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The Consensus API puts Consensus search inside your own applications, tools, and workflows. Send a query, get back ranked peer-reviewed papers with metadata, and skip running each search by hand. The API is self-serve and open to everyone.

Get started with the API

Authentication, your first request in cURL, Python, JavaScript, and Go, and the full parameter reference.

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What you get

  • The top 20 most relevant papers per query by default, up to 1,000 per query with page_size
  • A relevance score on every paper for ranking or pruning
  • Metadata: title, authors, journal, publication year, DOI, citation count, and a link to the paper
  • Enriched fields on paid plans: study design, journal rank, extracted key takeaways, and query-relevant full-text excerpts (include_full_text_chunks)
  • Filters for publication date, study type, sample size, citation count, journal quality, academic field, country, open-access status, and more

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Who it’s for

  • Automating research discovery for R&D teams
  • Powering private ChatGPT instances and internal copilots
  • Giving internal AI agents trusted research references
  • Building research dashboards and automation tools

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Get a key

1

Open the dashboard

Click your profile icon in the bottom-left of Consensus and choose API & MCP Dashboard.
2

Create a key

Open the Keys and Clients tab, click New key, and name it.
3

Copy it now

The full key is shown once. If you lose it, revoke it and create a new one.
The API & MCP Dashboard with the profile menu, Keys and clients tab, and New key button highlighted

Profile icon › API & MCP Dashboard › Keys and clients › New key.

Send the key in the x-api-key header on every request. Treat it like a password: keep it out of client-side code, public repositories, and screenshots.

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Plans and limits

API and MCP calls share one monthly pool.
  • A call covers up to 100 papers, rounded up, with a minimum of 1 call per request.
  • Additional usage costs $0.05 per call. It’s off by default; enable it in the dashboard. Free plans can’t enable it.
  • Rate limit: 1 request per second.
  • Usage resets on the 1st of each month.
The API & MCP Dashboard's Usage tab with a bar chart of API and MCP calls

The Usage tab splits calls between API and MCP over 7 days, 30 days, or the billing period.

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Common errors

Need higher limits or Bearer-token auth? Contact [email protected] about Enterprise access.

API reference

Every parameter and response field.

MCP

The same search inside Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor.