The Elicit API is available on the Pro, Scale, and Enterprise plans. It gives you three endpoints:
Search: 138 million academic papers and 545,000 clinical trials, by semantic or keyword query.
Reports: submit a research question and get a fully cited report drawn from hundreds of papers or trials.
Systematic Review: run a full review end to end, with control over search strategy, screening criteria, extraction parameters, and reporting.
All three are also available through the Elicit MCP server, so Elicit can return cited answers inside Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or any MCP-compatible client. See Use Elicit via MCP Server. Rate limits and pricing are documented at docs.elicit.com.
Example uses:
Run research at scale. Got 30 compounds to check, or 20 hypotheses to test across different populations? You can write a short script and get structured results for all of them instead of running each one manually in the app.
Integrate Elicit into your workflow. Call the API from Claude or ChatGPT to get real citations while writing a paper, or build a Slack bot that pulls evidence into team discussions.
Build on top of Elicit. Many of you have asked about building internal research dashboards or combining Elicit evidence with your own datasets. We wanted to make that possible. You can use Elicit's search and report generation as a layer in whatever you're creating.
Getting started
Create an API key at elicit.com/developer. Click your name at the bottom left of any page, then Developer. For managing, viewing, and deleting keys, see Managing Your Elicit API Keys.
If you use Claude or ChatGPT:
Create an API key at elicit.com/developer
Give the AI tool your research question and the API docs
It'll write a script you can run to get results
If you write code:
Create an API key at elicit.com/developer
Copy the code snippet below, swap in your key, and run it (Javascript and shell versions also available)
Get the code snippet from our Github here.
Check out more code examples at https://github.com/elicit/api-examples. API reference and information on authentication, billing, and rate limits are available at docs.elicit.com.
The API and MCP server are available on the Pro, Scale, and Enterprise plans. If your plan doesn't include API access, you can upgrade from your Account Settings page.