OpenAlex Has a Free API — Search 250M+ Academic Works Without Any Key

Ever tried to build something with academic data? Google Scholar blocks you, Scopus costs thousands, and Web of Science requires institutional access. Then I found OpenAlex — a completely free, open-source catalog of 250M+ academic works, 90M+ authors, and 100K+ institutions. No API key. No rate limits. No authentication. Let me show you what you can actually build with it. What Is OpenAlex? OpenAlex is the open replacement for Microsoft Academic Graph (which shut down in 2021). It indexes: 250M+ works (papers, books, datasets) 90M+ authors with disambiguation 100K+ institutions 65K+ journals and venues Citation graphs, concepts, topics — all linked And it is 100% free. No API key needed. Quick Start: Search Papers by Topic import requests # Search for papers about "transformer architecture" url = "https://api.openalex.org/works" params = { "search": "transformer architecture neural networks", "per_page": 5, "sort": "cited_by_count:desc" } response = requests.get(url, params=params) da