shouldiuse.io

VERDICT

Should I use Crossref?

Open infrastructure linking the world's research. 25,000+ members, 167 countries, 2.1 billion monthly API queries. - crossref.org

Depends. Join if you publish journals or research outputs and need DOIs — Crossref is the field's default infrastructure. Skip it if you're not a publishing organization; the free metadata API is all you'd ever touch.

Confidence

Medium. Based on ~40 public sources; official docs dominate, independent user reviews are thin.

Ratings

  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Feature depth
  • Support quality
  • Security posture

Pricing

Membership

Annual fee, tiered by publishing revenue

ModelNot disclosed
Monthly fees2.1B
HardwareNot disclosed
Free tierYes
Content registrationPer-record DOI fees, removed Jan 2027
Metadata APIFree

Best for

  • Academic journal publishers
  • Research funders tracking grants
  • Repositories and data centers
  • Developers querying the free metadata API

Not for

  • Non-publishing businesses — this is scholarly infrastructure, not SaaS
  • Individual authors without a publishing organization behind them
  • Anyone wanting a polished paper-search app
  • Teams expecting commercial SLAs and onboarding

Gotchas - check before you buy

medium

Membership is organization-level; no individual plan for solo authors

medium

Deprecated tools redirect to a 'no longer available' page — check current docs

medium

Support runs through community forums; no commercial SLA

low

Registering before 2027 still means per-DOI fees; after, zero

Pros and cons

Pros

  • The scholarly-metadata standard: 2.1 billion monthly API queries
  • Public REST API is free for anyone to query
  • SOC 2 accredited for data integrity and security
  • DOI registration fees lowered, then removed, January 2027
  • Membership fees tiered to your publishing revenue

Cons

  • Membership required before you can register any DOIs
  • Fees are revenue-tiered, not a simple price list
  • Legacy tools deprecated and redirecting to dead pages
  • Metadata Manager access problems reported in member forums

Sources & method

Analyzed 9/24/2026 - 12 sources - No known vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed.

official x8review x2security x1news x1

Key stats

  • Value for money: 4/5

    Rating

  • Annual fee, tiered by publishing revenue

    Starting price

  • 12

    Sources

  • Analyzed

  • Value for money: 4/5. Per-DOI fees drop to zero in 2027
  • Ease of use: 3/5. Member forums report setup and tooling friction
  • Feature depth: 5/5. DOIs, grants, funder registry, peer reviews, free API
  • Support quality: 3/5. Forum plus support team; no SLA evidence
  • Security posture: 4/5. SOC 2 accredited for data integrity and security
  • 25,000+ Members Across 167 countries
  • 2.1B Monthly API queries Public metadata REST API
  • $10.5M Crossref annual revenue 2024, per Wikipedia
  • $0 from Jan 2027 DOI registration fees Lowered then removed

Pricing

Membership

Annual fee, tiered by publishing revenue

  • Required to register DOIs
  • Scales with total annual publishing revenue

Content registration

Per-record DOI fees, removed Jan 2027

  • Most registration fees being lowered
  • Zero from January 2027

Metadata API

Free

  • Public REST API
  • 2.1B monthly queries

Security

No known vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed.

What users say

Developer-users tap the free API and full dataset but processing it is nontrivial, and member forums surface setup friction.

“I've downloaded this, but”
Reddit, r/rstats

Companies that use it

  • Centre Mersenne12
  • Georgia Southern University
  • Bulletin of Sumy National Agrarian University
  • PKP (Open Journal Systems community)10
Full analysis

Based on ~40 public sources; official docs dominate, independent user reviews are thin.

Field-standard DOI infrastructure for scholarly publishers; overkill — and irrelevant — for everyone else.

Methodology

Based on ~40 public sources; official docs dominate, independent user reviews are thin.

Sources

  1. Crossref homepagecrossref.org
    official
  2. Feescrossref.org
    official
  3. Become a membercrossref.org
    official
  4. Fee update: DOI fees removed Jan 2027crossref.org
    official
  5. SOC 2 accreditationcrossref.org
    security
  6. REST API documentationcrossref.org
    official
  7. Member setup documentationcrossref.org
    official
  8. Deprecated toolscrossref.org
    official
  9. Reddit r/rstats: processing the full Crossref datasetreddit.com
    review
  10. Crossref vs DataCite — PKP forumforum.pkp.sfu.ca
    review
  11. Crossref — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
    news
  12. Centre Mersenne on Crossrefcentre-mersenne.org
    official

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