Free tier
A free trademark API with no key required
Most 'free' trademark APIs want a signup, a key, and a card before the first request. Markbase gives you 1,000 requests a month against the full 14M-record USPTO index with no key at all — and 5,000 a month if you sign up free.
Last updated July 2026
Your first request
No key, no header, no account:
curl "https://api.markbase.co/search?q=nike"
The response includes each mark's serial number, registration number, live/dead status, filing and registration dates, owner, international classes, and goods & services text — plus how long the query took (typically tens of milliseconds).
What's in the free tiers
| Limit | No key | Free account | Launch | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Requests / month | 1,000 | 5,000 | 50,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Requests / minute | 30 | 60 | 120 | 600 |
| Results / search | 10 | 25 | 100 | 1,000 |
| Endpoints | all | all | all | all |
| Price | $0 | $0 | $49/mo | $149/mo |
Every response carries X-Quota-Remaining and X-RateLimit-* headers, so you always know where you stand — no surprise cutoffs.
What people build on it
The free tiers are deliberately full-featured: brand-name generators that screen suggestions against live marks, domain registrars flagging trademark conflicts at checkout, internal legal tools that autocomplete mark names, and AI agents that call /clearance before proposing a company name.
When a prototype becomes a product, the paid tiers change the volume — not the API. Nothing to rewrite.
Send your first request now
It's one curl command. The response is live USPTO data.
Frequently asked questions
Is the free trademark API actually free?
Yes, and there are two ways to use it. Without any API key you get 1,000 requests a month — no signup, no card. Sign up for a free account and that becomes 5,000 requests a month with a permanent key. Neither costs anything.
What are the free tier limits?
Keyless: 1,000 requests/month, 30 per minute, 10 results per search. With a free account: 5,000 requests/month, 60 per minute, 25 results per search. Paid plans go to 50,000 or 1,000,000 requests a month with up to 1,000 results per search.
Do I need to sign up?
Not to try it — every endpoint works from curl with no key. Signing up is free and gets you 10x the monthly quota, a permanent API key, and a dashboard showing your usage.
Which endpoints work on the free tier?
All of them — search, suggest, trademark lookup, owner, clearance, aggregate, and classes. The free tiers limit volume, not capability.
Where does the data come from?
The USPTO's public daily bulk data files, ingested every day into a dedicated search index covering 14M+ live and dead US trademarks.
Can I use it in production?
The free tiers are sized for prototypes and evaluation. Once you're serving real traffic, Launch is $49/mo for 50,000 requests and Scale is $149/mo for 1,000,000.