ODEN API documentation

Q: Can I get citations without a synthesized answer?

Yes. Send "answer": false in the request body and the response returns ranked citations only, with no synthesized answer. The answer field defaults to true.

ODEN is a web search and synthesis API for LLMs and AI agents. One HTTPS request turns a natural-language query into a synthesized answer plus ranked, citation-backed sources — returned as clean JSON, ready to drop into a model's context window.

There is a single endpoint. No SDK is required: it speaks plain JSON over HTTPS, so it works from any language with an HTTP client.

Start here#

Quickstart — from zero to your first call in five minutes, in curl, Python, JavaScript and TypeScript.
Authentication — API keys, the Authorization header, and how to rotate a key.
Search endpoint — the full reference for POST /search: every parameter and every field in the response.

What you get back#

A single call returns the answer and the sources behind it:

{
  "query": "What are the symptoms of vitamin D deficiency?",
  "trace_id": "oden-mquycpae-p3thrk",
  "cached": false,
  "results": {
    "answer": "Low vitamin D can cause muscle weakness, bone pain and fatigue, and in severe cases rickets in children or osteomalacia in adults. Mild deficiency is often symptom-free and found only through a blood test.",
    "citations": [
      { "title": "Vitamin D deficiency — 1177 Vårdguiden", "url": "https://www.1177.se/...", "score": 0.912 }
    ]
  }
}

No HTML, no page chrome, no scraped article bodies you have to clean up — extraction, passage selection and ranking all run server-side.

How ODEN is different#

One call, not a pipeline. You do not fetch links and then scrape them. The answer and its citations come back together.
Compliant at the source. ODEN checks robots.txt and the EU TDM opt-out (DSM Article 4) before a page is read, and returns citations as metadata rather than reproducing source text.
EU-native. It runs on Cloudflare Workers and is operated from Sweden.

If you are choosing between retrieval APIs, see the comparison pages and the use-case guides for RAG, LangChain, and tool use.

Base URL#

https://api.oden-api.com

All requests are POST, send and receive application/json, and require a bearer token. Get a key from your dashboard — every account starts free with 1,000 searches a month, no card required.

FAQ#

How do I authenticate with the ODEN API?#

Pass your API key as a bearer token in the Authorization header: Authorization: Bearer <key>. Create and rotate keys from your ODEN dashboard. Keep keys server-side — anyone with the key can spend your quota.

How do I get an ODEN API key?#

Sign in at oden-api.com/app and generate a key from the dashboard. Every account starts on the free tier with 1,000 searches per month and no card required.

Can I get citations without a synthesized answer?#

Yes. Send "answer": false in the request body and the response returns ranked citations only, with no synthesized answer. The answer field defaults to true.

What language does ODEN answer in?#

ODEN mirrors the language of your query. Ask in Swedish and the answer comes back in Swedish; ask in English and it answers in English, translating facts from foreign-language sources when needed.

How do I handle rate limits and 429 responses?#

When you exceed your limit the API returns HTTP 429. Back off and retry, cache repeated queries on your side, and watch the cached flag in the response — cached calls return in tens of milliseconds.

Does ODEN have an SDK?#

No SDK is required. ODEN is a plain HTTPS endpoint that sends and receives JSON, so it works from any language with an HTTP client — curl, Python requests, JavaScript fetch, or anything else.