Monitor API Quickstart

Define a query once and Monitor continuously watches the web for new, relevant updates—surfacing only what changed and delivering it to your systems via webhook. No cron jobs, no manual polling, no custom deduplication pipelines. Use cases:

Finance and investing: Fund activity, M&A signals, earnings releases, new investment announcements
People and companies: Executive changes, hiring signals, office openings, competitive product launches
Sciences: Clinical trial updates, regulatory submissions, drug pipeline changes, research publications
Legal and policy: Regulatory rule changes, enforcement actions, compliance updates across jurisdictions
eCommerce: Pricing changes, stock availability, product listing updates
Real estate: Listing changes, zoning updates, market reports

Best Practices

Scope your query: Intent-heavy natural language outperforms keyword strings. Describe what you’re looking for, not how to find it.
Choose the right frequency: "1h" for fast-moving topics, "1d" for most news and signals, "1w" for slower changes.
Pick a processor: "lite" (default) handles routine queries; "base" increases recall and breadth for harder queries, at higher cost.
Use webhooks: Push delivery is lower latency than polling and requires no infrastructure to maintain.
Cancel unused monitors: Reduces usage costs.
Don’t use for historical research: Monitor tracks new updates from the time of creation. Use Deep Research for retrospective queries.

Writing Effective Queries

❌ Avoid	✅ Prefer
`"Parallel OR Parallel AI AND Funding OR Launch"`	`"Parallel Web Systems (parallel.ai) funding or launch announcements"`
`"Find all AI funding news from the last 2 years"`	`"AI startup funding announcements"`
`"Tesla news after December 12, 2025"`	`"Tesla news and announcements"`

Prerequisites

Generate your API key on Platform. Python and TypeScript SDKs are also available (pip install parallel-web / npm install parallel-web).

export PARALLEL_API_KEY="PARALLEL_API_KEY"

Event Stream Quickstart

Step 1. Create a monitor

Create a monitor that tracks daily AI funding news:

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.parallel.ai/v1/monitors \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --header "x-api-key: $PARALLEL_API_KEY" \
  --data '{
    "type": "event_stream",
    "frequency": "1d",
    "processor": "lite",
    "settings": {
      "query": "AI startup funding announcements"
    },
    "webhook": {
      "url": "https://example.com/webhook",
      "event_types": ["monitor.event.detected"]
    },
    "metadata": { "external_id": "acme-monitor-001" }
  }'

import os
from parallel import Parallel

client = Parallel(api_key=os.environ["PARALLEL_API_KEY"])

monitor = client.monitor.create(
    type="event_stream",
    frequency="1d",
    processor="lite",
    settings={"query": "AI startup funding announcements"},
    webhook={
        "url": "https://example.com/webhook",
        "event_types": ["monitor.event.detected"],
    },
    metadata={"external_id": "acme-monitor-001"},
)
print(f"Monitor ID: {monitor.monitor_id}")

import Parallel from "parallel-web";

const client = new Parallel({ apiKey: process.env.PARALLEL_API_KEY });

const monitor = await client.monitor.create({
  type: "event_stream",
  frequency: "1d",
  processor: "lite",
  settings: { query: "AI startup funding announcements" },
  webhook: {
    url: "https://example.com/webhook",
    event_types: ["monitor.event.detected"],
  },
  metadata: { external_id: "acme-monitor-001" },
});

console.log(`Monitor ID: ${monitor.monitor_id}`);

Response:

{
  "monitor_id": "monitor_b0079f70195e4258a3b982c1b6d8bd3a",
  "type": "event_stream",
  "status": "active",
  "frequency": "1d",
  "processor": "lite",
  "settings": {
    "query": "AI startup funding announcements"
  },
  "webhook": {
    "url": "https://example.com/webhook",
    "event_types": ["monitor.event.detected"]
  },
  "metadata": { "external_id": "acme-monitor-001" },
  "created_at": "2025-04-23T20:21:48.037943Z"
}

The monitor runs once immediately at creation, then continues on the configured schedule.

