Quick start: Search

GET /v1/search returns ranked papers for a query in a single request. Use it when your code or your own model needs the papers themselves: titles, journals, citation counts, links, and full-text excerpts.

When to use search

Search is the right fit when you want the papers and plan to do the reasoning yourself.

Lookups: find the papers on a specific question, author, or method.
Your own pipeline: feed ranked papers and full-text excerpts into your own LLM, agent, or scoring step.
High volume: screen many queries or targets quickly. Each request costs one call per 100 papers returned.
Structured filtering: narrow by study design, date, journal quality, sample size, field, or country.

Want Consensus to read the papers and write a cited answer for you instead? Use Threads.

Make a request

Store your key in an environment variable named CONSENSUS_API_KEY, then send a query:

curl -G "https://api.consensus.app/v1/search" -H "x-api-key: $CONSENSUS_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "query=does creatine improve working memory" \
  --data-urlencode "study_types=rct,meta-analysis" \
  --data-urlencode "year_min=2015"

Each result in results carries the paper’s title, authors, journal_name, publish_year, citation_count, doi, a Consensus url, and a one-sentence takeaway.

Go further

Full-text excerpts: add include_full_text_chunks=true on a paid plan to get the passages that answer your query. See Full text in the API.
More results: raise page_size and page through with page. Your plan sets the maximum. See plans and access.
Every parameter: see the search endpoint reference.

Use cases

Abstract screening

Screen candidate papers against inclusion criteria at scale.

Citation verification

Check that a claim is backed by the paper it cites.

Extract values from full text

Pull doses, effect sizes, and sample sizes from full-text excerpts.

Scheduled research pipeline

Monitor a field on a schedule and report what’s new.

​When to use search

​Make a request

​Go further

​Use cases