API keys required starting Feb 13 (and some new endpoints!)

[Jason Priem]

Hey everyone,

TLDR: In one month, the API will require a (free!) API key.

More details: We're making several changes to how the OpenAlex API handles authentication and rate limiting. Here's what you need to know.

Why we're doing this
We need to track usage, adjust our infrastructure to actual demand, find problems faster, and prevent abuse. The current system doesn't give us visibility into any of that. We handle 1.5 billion calls per month (that's even more than Crossref, whose API we adore and provided much of our inspiration!) and it's growing fast, so things that let us optimize are really important.

What's changing
API calls will require a key starting one month from today (Feb 13). If you don't include one after that, you'll get 100 free credits for testing, then 409 errors.

No more polite pool! No more email parameter in your calls—it was never secure and couldn't scale. Keys only from here on out.

What's not changing
It's still free for most users. You get 100,000 credits per day with your API key (more on "credits" below). Without a key you get 100 credits per day, which is fine for testing and demos but not for real work. 

Of course our underlying data remains CC0 and free to download in its entirety any time. We just need to add some more structure to help us maintain the service layer the API provides on top of the data.

What to do

Go to openalex.org and create a free account
Copy your API key from https://openalex.org/settings/api
Add it to your calls: api.openalex.org/works?api_key=YOUR_KEY

Naturally, if you're already using your API key (as most Premium users are), you don't have to change anything. 

Credit-based limits
We're also moving from call-based to credit-based rate limits. This lets us map limits more closely to our actual costs per endpoint, which is more sustainable for us and more fair for y'all. Rough credit costs:

existing endopints:
Singleton (eg /works/w123): 1 credit
List (eg /works?filter=foo:bar): 10 credits

New endpoints:
Content (lets you download PDFs/text; coming later this month): 100 credits
Vector search (coming TBD): 1,000 credits

These numbers aren't final—we're still calibrating based on our costs. 

If you already have an API key with a paid plan, we'll convert your call limits to credits so you won't lose out.

New endpoints coming
As alert readers may have noticed above: there are new endpoints coming! If you want early access to either, please contact st...@ourresearch.org. We'd love to get early feedback, as it'll help us provision the service adequately from the jump.

Thanks for everyone's support! We are moving FAST in 2026 and super excited about launching a lot of amazing new features and data-quality improvements. Faces are melting here at OpenAlex HQ.  This isn't the place for details about all we have planned for this year, but I highly recommend checking out our Q1 Town Hall this Thursday if you want to stay up to date. It's going to be a wild, wild year.

Jason