# edu-verify

> edu-verify is a paid API for AI agents from payai.agentstools.dev, paid per call via x402, $0.02/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-14).

Verify whether a US college or university is accredited, flag potential diploma mills, and return recognized accreditors, operating status, and confidence scores.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://payai.agentstools.dev/edu/verify
- Price: $0.02/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-14
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/edu-verify-b9a9c9c9
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_42Q0nSsYb9vHCEyGyRhcH

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability edu-verify-b9a9c9c9
```

Example prompt: Can you check whether Ashford University is accredited — its domain is ashford.edu — and let me know if it might be a diploma mill?

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need a deterministic, source-cited accreditation verdict for a US college or university — especially when evaluating diploma mill risk. Prefer it over general web searches when you need structured flags (is_accredited, diploma_mill_flag) rather than unstructured text, and when you want confidence scores backed by official Department of Education data rather than LLM inference.

## Known failure modes

- Institution not found in database — fuzzy name match may fail for uncommon or misspelled names
- Ambiguous name match returns wrong institution — use OPEID or IPEDS for precision
- Non-US institutions will not be found — only US colleges and universities are covered
- Stale accreditation data if the database is not recently updated
- Invalid or unrecognized domain returns no match

## How this service works

Verify a US college or university is accredited and get a diploma-mill verdict. Give one of name, opeid, ipeds or domain plus an optional claimed_accreditor; get back an is_accredited flag, the recognized accreditors, a diploma_mill_flag with weighted signals, operating status, a confidence and cited sources. Deterministic, no LLM.

## Output

Returns an is_accredited boolean flag, a list of recognized accreditors for the institution, a diploma_mill_flag with weighted signals explaining the verdict, the institution's operating status, a confidence score, and cited sources — all computed deterministically without an LLM.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "GET",
      "HEAD",
      "DELETE"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "required": [],
     "properties": {
      "name": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Institution name (fuzzy match)"
      },
      "ipeds": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "IPEDS unit id (College Scorecard id)"
      },
      "opeid": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Office of Postsecondary Education ID (OPEID)"
      },
      "domain": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Web domain, e.g. harvard.edu"
      },
      "claimed_accreditor": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Optional claimed accreditor, checked vs the ED list"
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/edu-verify-b9a9c9c9/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from payai.agentstools.dev](https://www.zero.xyz/host/payai.agentstools.dev/llms.txt)