---
title: "API overview"
canonical_url: "https://www.nutrient.io/guides/dws-data-extraction/api-overview/"
md_url: "https://www.nutrient.io/guides/dws-data-extraction/api-overview.md"
last_updated: "2026-06-11T00:00:00.000Z"
description: "DWS Data Extraction API base URL, authentication, and available capabilities."
---

# API overview

Nutrient hosts the DWS Data Extraction API at `https://api.nutrient.io`. Use this HTTP API to extract structured content and domain-specific data from documents.

## Base URL

Use this base URL for all Data Extraction API endpoints:

```

https://api.nutrient.io

```

All endpoints are relative to this base URL.

## Authentication

Include your API key in the `Authorization` header with every request:

```

Authorization: Bearer pdf_live_...

```

Get API keys from the [Data Extraction API dashboard](https://dashboard.nutrient.io/). Use keys that start with `pdf_live_` for production. Use keys that start with `pdf_test_` for testing with limitations.

## Available endpoints

The API provides the endpoints below for parsing documents and extracting schema-shaped data.

| Endpoint                     | Description                                                                                                                                                                               |
| ---------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| [POST /extraction/parse](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/dws-data-extraction/parsing.md)   | Extracts structured elements or Markdown from documents. Supports four processing modes: `text`, `structure`, `understand`, and `agentic`. Supports spatial elements and Markdown output. |
| [POST /extraction/extract](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/dws-data-extraction/extract.md) | Extracts domain-specific JSON data from documents and maps it to your JSON Schema, with optional per-field citations.                                                                     |

## Further details

Use these guides to continue configuring the Data Extraction API:

- Refer to the [supported languages](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/dws-data-extraction/supported-languages.md) guide for the full list of 100+ optical character recognition (OCR) languages with ISO codes and aliases.

- Refer to the [supported file types](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/dws-data-extraction/file-types.md) guide for PDFs, images, and Office files accepted by the API.

- Refer to the [error handling](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/dws-data-extraction/errors.md) guide for HTTP status codes, error response formats, and troubleshooting.
---

## Related pages

- [Error handling](/guides/dws-data-extraction/errors.md)
- [Supported file types](/guides/dws-data-extraction/file-types.md)
- [Get started](/guides/dws-data-extraction/getting-started.md)
- [DWS Data Extraction API](/guides/dws-data-extraction.md)
- [Privacy](/guides/dws-data-extraction/privacy.md)
- [Support](/guides/dws-data-extraction/support.md)
- [Security](/guides/dws-data-extraction/security.md)
- [Supported languages](/guides/dws-data-extraction/supported-languages.md)