Book search (Open Library) API

Search books by title, author, or keyword (Open Library) — title, authors, first-publish year, ISBN, cover. Complements data/isbn (direct ISBN lookup). Answers 'find books about X', 'books by author Y', 'what's the ISBN of Z', 'search for this book'.

Price$0.01per request

MethodPOST

Route/v1/data/book-search

StatusLive

MIME typeapplication/json

Rate limit60/minute

Cache86400s public

databooksopenlibrarysearchauthorisbnliteraturebibliography

API URLhttps://x402.hexl.dev/v1/data/book-search

Integration docs

Example request

{
  "query": "tolkien hobbit",
  "limit": 1
}

Example response

{
  "query": "tolkien hobbit",
  "total": 2111,
  "books": [
    {
      "title": "The Hobbit",
      "authors": [
        "J.R.R. Tolkien"
      ],
      "firstPublished": 1937,
      "isbn": "9780261103283",
      "coverUrl": "https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/…-M.jpg",
      "url": "https://openlibrary.org/works/…"
    }
  ]
}

Input schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "required": [
    "query"
  ],
  "properties": {
    "query": {
      "type": "string",
      "examples": [
        "tolkien hobbit"
      ]
    },
    "limit": {
      "type": "number",
      "default": 10
    }
  }
}

Output schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "additionalProperties": true
}