PubMed

NCBI PubMed is the primary biomedical literature database providing free access to over 35 million citations and abstracts from life science journals and online books. The Entrez Programming Utilities (E-utilities) REST API enables programmatic searching, retrieval, and linking of citations, article metadata, abstracts, full-text links, and MeSH terms across PubMed and 38 other NCBI databases.

PubMed publishes 6 APIs on the APIs.io network, including History API, Info API, Links API, and 3 more. Tagged areas include Biomedical, Life Science, Research, Literature, and Citations.

The PubMed catalog on APIs.io includes 2 JSON-LD contexts and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

PubMed’s developer surface includes authentication, engineering blog, and 2 more developer resources.

📡 Source on GitHub

32.3/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 22/100 agent aware saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0

AccessFreeSelf serve⚡ Free to try

1 APIs

Biomedical Life Science Research Literature Citations Abstracts Mesh Genomics PubMed NCBI

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0

Composite quality — 32.3/100 · thin

Contract Quality 10.5 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 3.6 / 15

Access Clarity 4.3 / 15

Operational Transparency 0.0 / 10

Contract Governance 0.9 / 9

Discoverability 5.1 / 8

Regulatory Posture 3.2 / 15

Create-or-Update Ergonomics 0.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 22/100 · 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 7 / 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

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Health 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/.

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 github.com/api-evangelist/pubmed: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

APIs 10

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

PubMed Central OA API

The PMC Open Access API provides citation data, license information, and download links for Open Access articles in PubMed Central. Supports filtering by date and license type, ...

PMC OAI-PMH API

The PMC OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) API enables systematic harvesting of metadata for all PMC archive items and full text for licensed co...

PMC BioC API

The BioC API provides full text retrieval of PubMed Central Open Access articles in BioC XML or JSON format, optimized for natural language processing (NLP) and text mining appl...

PMC ID Converter API

The PMC ID Converter API translates between different article identifier formats including PubMed IDs (PMIDs), PubMed Central IDs (PMCIDs), Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), an...

PubMed History API

Operations for managing sets of records on the Entrez History server

PubMed Info API

Operations for retrieving database metadata and information

PubMed Links API

Operations for finding linked records between databases

PubMed Retrieval API

Operations for retrieving records from Entrez databases

PubMed Search API

Operations for searching Entrez databases

PubMed Summary API

Operations for retrieving document summaries

Scroll for all 10

Open Collections 7

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

API Collection

OPEN COLLECTION

NCBI Entrez E-utilities History API

OPEN COLLECTION

NCBI Entrez E-utilities History Info API

OPEN COLLECTION

NCBI Entrez E-utilities History Links API

OPEN COLLECTION

NCBI Entrez E-utilities History Retrieval API

OPEN COLLECTION

NCBI Entrez E-utilities History Search API

OPEN COLLECTION

NCBI Entrez E-utilities History Summary API

OPEN COLLECTION

Scroll for all 7

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Entrez Eutils

2 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Entrez Eutils

0 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

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

Entrez Eutils

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 2

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Pubmed Article Example Context

0 classes · 0 properties

JSON-LD

Pubmed Context

4 classes · 30 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

PubMed API Rules

6 rules · 4 warnings 2 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 2

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

ESearch Response

2 properties

JSON SCHEMA

PubMed Article

23 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Examples 4

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

Efetch Abstracts

4 fields

EXAMPLE

Elink Related Articles

4 fields

EXAMPLE

Esearch Pubmed

3 fields

EXAMPLE

Esummary Pubmed

3 fields

EXAMPLE

Security Posture 2

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

Pubmed Authentication

apiKey · 1 scheme

SECURITY

Pubmed Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

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

Pubmed Agentic Access

9 operations · 1 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Authentication

Authentication

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Blog

Blog

Source (apis.yml)

