Introduction

Welcome to the Cognism developer hub. Here you will find everything you need to build on Cognism data — guides that explain how the platform behaves, a full API reference you can try in the browser, and setup instructions for connecting AI assistants through MCP.

Overview

Cognism is a B2B sales intelligence platform for revenue teams. It combines company data (firmographics, technologies, funding, hiring and other events, buying-intent signals) with people data (job titles, seniority, departments, career history) and verified business contact details — emails, direct dials and phone-verified mobile numbers — with do-not-call and regional compliance rules applied on every request.

The Cognism API gives your own applications programmatic access to that data. It is a REST API over HTTPS with JSON request and response bodies, authenticated with OAuth 2.0 client credentials, and designed around one pattern: describe the companies or people you want with a declarative filter, count the result set, then retrieve records page by page. Contact details are returned only when you ask for them, so you control exactly when credits are spent.

The Cognism MCP server exposes the same capabilities to AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor. Connect it once, sign in with your Cognism account, and search in plain language with no integration work. See Cognism MCP server.

Who it is for

What you can do with the API

• Search companies — filter by industry, location, headcount, revenue, founding year, technologies in use, SIC/NAICS/ISIC codes, funding, acquisition, IPO and hiring events, and buying-intent signals. See Search companies.
• Search people — filter by job title, seniority, department, skills, location and data-quality scores, combined with any company filter in the same request. Reveal verified emails and phone numbers when you need them. See Search persons.
• Size a list before you pull it — the count endpoints return how many records match a filter without returning the records.
• Resolve filter values — the dictionaries return the exact industry, country, region, department, seniority and technology values that filters accept.
• Read your account configuration — compliance, personalization and intent topic settings applied to your account.

Before you start

• You need an active Cognism account on a package that includes API access. Your package determines which data points you can retrieve, your search-token allowance and your rate limits. Not sure whether yours does? Ask your account team.
• API access uses OAuth 2.0 client credentials (server-to-server). Generate a client_id and client_secret in the Cognism platform under Settings → M2M Connect, then exchange them for a short-lived bearer token. See Authentication.

Base URL

All endpoints are served from:

https://api.cognism.com

Requests and responses are JSON. Send Content-Type: application/json on every request with a body, and Authorization: Bearer <access_token> on every request.

Make your first request

Once you have an access token, count the companies that match a simple filter. Count requests cost no search tokens or credits.

curl --request POST \
  --url 'https://api.cognism.com/companies/filter/count' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "company": {
      "industry": { "include": ["Software"] },
      "location": { "type": "hq", "country": { "include": ["United Kingdom"] } },
      "headcount": { "gte": 200, "lte": 1000 }
    }
  }'

{
  "total": 212
}

Swap /companies/filter/count for /companies/filter to retrieve the records themselves, one page at a time.

API fundamentals

Whatever you are building, these pages describe behaviour that applies to every endpoint:

• Authentication — generate credentials, obtain a token, send it on every request.
• Endpoints — the full list of operations and what each one costs.
• Pagination — cursor pagination for walking a result set, offset pagination for numbered pages and sorting.
• Credits and search tokens — the two usage quotas, how they are metered and how to read your balance from response headers.
• Rate limits — per-operation request limits, the RateLimit-* headers and how to back off.
• Errors — the error envelope, every documented error code and what to do about each.

Using an AI assistant instead of code?

Connect Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP-compatible client to the Cognism MCP server and run the same searches in plain language — no integration work required.

Building an AI agent?

The Cognism API is well suited to agentic use: filters are declarative, dictionaries resolve natural-language values to exact ones, and counts let an agent estimate cost before spending. A reliable agent loop is dictionary → count → search → reveal contacts only for the records you need. Contact details (view=contacts) are the only operation that consumes credits, so confirm with the user before requesting them for a large result set.

Need help?

Questions about access, packages or allowances go to your Cognism account team. For technical questions about the API, contact Cognism support and include the request timestamp and, where relevant, the error code from the response.