# Wolfram|Alpha Short Answer

> Wolfram|Alpha Short Answer is a paid API for AI agents from Wolfram|Alpha at wolframalpha.mpp.paywithlocus.com, paid per call via MPP, $0.055/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-11, last successful call 2026-04-20).

Returns a single plain-text short answer to a natural language factual or computational query using Wolfram|Alpha's knowledge engine

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://wolframalpha.mpp.paywithlocus.com/wolframalpha/short-answer?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.055/call
- Payment: MPP
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-11
- Last successful call: 2026-04-20
- Success rate: 100% of calls made through Zero
- Rating: 4.3 / 5 from 1 review
- Activations on Zero: 1
- Provider: Wolfram|Alpha
- Docs: https://products.wolframalpha.com/api
- Website: https://www.wolframalpha.com
- Tags: computation, math, science, knowledge-engine, data
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/wolfram-alpha-short-answer-2249c05d
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_dDn9A6kI_aW-7YOFGWm0g

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 wolfram-alpha-short-answer-2249c05d -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Ask Wolfram|Alpha to compute the distance from Earth to Neptune in kilometers and give me just the short answer.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need a single, concise text answer to a factual, mathematical, scientific, or computational question and don't need structured data, images, or spoken audio. Prefer this over Full Results when you only need the bottom-line answer and want minimal response payload. Prefer over Spoken when text (not audio) is needed. Ideal for quick lookups, unit conversions, calculations, and factual queries where a one-line answer suffices.

## Known failure modes

- Query not understood or no result available — Wolfram|Alpha may return empty or null text
- Timeout exceeded — if the computation takes longer than the specified timeout (default 5s), no result is returned
- Ambiguous query — may return an unexpected interpretation's answer without clarification
- Network or service unavailability — HTTP 5xx error
- Invalid input schema — missing required 'i' field returns validation error

## How this service works

Get a brief plain text answer to any question. Returns a single line of text — ideal for quick lookups and calculations.

## Output

A plain-text string containing a concise, direct answer to the query — e.g. 'Berlin, Germany' for a capital city question or a numeric result for a math query. The response includes a success boolean and the answer text nested under data.text.

## Example request

```json
{
 "i": "what is the capital of France",
 "units": "metric",
 "timeout": 5
}
```

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "required": [
  "i"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "i": {
   "type": "string",
   "description": "Natural language query (e.g. \"population of france\", \"distance to mars\")"
  },
  "units": {
   "type": "string",
   "description": "\"metric\" or \"imperial\""
  },
  "timeout": {
   "type": "number",
   "description": "Max seconds to process (default 5)"
  }
 },
 "additionalProperties": true
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/wolfram-alpha-short-answer-2249c05d/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from wolframalpha.mpp.paywithlocus.com](https://www.zero.xyz/host/wolframalpha.mpp.paywithlocus.com/llms.txt)