Free for academic research. Bearer-auth across every endpoint.

.edu / .gov email + citation TOS.

1. Visit /signup/researcher and submit your institutional email + citation TOS acceptance.
2. Copy the API key shown ONCE on the success page (we don’t store the plaintext).
3. Click the activation link in your email (24h expiry).
4. Start using your key on any /api/v1/* endpoint.

Allowlisted domains: .edu, .gov, .ac.uk, .ac.jp, .ac.kr, .ac.za, .edu.au, .edu.cn, .edu.sg, .edu.hk, .edu.tw, .edu.in. For non-academic-domain institutional access, contact our team via /contact.

Authorization: Bearer header.

Every protected operation under https://fonteum.com/api/v1/* requires the Bearer header. Only operations on the explicit public allowlist are key-exempt:

Authorization: Bearer fnt_<your-key>

Same header pattern across all tiers (researcher / standard / institutional). The key’s tier is server-side metadata; consumers don’t need to pick a header per tier.

Tier scales the per-minute + per-day window.

• Public allowlist: no key; limited to explicitly designated discovery, status, provenance, transparency, chain, and bulk-download operations.
• Researcher (Bearer key tier=researcher, email_verified): 300 req/min, 10,000 req/day per key.
• Standard (paid Bearer key): negotiated per agreement.
• Institutional (reserved for future enterprise tier).

Rate-limit headers on every response surface the current usage:

X-RateLimit-Limit-Minute: 300
X-RateLimit-Remaining-Minute: 287
X-RateLimit-Limit-Day: 10000
X-RateLimit-Remaining-Day: 9942
X-RateLimit-Reset-At: 2026-05-10T17:42:31.000Z

On 429 (rate-limit exceeded), responses include Retry-After in seconds. Back off + retry per the standard HTTP pattern.

Cite Fonteum in any publication that uses the API.

Researcher signups accept the citation TOS at signup time (an explicit checkbox; the version is recorded on the api_keys row). The model relies on academic norms — no bot-driven enforcement, no retroactive takedowns. Three citation formats (APA, AMA, BibTeX) at /cite.

For papers that need version-specific reproducibility, cite the specific methodology version your data came from. Recorded version entries are dated on /methodology/changelog; the changelog is not a universal archive of every historical dataset state. Where a separate snapshot attestation exists, inspect it independently at /chain; provenance facts do not currently link deterministically to those signatures.

For shell scripting + ad-hoc lookups.

# Resolve an NPI to its canonical PECOS-ID
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer fnt_..." \
  https://fonteum.com/api/v1/identity/nppes/1245319599

# Aggregate identity stats
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer fnt_..." \
  https://fonteum.com/api/v1/identity/stats

# Snapshot integrity check
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer fnt_..." \
  https://fonteum.com/verify/123

stdlib fetch.

// Node 18+ (built-in fetch)
const KEY = process.env.FONTEUM_API_KEY; // fnt_...

const res = await fetch("https://fonteum.com/api/v1/identity/nppes/1245319599", {
  headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${KEY}` },
});
if (!res.ok) {
  console.error("API error:", res.status, await res.text());
  process.exit(1);
}
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);

stdlib + requests.

# Python 3.10+ (stdlib + requests)
import os
import requests

KEY = os.environ["FONTEUM_API_KEY"]  # fnt_...

res = requests.get(
    "https://fonteum.com/api/v1/identity/nppes/1245319599",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {KEY}"},
)
res.raise_for_status()
print(res.json())

httr + jsonlite.

# R 4.0+ (httr + jsonlite)
library(httr)
library(jsonlite)

key <- Sys.getenv("FONTEUM_API_KEY")  # fnt_...

res <- GET(
  "https://fonteum.com/api/v1/identity/nppes/1245319599",
  add_headers(Authorization = paste("Bearer", key))
)
stop_for_status(res)
data <- fromJSON(content(res, "text", encoding = "UTF-8"))
print(data)

For analyst stacks: pull any dataset as CSV/JSON from Fonteum's /data or query the FHIR R4 API directly from R / Python / SQL over plain HTTP — no SDK or package install required.

Phase 1 ships the tier. Phases 2-3 add discovery + lifecycle.

• Phase 1 (this wave): signup flow + activation email + Bearer auth + 300/10000 rate limits + /cite + /researchers + this page.
• §sprint3-citation-discovery-pipeline (queued): automated detection of papers citing Fonteum via OpenAlex API. Auto-populates /researchers featured-citations list.
• §sprint3-orcid-integration (queued): attested researcher identity via ORCID OAuth.
• §sprint3-researcher-key-rotation (queued): per-researcher key rotation UI (current: lost keys → operator re-issues).
• §sprint3-tier-expansion (queued): additional tiers (institutional / press).