.
  • Crossref asks for an email in the polite pool. Most of its metadata isn’t subject to copyright6.
Read each provider’s terms against your own policy.

API plans and access

Calls, page sizes, features and errors by plan.

Compare scholarly APIs

Why teams choose Consensus, and every API at a glance.

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Sources

Facts about other providers were checked against their official documentation on 5 November 2026. Limits and prices change, so check the source before you build on a number.
  1. About PubMed: “more than 40 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature”; “does not include full text journal articles”; a free resource.
  2. About Europe PMC: 49.2 million abstracts and 12.5 million full-text articles; searches abstracts and full text; searches can be limited to clinical trials, preprints or article sections such as Methods; free to anyone.
  3. OpenAlex example costs: search costs $1 per 1,000 calls; content downloads cost $10 per 1,000.
  4. OpenAlex pricing: all data CC0; $1 of free API usage a day with a key; annual plans from $5,000 a year; the whole database can be downloaded as a snapshot refreshed every quarter. A keyless response notes that it shares a $0.10 daily budget per IP address.
  5. Semantic Scholar API overview: 214 million papers; unauthenticated requests share 1,000 requests a second across all users and may be throttled under heavy use; the introductory limit for an API key is 1 request a second. The API also serves SPECTER2 embeddings and a Recommendations service for similar papers.
  6. Crossref REST API: bibliographic metadata including funding, licence and abstracts; no sign-up required; most metadata isn’t subject to copyright.
  7. Crossref access and authentication: public pool 5 requests a second, polite pool 10, Metadata Plus 150.
  8. A General Introduction to the E-utilities: more than 3 requests a second without an API key returns an error; with a key, up to 10 a second by default; higher rates by request. Requests without registered tool and email values may be blocked.
  9. Europe PMC team on the Europe PMC web services forum, 1 October 2024: the rate limit is 10 requests a second (500 a minute), and no API key is required.
  10. OpenAlex authentication and rate limits: 10 requests a second with no key, 30 with a free key or prepaid usage, 50 on an annual plan; semantic search is limited to 1 a second.
  11. Europe PMC developer resources: REST, SOAP, OAI-PMH and FTP access to open-access content and metadata; automated bulk download of other content isn’t allowed. The Articles RESTful API includes /{id}/fullTextXML.
  12. OpenAlex help center index: REST URLs, OQL, a CLI, and Claude and ChatGPT connectors.
  13. Tips for using the Crossref REST API: annual public data file.
  14. Semantic Scholar API License Agreement: AI2 uses the data you send to call the API “for the purpose of providing and improving the API”; data is licensed CC BY-NC or ODC-BY; attribution required.