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The OpenAlex CLI is the official command-line tool for downloading data from OpenAlex. It handles parallel downloads, checkpointing, and rate limiting so you don’t have to build that yourself. 
pip install openalex-official
Work in progress. The CLI currently focuses on work metadata and content downloads. More features (CSV export, other entity types) are coming. Follow development on GitHub.

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Quick examples

Download metadata for works on a topic: 
openalex download \
  --api-key YOUR_KEY \
  --output ./frogs \
  --filter "topics.id:T10325"
Download metadata + PDFs: 
openalex download \
  --api-key YOUR_KEY \
  --output ./frogs \
  --filter "topics.id:T10325" \
  --content pdf
Download metadata + PDFs + TEI XML: 
openalex download \
  --api-key YOUR_KEY \
  --output ./frogs \
  --filter "topics.id:T10325" \
  --content pdf,xml
Download by DOI: 
openalex download \
  --api-key YOUR_KEY \
  --output ./my-papers \
  --ids "10.1038/nature12373,10.1126/science.1234567"
Pipe in a list of work IDs: 
cat work_ids.txt | openalex download \
  --api-key YOUR_KEY \
  --output ./corpus \
  --stdin

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Output format

Metadata is saved as JSON files alongside any content you requested: 
output/
├── W2741809807.json     # metadata (always saved)
├── W2741809807.pdf      # content (if --content pdf)
├── W2741809807.tei.xml  # content (if --content xml)
└── W1234567890.json

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Why use the CLI?

Building a robust bulk downloader is harder than it looks. The CLI handles:
  • Metadata by default — Every work gets a complete JSON file
  • Parallel downloads — Up to 200 concurrent connections
  • Automatic checkpointing — Resume interrupted downloads without re-downloading
  • Adaptive rate limiting — Adjusts to API conditions automatically
  • DOI resolution — Auto-detects DOIs and converts them to OpenAlex IDs
  • Progress tracking — Real-time stats in your terminal
At full speed, you can download thousands of works per hour.

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Pricing

Download typeCost
MetadataFree
PDFs$0.01 each
TEI XML$0.01 each
With a free API key ($1/day), you can download unlimited metadata and about 100 content files per day. Need more content? Contact us about enterprise pricing for large-scale projects.

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Full documentation

For all options and advanced usage: 
openalex download --help
See the GitHub README for complete documentation.