Get started with Consensus API

The Consensus API lets you search 400+ million peer-reviewed papers over a single REST endpoint. Send a query and get back ranked papers with titles, authors, journals, publication years, citation counts, and direct links. Here’s a real request and response, with full-text excerpts turned on:

curl -G "https://api.consensus.app/v1/search" -H "x-api-key: $CONSENSUS_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "query=what dose of creatine improves working memory" \
  --data-urlencode "include_full_text_chunks=true"

{
  "results": [
    {
      "title": "Creatine and improvement in cognitive function: Evaluation of a health claim pursuant to article 13(5) of regulation (EC) No 1924/2006",
      "authors": ["Dominique Turck", "T. Bohn", "Montaña Cámara", "…"],
      "journal_name": "EFSA Journal",
      "publisher_name": "Wiley",
      "publish_year": 2024,
      "sjr_best_quartile": 1,
      "citation_count": 5,
      "doi": "10.2903/j.efsa.2024.9100",
      "url": "https://consensus.app/papers/creatine-and-improvement-in-cognitive-function-turck-bohn/7e703e828b815257b31687a25eceac9d/",
      "takeaway": "Creatine supplementation has not been established as a cause-and-effect relationship for improving cognitive function in one or more domains.",
      "full_text_chunks": [
        "Section: Human intervention studies in healthy individuals conducted under normal conditions | Two studies had an initial loading phase of 20 g/day of creatine for 5 days, followed by 5 g/day … A significant improvement in working memory, as measured by the Backwards Digit Span test, was observed only in the study of shorter duration …",
        "Section: Weighing of the evidence | … the acute effect of creatine on working memory reported in some studies at doses of 20 g/day given for 5-7 days … was not observed at lower creatine doses, ranging from 2.2 to 14 g/day …"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Trimmed to one result with shortened excerpts. The takeaway gives you the paper’s conclusion; the full_text_chunks give you the doses and study designs behind it, each labeled with the section of the paper it came from.

What people build with the API

What you can build with the Consensus API

Teams use the API to power internal research tools, field-monitoring agents, and scientific agents. Phylo calls it directly from its agents to screen about 20,000 drug targets across hundreds of diseases. Browse the use cases.

Internal tools: paper search for scientific agents, field-monitoring agents, and literature tables that fill themselves.
Research systems: literature review pipelines, citation-grounded writing, and recurring evidence reports.

Full text in the API

Every search reaches inside the paper. Queries are matched against full text where available, and on paid plans include_full_text_chunks=true returns the passages from each open-access paper that answer your query.

Full text in the API

What comes back, which papers have excerpts, plan availability, and how to use them.

Base URL

https://api.consensus.app

Authentication

Every request must include your API key in the x-api-key header.

x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY

Don’t have a key yet? Create an API key from your API & MCP Dashboard at consensus.app/api-mcp. See plans and access for what each plan includes.

Make your first request

Pass a query — the only required parameter. Store your key in an environment variable named CONSENSUS_API_KEY first.

curl "https://api.consensus.app/v1/search?query=creatine%20and%20cognitive%20function" \
  -H "x-api-key: $CONSENSUS_API_KEY"

import os
import requests

resp = requests.get(
    "https://api.consensus.app/v1/search",
    headers={"x-api-key": os.environ["CONSENSUS_API_KEY"]},
    params={"query": "creatine and cognitive function"},
)
resp.raise_for_status()

for paper in resp.json()["results"]:
    print(paper["title"], "—", paper["journal_name"], paper["publish_year"])

const params = new URLSearchParams({ query: "creatine and cognitive function" });

const resp = await fetch(`https://api.consensus.app/v1/search?${params}`, {
  headers: { "x-api-key": process.env.CONSENSUS_API_KEY },
});
const { results } = await resp.json();

for (const paper of results) {
  console.log(paper.title, "—", paper.journal_name, paper.publish_year);
}

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
	"net/http"
	"net/url"
	"os"
)

func main() {
	req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://api.consensus.app/v1/search", nil)
	req.Header.Set("x-api-key", os.Getenv("CONSENSUS_API_KEY"))
	req.URL.RawQuery = url.Values{"query": {"creatine and cognitive function"}}.Encode()

	resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	defer resp.Body.Close()

	var body struct {
		Results []struct {
			Title       string `json:"title"`
			JournalName string `json:"journal_name"`
			PublishYear int    `json:"publish_year"`
		} `json:"results"`
	}
	json.NewDecoder(resp.Body).Decode(&body)

	for _, paper := range body.Results {
		fmt.Printf("%s — %s %d\n", paper.Title, paper.JournalName, paper.PublishYear)
	}
}

<?php

$query = urlencode("creatine and cognitive function");
$ch = curl_init("https://api.consensus.app/v1/search?query={$query}");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, ["x-api-key: " . getenv("CONSENSUS_API_KEY")]);

$data = json_decode(curl_exec($ch), true);
curl_close($ch);

foreach ($data["results"] as $paper) {
    echo "{$paper['title']} — {$paper['journal_name']} {$paper['publish_year']}\n";
}

require "net/http"
require "json"
require "uri"

uri = URI("https://api.consensus.app/v1/search")
uri.query = URI.encode_www_form(query: "creatine and cognitive function")

req = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri)
req["x-api-key"] = ENV["CONSENSUS_API_KEY"]

res = Net::HTTP.start(uri.hostname, uri.port, use_ssl: true) { |http| http.request(req) }

JSON.parse(res.body)["results"].each do |paper|
  puts "#{paper['title']} — #{paper['journal_name']} #{paper['publish_year']}"
end

import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;

public class Search {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        HttpRequest request = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
            .uri(URI.create("https://api.consensus.app/v1/search?query=creatine%20and%20cognitive%20function"))
            .header("x-api-key", System.getenv("CONSENSUS_API_KEY"))
            .build();

        HttpResponse<String> response = HttpClient.newHttpClient()
            .send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());

        // Parse response.body() with your preferred JSON library (Jackson, Gson, ...)
        System.out.println(response.body());
    }
}

Next steps

Search endpoint reference

Full parameter list, response schema, and interactive playground.

API on GitHub

Client code, examples, and issues for the Consensus API.

MCP server

Prefer a no-code path? Connect Consensus to Claude, ChatGPT, and other MCP clients.

Consensus website

Explore the Consensus research platform.

Introduction

References

Get started with Consensus API

What people build with the API

What you can build with the Consensus API

Full text in the API

Full text in the API

Authentication

Make your first request

Next steps

Search endpoint reference

API on GitHub

MCP server

Consensus website

​What people build with the API

What you can build with the Consensus API

​Full text in the API

Full text in the API

​Authentication

​Make your first request

​Next steps

Search endpoint reference

API on GitHub

MCP server

Consensus website

What people build with the API

Full text in the API

Authentication

Make your first request

Next steps