Europeana Search & Record API

{
  "service_type": "platform",
  "base_url": "https://api.europeana.eu",
  "auth_method": "api_key",
  "auth_config": {
    "api_key_param": "wskey",
    "registration_url": "https://pro.europeana.eu/pages/get-api"
  },
  "endpoints": [
    {
      "name": "Search",
      "path": "/record/v2/search.json",
      "method": "GET",
      "description": "Search Europeana collections with facet-based filtering (dates, geotags, media type, etc.)"
    },
    {
      "name": "Record",
      "path": "/record/v2/{collectionId}/{recordId}.json",
      "method": "GET",
      "description": "Retrieve a single enriched record in JSON-LD or other formats"
    },
    {
      "name": "Record (legacy)",
      "path": "/record/v2/{recordId}.json",
      "method": "GET",
      "description": "Retrieve a single record by full Europeana ID"
    }
  ],
  "pricing_model": {
    "type": "freemium",
    "details": {
      "free_tier": "Free API key with standard rate limits for non-commercial and most commercial uses",
      "commercial": "Higher limits / SLA available via Europeana Pro partnership",
      "notes": "Open data under various licenses; API key required"
    }
  },
  "rate_limits": {
    "default": "10 requests/second per API key (approximate; tier-dependent)",
    "notes": "Higher limits negotiated for partners; throttling enforced via API key"
  },
  "capabilities": [
    "Full-text search across aggregated cultural heritage metadata",
    "Faceted search (dates, geotags, provider, data provider, media type, language, etc.)",
    "Single record retrieval with enrichment (JSON-LD, RDF/XML, etc.)",
    "Cursor-based deep pagination",
    "Multilingual metadata (hundreds of languages from European institutions)",
    "IIIF / media links where available",
    "SPARQL endpoint for linked data queries",
    "OAI-PMH harvesting for metadata bulk access",
    "Swagger/OpenAPI console for interactive testing"
  ],
  "raw_analysis": "Europeana is the EU-funded digital platform for cultural heritage, aggregating metadata from museums, libraries, archives, and galleries across Europe. The Europeana Search & Record API is a mature, production-grade REST API exposed via a Swagger/OpenAPI console, allowing developers to build applications on top of roughly 50+ million items.\n\nThe API is not a general-purpose 'platform tool' without a public API — it very much does have a documented REST API, backed by an OpenAPI spec and an interactive Swagger console at europeana.eu. Authentication is via a free API key (`wskey` query parameter), obtained through Europeana Pro registration. Endpoints center on search (with rich faceting) and record retrieval, with formats including JSON-LD.\n\nKey integration surfaces: REST (Search & Record API), SPARQL (for linked-data queries), OAI-PMH (for bulk harvesting), and IIIF for media. The platform is mature (operating since 2008), well-documented, and widely used in digital humanities, education, and cultural heritage apps. Pricing is effectively freemium: free with fair-use rate limits, with higher limits and support available through partnership. Rate limits are enforced per API key and vary by tier; the default is around 10 req/s. No OAuth flows; key-based auth only. Ideal developer audience: DH researchers, GLAM institutions, app builders needing European cultural metadata."
}

2/3 tests passed

{
  "overall": 72,
  "dimensions": {
    "token_efficiency": 8.0,
    "first_try_success": 7.0,
    "response_parseability": 9.0,
    "error_clarity": 7.5,
    "doc_quality": 8.0,
    "auth_simplicity": 6.5,
    "latency": 5.5,
    "consistency": 7.5
  },
  "pricing_normalized": {
    "model": "freemium",
    "free_tier": "Free API key with standard rate limits",
    "paid_tier": "Higher limits / SLA via Europeana Pro partnership",
    "notes": "Open data under various licenses; API key required for all use"
  },
  "issues": [
    "robots_txt check returned HTML (SSR app shell) instead of plaintext robots.txt — suggests robots.txt path may not resolve cleanly or is proxied through the SPA",
    "llms_txt 404 — no agent-oriented discovery file",
    "Homepage latency 1552ms exceeds the <2s threshold slightly (site is an SSR Nuxt app; slow first paint)",
    "API key required even for basic access adds a signup step vs. fully open endpoints",
    "Commercial/SLA tier requires partnership conversation rather than self-serve upgrade"
  ],
  "recommendations": [
    "Publish an llms.txt and clean robots.txt to improve agent crawler discoverability",
    "Reduce homepage SSR TTFB (edge caching) to get latency under 1s",
    "Offer instant self-serve API key issuance with clear rate-limit tiers to maximize first-try success",
    "Surface OpenAPI/Swagger schema prominently so agents can programmatically generate clients",
    "Document error codes and rate-limit headers explicitly for parseable failure handling"
  ]
}