name: PubMed
description: NCBI PubMed is the primary biomedical literature database providing free access to over 35 million citations
  and abstracts from life science journals and online books. The Entrez Programming Utilities (E-utilities) REST API enables
  programmatic searching, retrieval, and linking of citations, article metadata, abstracts, full-text links, and MeSH terms
  across PubMed and 38 other NCBI databases.
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: free
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: false
  label: Free · Self-serve signup
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  - security
  generated: '2026-09-03'
  method: derived
image: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/coreutils/img/ncbilogo.png
tags:
- Biomedical
- Life Science
- Research
- Literature
- Citations
- Abstracts
- Mesh
- Genomics
- PubMed
- NCBI
tags_raw:
- biomedical
- life science
- research
- literature
- citations
- abstracts
- MeSH
- genomics
- PubMed
- NCBI
created: '2026-06-13'
modified: '2026-06-13'
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- name: PubMed Central OA API
  description: The PMC Open Access API provides citation data, license information, and download links for Open Access articles
    in PubMed Central. Supports filtering by date and license type, returning FTP and HTTPS links to full-text XML and PDF
    files.
  image: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/coreutils/img/ncbilogo.png
  humanURL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/tools/developers/
  baseURL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/utils/oa/oa.fcgi
  tags:
  - Open Access
  - Full Text
  - PMC
  - XML
  - PDF
  tags_raw:
  - open access
  - full text
  - PMC
  - XML
  - PDF
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/tools/oa-service/
  - type: RateLimits
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/plans/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/finops/entrez-eutils.yml
  contact:
  - FN: NCBI Help Desk
    email: info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
    url: https://support.nlm.nih.gov/
  meta:
  - key: cost
    value: Free
  - key: access
    value: Open Access articles only
- name: PMC OAI-PMH API
  description: The PMC OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) API enables systematic harvesting
    of metadata for all PMC archive items and full text for licensed content. Follows the OAI-PMH 2.0 standard for interoperability
    with metadata aggregators and digital libraries.
  image: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/coreutils/img/ncbilogo.png
  humanURL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/tools/developers/
  baseURL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/api/oai/v1/mh/
  tags:
  - OAI-PMH
  - Metadata
  - Harvesting
  - PMC
  - Interoperability
  tags_raw:
  - OAI-PMH
  - metadata
  - harvesting
  - PMC
  - interoperability
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/tools/oai/
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/plans/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/finops/entrez-eutils.yml
  contact:
  - FN: NCBI Help Desk
    email: info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
    url: https://support.nlm.nih.gov/
  meta:
  - key: cost
    value: Free
  - key: standard
    value: OAI-PMH 2.0
- name: PMC BioC API
  description: The BioC API provides full text retrieval of PubMed Central Open Access articles in BioC XML or JSON format,
    optimized for natural language processing (NLP) and text mining applications. Supports article-level and passage-level
    access to structured article content.
  image: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/coreutils/img/ncbilogo.png
  humanURL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/tools/developers/
  baseURL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/research/bionlp/RESTful/pmcoa.cgi
  tags:
  - BioC
  - NLP
  - Text Mining
  - Full Text
  - XML
  - JSON
  - PMC
  tags_raw:
  - BioC
  - NLP
  - text mining
  - full text
  - XML
  - JSON
  - PMC
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/tools/bioc/
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/plans/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/finops/entrez-eutils.yml
  contact:
  - FN: NCBI Help Desk
    email: info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
    url: https://support.nlm.nih.gov/
  meta:
  - key: cost
    value: Free
  - key: formats
    value: BioC XML, BioC JSON
- name: PMC ID Converter API
  description: The PMC ID Converter API translates between different article identifier formats including PubMed IDs (PMIDs),
    PubMed Central IDs (PMCIDs), Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), and manuscript IDs. Essential for cross-referencing articles
    across databases and citation systems.
  image: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/coreutils/img/ncbilogo.png
  humanURL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/tools/developers/
  baseURL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/tools/idconv/api/v1/articles/
  tags:
  - identifier
  - Conversion
  - PMID
  - PMCID
  - DOI
  - PMC
  tags_raw:
  - identifier
  - conversion
  - PMID
  - PMCID
  - DOI
  - PMC
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/tools/idconv/
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/plans/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/finops/entrez-eutils.yml
  contact:
  - FN: NCBI Help Desk
    email: info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
    url: https://support.nlm.nih.gov/
  meta:
  - key: cost
    value: Free
  - key: identifiers
    value: PMID, PMCID, DOI, manuscript ID
- aid: pubmed:pubmed-history-api
  name: PubMed History API
  description: Operations for managing sets of records on the Entrez History server
  humanURL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/home/develop/api/
  baseURL: https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/
  tags:
  - History
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/pubmed-history-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25497/
  - type: RateLimits
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/plans/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/finops/entrez-eutils.yml
- aid: pubmed:pubmed-info-api
  name: PubMed Info API
  description: Operations for retrieving database metadata and information
  humanURL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/home/develop/api/
  baseURL: https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/
  tags:
  - Info
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/pubmed-info-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25497/
  - type: RateLimits
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/plans/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/finops/entrez-eutils.yml
- aid: pubmed:pubmed-links-api
  name: PubMed Links API
  description: Operations for finding linked records between databases
  humanURL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/home/develop/api/
  baseURL: https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/
  tags:
  - Links
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/pubmed-links-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25497/
  - type: RateLimits
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/plans/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/finops/entrez-eutils.yml
- aid: pubmed:pubmed-retrieval-api
  name: PubMed Retrieval API
  description: Operations for retrieving records from Entrez databases
  humanURL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/home/develop/api/
  baseURL: https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/
  tags:
  - Retrieval
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/pubmed-retrieval-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25497/
  - type: RateLimits
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/plans/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/finops/entrez-eutils.yml
- aid: pubmed:pubmed-search-api
  name: PubMed Search API
  description: Operations for searching Entrez databases
  humanURL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/home/develop/api/
  baseURL: https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/
  tags:
  - Search
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/pubmed-search-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25497/
  - type: RateLimits
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/plans/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/finops/entrez-eutils.yml
- aid: pubmed:pubmed-summary-api
  name: PubMed Summary API
  description: Operations for retrieving document summaries
  humanURL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/home/develop/api/
  baseURL: https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/
  tags:
  - Summary
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/pubmed-summary-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25497/
  - type: RateLimits
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/plans/entrez-eutils.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/finops/entrez-eutils.yml
common:
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/pubmed-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/pubmed-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/pubmed-authentication.yml
- type: Blog
  url: https://ncbiinsights.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/feed/
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

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