Step 2. Receive and retrieve events

When a change is detected, your webhook receives:

{
  "type": "monitor.event.detected",
  "timestamp": "2025-12-10T19:00:36.199543+00:00",
  "data": {
    "monitor_id": "monitor_b0079f70195e4258a3b982c1b6d8bd3a",
    "event": {
      "event_group_id": "mevtgrp_35ab7d16b00f412b9d6b6c0eff1f49733b5cf0b02056a29c"
    },
    "metadata": { "external_id": "acme-monitor-001" }
  }
}

data.event.event_group_id identifies the execution to fetch.
data.monitor_id identifies which monitor fired.
data.metadata echoes what you set at creation, useful for routing to a downstream system.

Fetch the events for that execution:

curl --request GET \
  --url "https://api.parallel.ai/v1/monitors/${MONITOR_ID}/events?event_group_id=${EVENT_GROUP_ID}" \
  --header "x-api-key: $PARALLEL_API_KEY"

import os
from parallel import Parallel

client = Parallel(api_key=os.environ["PARALLEL_API_KEY"])

result = client.monitor.events(
    monitor_id,
    event_group_id=event_group_id,
)
for event in result.events:
    print(event.output.content)

import Parallel from "parallel-web";

const client = new Parallel({ apiKey: process.env.PARALLEL_API_KEY });

const result = await client.monitor.events(monitorId, {
  event_group_id: eventGroupId,
});
for (const event of result.events) {
  console.log(event.output?.content);
}

Response:

{
  "events": [
    {
      "event_id": "mevt_323b37562d1bec451c5bab674ee5afaf2ddd17674e99cd5f4e99cd5f",
      "event_group_id": "mevtgrp_35ab7d16b00f412b9d6b6c0eff1f49733b5cf0b02056a29c",
      "event_date": "2025-01-15",
      "event_type": "event_stream",
      "output": {
        "type": "text",
        "content": "Acme AI raised a $50M Series B led by Example Ventures.",
        "basis": [
          {
            "field": "output",
            "citations": [{ "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/15/acme-ai-series-b" }],
            "reasoning": "TechCrunch article confirms the round size and lead investor.",
            "confidence": "high"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

Each event includes a basis field with citations, reasoning, and a confidence level—the same transparency available in Task API outputs. See Research Basis for details.

See the Events page for the full event model and how to list all events across executions.

Advanced Settings

Two retrieval controls are available via advanced_settings inside settings:

Setting	Field	Description
Source policy	`source_policy`	Restrict or prioritize specific domains. Useful when signal validity depends on source authority (e.g., SEC filings, government portals). See Source Policy.
Geo	`location`	Scope retrieval to a country (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, e.g., `"DE"`). Surfaces regional sources.

"settings": {
  "query": "AI startup funding announcements",
  "advanced_settings": {
    "source_policy": {
      "include_domains": ["techcrunch.com", "bloomberg.com"]
    },
    "location": "US"
  }
}

Lifecycle

Create: Define type, frequency, processor, settings, and optional webhook and metadata.
Update: Change frequency, webhook, or metadata at any time.
Cancel: Cancel a monitor to stop future executions.

Next Steps

Snapshot Quickstart: Monitor structured task outputs for material changes.
Events: Full event model, event types, and retrieval options.
Webhooks: Webhook setup, payloads, and verification.
Follow-up Tasks: Trigger Task API enrichment or deep research from a monitor event.
Pricing: Processor tiers and rate schedule.
API Reference: Complete endpoint documentation.

Rate Limits

See Rate Limits for default quotas and how to request higher limits.

Getting started

Web Tools

Web Agents

Developer Tools

Platform Integrations

Data Integrations

Additional Resources

Monitor API Quickstart

Best Practices

Writing Effective Queries

Prerequisites

Event Stream Quickstart

Step 1. Create a monitor

Step 2. Receive and retrieve events

Advanced Settings

Lifecycle

Next Steps

Rate Limits

​Best Practices

​Writing Effective Queries

​Prerequisites

​Event Stream Quickstart

​Step 1. Create a monitor

​Step 2. Receive and retrieve events

​Advanced Settings

​Lifecycle

​Next Steps

​Rate Limits

Best Practices

Writing Effective Queries

Prerequisites

Event Stream Quickstart

Step 1. Create a monitor

Step 2. Receive and retrieve events

Advanced Settings

Lifecycle

Next Steps

Rate Limits