Find the university behind an email address (student and academic verification)
Student discounts, academic pricing and research tools all need to answer the same question: does this email belong to a university, and which one? Checking for ".edu" misses most of the world (ox.ac.uk, u-tokyo.ac.jp, iitb.ac.in) and says nothing about which institution it is.
The World Universities API matches the email's domain, including subdomains like cs.stanford.edu, against the web domains of 10,000+ universities in 200 countries.
Make the request
Send your API key in the x-api-key header. Free accounts include 1,000 calls a month.
curl "https://apistack.online/api/data/world-universities-database/v1?email=jane@cs.stanford.edu" \
-H "x-api-key: $APISTACK_API_KEY"{
"success": true,
"data": {
"universities": [
{
"name": "Stanford University",
"country": "United States",
"country_code": "US",
"state_province": "California",
"web_pages": [
"https://www.stanford.edu"
],
"domains": [
"stanford.edu"
]
}
],
"pagination": {
"currentPage": 1,
"totalItems": 1
}
}
}Response abridged: some fields (timestamps, metadata) omitted.
Email, domain or URL
Pass email=jane@cs.stanford.edu or domain=stanford.edu. Subdomains match their university (cs.stanford.edu → stanford.edu), and so do country-style domains such as ox.ac.uk or iitb.ac.in. An empty list means no university uses that domain.
A domain proves less than a login
A matching domain shows the address belongs to a university, not that the person is a current student. For discounts, send a verification code to the address too: the API tells you which school it is, the code proves they can read that inbox.
Browse instead of look up
The same endpoint lists universities by country, name or city: country=Germany&limit=20, name=Technology, or search=Tokyo. Every result includes official web pages and domains.
Give it to your AI agent
The same API is available as an MCP tool. Add APIStack to Claude, Cursor, VS Code or any MCP client:
{
"mcpServers": {
"apistack": {
"url": "https://apistack.online/api/mcp/connect",
"headers": { "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY" }
}
}
}Then ask: “Which university does the email address jane@cs.stanford.edu belong to?” See MCP setup for every client.