FW: [openalex-users] new features and usage-based pricing

[Friedman, Jason]

Hi All,

 

Does anyone know if the changes between the new documentation and the old documentation are… documented? For example, the warning is no longer there for the author_is_corresponding field (Authorship object | OpenAlex technical documentation). Does that mean coverage is now complete? Or is that just part of the transition? And I don’t see documentation around apc_list and apc_paid (maybe I’m just missing it with the re-organization?), although they’re still in the schema overview (List works - OpenAlex Developers).

 

Thanks!

 

-Jason

 

Jason Friedman, BA, MA, MIS
he/him

Assistant Dean, Collections and Discovery

 

University of Saskatchewan

University Library

Ph: (306) 966-8114

 

I acknowledge that I live and work on Treaty 6 Territory and the Homeland of the Métis. We pay our respect to the First Nations and Métis ancestors of this place and reaffirm our relationship with one another.

 

From: openale...@googlegroups.com <openale...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Jason Priem
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2026 9:07 PM
To: OpenAlex users <openale...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [openalex-users] new features and usage-based pricing

 

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Hi all,

We just shipped a bunch of new stuff to the OpenAlex API, and we're also making a big change to how pricing works. Full details are in the blog post.

Here's the short version.

New features:

• Advanced search: proximity, exact matching, wildcards, and long queries (up to 8KB). 
• Semantic search (beta): search by meaning, not just keywords. 
• Full-text downloads: download PDFs and TEI XML for 60M open-access works
• Completely rebuilt developer docs at developers.openalex.org.

Usage-based pricing:

We're introducing usage-based pricing for the API. The data itself remains completely free — you can still download, share, and build on the full 480M-work dataset at no cost. We're doing this POSI-style: charging for the service (the API), not the data.

API keys are now required for all requests. Getting one is free and takes 30 seconds: create an account at openalex.org, then grab your key at openalex.org/settings/api.

Your free API key gets $1 of free usage per day. For most users, that's all you'll ever need. To give you a sense of scale: Grabbing all 694k works by Finnish authors costs about $0.70 — well within your daily free allowance. Searching costs $1 per thousand calls.

 

As a bonus: looking up a single work (or millions of them) by DOI or ID is now free.

For heavier search/filter/download usage, you can buy prepaid credits anytime. Organizations can get annual plans with volume discounts.

The blog post has full pricing tables, FAQs, and more context on why we're doing this and where we're headed. Very recommended if you're using OpenAlex:
https://blog.openalex.org/openalex-api-new-features-and-usage-based-pricing/

Thanks for your support!
Jason

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