Lens

Lens is an open knowledge platform from Cambia that aggregates global scholarly works and patent records and exposes them through a REST API. The versioned API supports rich Elasticsearch-style queries, cursor pagination, and field projection across the full Lens scholarly and patent corpora, enabling research, science policy, technology landscape, and patent intelligence applications.

Lens publishes 4 API contracts indexed on the APIs.io network, including Patents API, Scholarly API, Bulk API, and 1 more. Tagged areas include Scholarly, Patents, Research, Science, and Open Data.

The Lens catalog on APIs.io includes 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Lens’ developer surface includes authentication, documentation, and 11 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

29.5/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 19/100 agent aware Front door AI 1/6 silent Heartbeat 100/100 alive saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemiumSelf serve⚡ Free to try

1 published contract

Scholarly Patents Research Science Open Data

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 29.5/100 · thin

Contract Quality 7.8 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 3.2 / 15

Access Clarity 4.3 / 15

Operational Transparency 1.0 / 10

Contract Governance 1.2 / 9

Discoverability 5.0 / 8

Regulatory Posture 2.9 / 15

Create-or-Update Ergonomics 0.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 19/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 0 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Education & Research regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created. Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet, not penalised by it.

The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 25. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented)
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
Request/Response Examples +7 pts — share of operations carrying request/response examples; else an Examples / Code Samples link
Registration Without a Human +6 pts — a `registration_endpoint` in the served RFC 8414 / OIDC discovery document

10 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Developer Ergonomics scores 21.4 — up to +15.7 composite points
Contract Quality scores 41.6 — up to +14.6 composite points
Access Clarity scores 28.9 — up to +14.2 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/lens/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/lens to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Standards implemented 1

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

OpenAPI

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

APIs 4

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Lens Patents API

Search and retrieve global patent records.

Lens Scholarly API

Search and retrieve scholarly works.

Lens Bulk API

Bulk files Operations

Lens Collections API

Collection Operations

Open Collections 3

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Lens Patents API

OPEN COLLECTION

Lens Patents Scholarly API

OPEN COLLECTION

Lens API

OPEN COLLECTION

Lens API pricing

Not yet checked against Lens's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-05-04; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.

Plan	Price
Free freemium	Free
Professional paid	Free
Enterprise enterprise	—

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

Free Tier Default: 10 requests per minute
Free Tier Monthly Quota: 1000 requests per month
Professional Tier Default: 100 requests per minute

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against Lens's documentation. All 5 limits →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Lens Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Lens Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

Service Levels 1

Uptime the provider promises or reports, as SLA4OAI. Read from its own pages; APIs.io runs no monitors.

Lens

SLA

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Lens Finops

FINOPS

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Lens API Rules

55 rules · 47 errors 2 warnings 6 info

SPECTRAL

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Lens Authentication

http · 1 scheme

SECURITY

Lens Domain Security

TLSv1.2 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Lens Agentic Access

6 operations

6 operations · 0 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Authentication

Authentication

Operate 1

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

Commercial 4

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

FinOps

Plans

TermsOfService

PrivacyPolicy

Company 3

The organization behind the API

LinkedIn

Website

Website

About

About

Source (apis.yml)

aid: lens
name: Lens
description: Lens is an open knowledge platform from Cambia that aggregates global scholarly works and patent records and
  exposes them through a REST API. The versioned API supports rich Elasticsearch-style queries, cursor pagination, and field
  projection across the full Lens scholarly and patent corpora, enabling research, science policy, technology landscape, and
  patent intelligence applications.
type: Index
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: true
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: high
  source:
  - openapi
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: false
  gated: none
  gated_source:
  - onboarding
  label: Freemium · Self-serve signup
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
position: Consuming
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/lens.png
x-docs-platform: swagger-ui
x-docs-platform-confidence: medium
x-docs-platform-checked: 2026-10-03
x-docs-hosting: github-pages
tags:
- Scholarly
- Patents
- Research
- Science
- Open Data
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lens/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2025-02-06'
modified: '2026-05-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: lens:lens-patents-api
  name: Lens Patents API
  description: Search and retrieve global patent records.
  humanURL: https://docs.api.lens.org/
  baseURL: https://api.lens.org
  tags:
  - Patents
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/lens-patents-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.api.lens.org/
  - type: SwaggerUI
    url: https://api.lens.org/swagger-ui.html
- aid: lens:lens-scholarly-api
  name: Lens Scholarly API
  description: Search and retrieve scholarly works.
  humanURL: https://docs.api.lens.org/
  baseURL: https://api.lens.org
  tags:
  - Scholarly
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/lens-scholarly-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.api.lens.org/
  - type: SwaggerUI
    url: https://api.lens.org/swagger-ui.html
- aid: lens:lens-bulk-api
  name: Lens Bulk API
  description: Bulk files Operations
  humanURL: https://docs.api.lens.org/
  baseURL: https://api.lens.org
  tags:
  - Bulk
  tags_raw:
  - bulk
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/lens-bulk-api-openapi.yml
- aid: lens:lens-collections-api
  name: Lens Collections API
  description: Collection Operations
  humanURL: https://docs.api.lens.org/
  baseURL: https://api.lens.org
  tags:
  - Collection
  tags_raw:
  - collections
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/lens-collections-api-openapi.yml
common:
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/lens-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/lens-finops.yml
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/lens-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/lens-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/lens-authentication.yml
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/lensapp
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/k8slens
- url: https://www.lens.org/
  type: Website
- url: https://docs.api.lens.org/
  type: Documentation
- url: https://www.lens.org/lens/user/subscriptions
  type: Plans
- url: https://www.lens.org/lens/about
  type: About
- url: https://www.lens.org/lens/terms-and-conditions
  type: TermsOfService
- url: https://www.lens.org/lens/privacy-policy
  type: PrivacyPolicy
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

Lens API — frequently asked questions

Does Lens have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 4 APIs from Lens, including Lens Patents API, Lens Scholarly API and Lens Bulk API, and 1 more.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the Lens API?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 4 OpenAPI specifications for Lens, each linked for download from this page.

How do I authenticate with the Lens API?

Lens uses bearer-token authentication (http · 1 scheme). The details are profiled on APIs.io as Lens Authentication.

How much does the Lens API cost?

APIs.io lists 3 pricing plans for Lens, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the Lens API ready for AI agents?

Lens has a Kin Score of 29.5 out of 100 (thin) and an Agent Readiness score of 19.0 (agent-aware), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

Work with this as data

Every provider here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.

MCP server

One button, every client — Claude, Cursor, VS Code and the rest.

https://apis.io/mcp

Tools for providers

9 MCP tools reach this

find_providersBrowse and filter every provider in the catalog.
get_provider_artifactsEvery artifact this provider publishes, grouped by type.
get_provider_operationsEvery operation across all of their OpenAPIs — one call instead of parsing every spec.
get_provider_toolsEvery MCP tool they ship, with the operation each wraps.
get_provider_evidenceHow each part of their score was established. Free — the basis for a claim should not sit behind it.
get_provider_ratingPRO — composite, band, trend and facet scores.
apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.

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