# OpenAlex Institution Search

> OpenAlex Institution Search is a paid API for AI agents from clonecho.builda.company, paid per call via x402, $0.02/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-14).

Searches OpenAlex for research institutions matching a query string, returning institution names and country codes.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://clonecho.builda.company/x402/s/openalex-institutions
- 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/openalex-institution-search-27b4d169
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_1ivbj0GzCoZp2ydbcfRjg

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 openalex-institution-search-27b4d169 -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Search OpenAlex for research institutions matching 'MIT' and tell me their names and country codes.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need to search for research institutions by name and retrieve their country codes, especially when integrating with academic or bibliometric workflows powered by OpenAlex data. Prefer this over manual lookups or general web search when structured, machine-readable institution data is needed.

## Known failure modes

- Empty query string returns no results or an error
- Misspelled institution name returns zero matches
- Very common query terms may return too many or ambiguous results
- Network timeout if OpenAlex API is slow
- Payment failure (402) if USDC balance is insufficient

## How this service works

Searches OpenAlex for research institutions matching q, returning names and country codes. Query: ?q= Returns JSON.

## Output

A JSON array of research institutions matching the query, each containing the institution name and its ISO country code.

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/openalex-institution-search-27b4d169/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from clonecho.builda.company](https://www.zero.xyz/host/clonecho.builda.company/llms.txt)