Jina AI APIs

What it does

Jina AI offers search foundation APIs that take URLs, search queries, text, and images and return output ready for LLMs and retrieval systems. The Reader API converts a URL to clean text when you prepend r.jina.ai, s.jina.ai searches the web and returns results as LLM-friendly text, the Embeddings API turns text or images into fixed-length vectors, and the Reranker API ranks documents against a query.

Developers use these endpoints in retrieval-augmented generation pipelines, search applications, and agent workflows. An MCP server at mcp.jina.ai lets LLM clients call the APIs directly. Reader exposes many request controls, including CSS selectors, cookie forwarding, proxy settings, cache controls, and an optional OCR mode that costs 40 times more tokens.

Basic Reader use works without a key at a lower rate limit. An API key raises rate limits, and usage is charged in tokens that you top up. Organizations that need models inside their own infrastructure can buy a Jina On-Prem commercial license through Elastic Sales. Jina AI is now part of Elastic, and model licenses vary, so check each model's license before production use.

What it can do

• Convert a URL to LLM-friendly text with the Reader API
• Search the web and return results as LLM-friendly text
• Generate multimodal multilingual embeddings from text and images
• Rank documents by relevance to a query with the Reranker API
• Use Reader request controls such as CSS selectors, timeouts, and cached-content tolerance
• Connect LLM clients through the mcp.jina.ai MCP server

Before you choose

• Rate limits are enforced per IP or API key by requests per minute and tokens per minute, whichever is reached first.
• Some Reader options such as OCR cost substantially more tokens; the page notes OCR costs 40× more tokens.
• Model licenses differ: most open models are CC-BY-NC 4.0, so commercial production use needs a commercial license, and jina-embeddings-v4 carries a research license with no commercial use.

Listed under

• Coding

Get started

Sign up for an API key on the site to raise rate limits and top up tokens.

1. Open the Jina AI site and sign in to get an API key from the API Key & Billing page.
2. Call the Reader endpoint by prepending https://r.jina.ai/ to a URL, adding the API key header for higher limits.
3. Review the rate limit table to choose requests-per-minute and tokens-per-minute limits for each endpoint.

Reader is free for basic usage; supplying an API key raises rate limits and charges tokens based on content length. Search requests cost a fixed number of tokens, starting from 10,000. Tokens are topped up as you go, and charges may be in USD, EUR, or other currencies depending on location, with taxes possibly applying. Jina On-Prem is an annual license quoted through Elastic Sales.

Source: jina.ai/en-US/contact-sales, checked 29 Oct 2026. Prices can change; check before you buy.

Sources for this overview

Product pages, documentation, and pricing checked 29 Oct 2026. Each source supports part of the overview; availability and prices can change.

• Jina AI - Your Search Foundation, Supercharged. ↗jina.ai
• About Jina AI - Jina AI ↗jina.ai
• Contact sales - Jina AI ↗jina.ai

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Last checked 29 Oct 2026. Every field keeps its source and date; unknown means we couldn’t confirm it.