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.
image: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/coreutils/img/ncbilogo.png
tags:
  - 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: "0.19"
apis:

  - name: PubMed Entrez E-utilities API
    description: The Entrez Programming Utilities (E-utilities) provide a stable interface to the NCBI Entrez query and database system. Nine server-side programs allow searching, fetching, posting, linking, and summarizing records across PubMed and 38 NCBI databases including PubMed Central, Gene, Nuccore, and Protein. Supports searching 35M+ biomedical citations, retrieving abstracts, full-text links, MeSH terms, and related article metadata.
    image: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/coreutils/img/ncbilogo.png
    humanURL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/home/develop/api/
    baseURL: https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/
    tags:
      - search
      - citations
      - abstracts
      - MeSH
      - biomedical literature
      - Entrez
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25497/
      - type: OpenAPI
        url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubmed/refs/heads/main/openapi/entrez-eutils.json
      - 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: auth
        value: api_key (optional, recommended for >3 req/s)
      - key: rateLimit
        value: 3 req/s without key; 10 req/s with API key
      - key: cost
        value: Free
      - key: databases
        value: PubMed, PMC, Gene, Nuccore, Protein, and 33 other NCBI databases

  - 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
    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
    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
    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
    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

maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com