Crossref API Comparison: Speed, Cost, and Data Quality

TL;DR If you're choosing between academic search APIs that wrap Crossref data, three things matter: response latency (does it scale to bulk lookups?), monthly cost (is the free tier real?), and data shape (one call or three?). I ran benchmarks across the available wrappers — here's what the numbers say. Why a Crossref wrapper at all? The free Crossref REST API at api.crossref.org is generous and well-documented. So why pay for a wrapper? Three reasons most teams end up with one: Polite-Pool late