API reference

Prospect research

Written and maintained by The ProspectAPIs team

The prospect research API returns a structured brief on one prospect from a single identifier, such as a domain, an email or a LinkedIn URL, for account research, a sales call or outreach. Every field carries the sources that state it and a confidence score. A field the sources do not support is null, never a guess.

POST /v1/research

Send exactly one identifier (or person_name with company_name). URLs must be http(s) on a public host. Unknown fields are a 400.

curl -X POST https://api.prospectapis.com/v1/research \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PROSPECTAPIS_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "email": "jane@acme.com",
    "purpose": "pre_call",
    "context": "We sell route planning software for mid-size 3PLs"
  }'

{ "research_id": "7f3c2a90-...", "status": "queued", "estimated_seconds": 60 }

Keep the research_id. If you lose the response and submit again you pay for two jobs, so poll rather than resubmit.

GET /v1/research/:id

Free, and only your own account's jobs are visible (any other id is a 404). Status moves from queued to running to completed or failed. Poll every 10 to 15 seconds.

{
  "research_id": "7f3c2a90-...",
  "status": "completed",
  "input": { "email": "jane@acme.com", "purpose": "pre_call" },
  "result": {
    "company": {
      "description": {
        "value": "Warehouse robots for mid-size 3PLs",
        "sources": [{
          "url": "https://acme.com/about",
          "title": "About Acme",
          "kind": "site",
          "retrieved_at": "2026-10-01T09:14:02Z"
        }],
        "confidence": 0.9
      }
    },
    "funding": { ... },
    "fit": {
      "discovery_questions": [ ... ],
      "likely_objections": [ ... ]
    }
  },
  "error": null,
  "created_at": "2026-10-01T09:13:20Z",
  "completed_at": "2026-10-01T09:14:05Z"
}

The example is abridged and the company is fictional.

What a brief contains

The fit section and purpose

fit appears only when you send context. It keeps three kinds of statement apart: FACT (what a source states, always cited), INTERPRETATION (what the facts suggest) and ANGLE (a suggestion for you), so a sales suggestion never reads as a fact.

The social section

social covers two platforms. social.x reads the X account the company's own homepage links to, never one found by search: handle, followers, bio, posting cadence in posts per week, recent topics and notable posts. social.reddit reads Reddit threads that are evidently about the company: mention_count_90d, top threads with their subreddit and a one-line summary, the communities they sit in, and a tone (positive, mixed or negative) with the basis it rests on.

Counts, followers, cadence, titles and subreddits are computed from the platform data, not written by the model. A platform we found nothing on is left out of the section, and with neither the section is absent. mention_count_90d counts the matching threads we read, so treat it as a floor. It is part of the same brief at the same price.

How citations are enforced

The brief is written only from the pages we read for it: the company's homepage and up to five linked pages, news and competitor searches, our funding table, the company's X account and Reddit threads that mention it. A value that cites no source, an unknown source or a source that was not read is dropped before the brief is saved. News, risks and people may not rest on a search snippet, a Reddit thread or someone else's X post alone. Confidence follows the strongest source kind: the company's own site and our funding table rank highest, a search snippet or another person's post lowest.

A search result or a Reddit thread counts only when it is on or links to the company's domain, names the domain, or names the company as whole words. Less information beats information about the wrong company.

Billing and failures

Submitting holds $0.15. The hold is charged when the brief completes and refunded in full if it fails or does not finish within five minutes. Free funding records do not apply to research. A failed job's error is a fixed message per cause, such as company_not_identified or company_site_unreadable.

Not in this version

Webhooks on completion, batch submit, an idempotency key on submit, platforms beyond X and Reddit, and paid people data.

Next steps

Create a free account to get a key. The quickstart covers authentication and errors, and pricing lists every price. A brief's funding section reads the same table as the funding signals API. To see the same research done by hand, read our guide to sales prospect research.