Search for clinical trials. Trial records come from ClinicalTrials.gov.

Pass trialFilters to narrow by phase, recruitment status, or whether the trial has posted results. Set searchMode to "keyword" to use ClinicalTrials.gov advanced-search syntax, such as AREA[Condition]"obesity", rather than a natural-language query.

Filters and searchMode: "keyword" are mutually exclusive — put filter expressions directly into the query when using keyword search. Mixing them returns a 400.

To search academic papers instead, use POST /api/v2/search/papers.

Limits

maxResults defaults to 10. Search returns up to that many results in one response; it does not provide a pagination cursor. Each plan caps how many results a single request may return. A value above your plan's cap returns 400 invalid_request rather than being silently reduced:

Search is rate-limited only by the global limit of 100 requests per minute per IP address, applied across all endpoints and all plans. Exceeding it returns a 429 and blocks the IP for 5 minutes.

Upgrade your plan in account settings for higher per-request result caps.

Example

curl -X POST https://elicit.com/api/v2/search/trials \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer elk_live_your_key_here" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "semaglutide obesity", "trialFilters": {"phase": ["PHASE3"]}}'

{
  "query": "GLP-1 receptor agonists for weight loss",
  "searchMode": "semantic",
  "trialFilters": {
    "phase": [
      "PHASE2",
      "PHASE3"
    ],
    "recruitmentStatus": [
      "RECRUITING",
      "ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING"
    ],
    "hasResults": true
  }
}

{
  "trials": [
    {
      "nctId": "NCT05646706",
      "url": "https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05646706"
    }
  ]
}