Your first cited answer, in about five minutes.
Kendr ships on desktop, web, CLI, API, and a Chrome connector, and each has its own setup guide. This page ignores all of that. It is the shortest path from a brand-new account to one research answer whose sources you can open and check — the thing Kendr is actually for. Four steps, one browser tab, no install.
Read this first
Deep Research is not free to run, and a new account starts at a zero credit balance. Every research depth, including the shortest one, requires a balance above zero, so there is a payment step in the middle of this guide. It is listed as step 2 rather than discovered at step 3.
Kendr sends a six-digit, one-time sign-in code. No password to choose or remember.
The smallest credit top-up is $5. Purchased credits never expire.
Bring something you would otherwise research by hand. A question you already know the answer to makes the citations easy to check.
The whole path runs in the browser. Kendr Desktop, the CLI, and the API are worth having, but not for this.
1. Create your account
About one minute.
- 1Open the sign-up pageGo to kendr.org/signup and enter your email address.
- 2Enter the six-digit codeKendr emails it immediately. Keep the sign-up tab open while you check your inbox; if the code expires, request a fresh one and use only the newest.
- 3Confirm your detailsYou land in the Kendr workspace with an account that works across web, desktop, and the API.
Use kendr.org/login with the same email. Do not create a second account — credits and history belong to one account, not one device.
2. Add credits
About one minute. This is the step most quickstarts leave out.
Research runs settle against a credit balance, and the balance has to be above zero before a run will start. Open Billing and buy the smallest top-up. What it unlocks:
| Research depth | Sources examined | Balance required |
|---|---|---|
| Brief | Up to 12 | Any balance above zero |
| Standard | Up to 40 | More than 200 credits |
| Comprehensive | Up to 150 | More than 400 credits |
| Deep Dossier | Up to 500 | More than 600 credits |
| Exhaustive | Up to 1,500 | More than 800 credits |
The smallest top-up is $5 for 1,750 credits at 350 credits per USD, which clears every threshold in the table. You are not buying a plan; you are buying credits that do not expire. Larger top-ups earn a better rate — see the calculator on the pricing page.
The thresholds above gate which depth you may start; they are not the price of a run. A run settles on measured usage and the exact charge appears in Usage afterwards. Most of that $5 will still be there tomorrow.
3. Run one Brief research run
Two to three minutes, most of it Kendr working rather than you typing.
- 1Open Deep ResearchGo to Research in the workspace sidebar.
- 2Ask one specific questionName the comparison, the decision, or the constraint. A vague prompt produces a vague report with citations you cannot judge.
- 3Choose BriefBrief examines up to 12 sources. That is the point for a first run: few enough sources that you can actually open one and check it.
- 4Start the run and watch it workKendr shows each step as it plans, searches, reads, and writes. You can leave the tab; the run continues and the report is waiting when you come back.
A question shaped like this gives you something checkable:
Compare managed Postgres pricing on AWS RDS, Google Cloud SQL, and Azure Database for PostgreSQL for a 4 vCPU / 16 GB instance in a US region. Give the on-demand monthly cost for each, note what is excluded from that figure, and say which is cheapest at that size.
An Exhaustive run reads up to 1,500 sources. It is a better report and a worse first experience: you cannot verify 1,500 citations, so you end up trusting it, which is the habit this whole product exists to break.
4. Check a citation
One minute. This is the step that makes the previous three worth anything.
- 1Find a claim with a number in itPick a sentence in the report that asserts a specific figure, date, or limit — not a summary sentence.
- 2Open its numbered citationEvery claim carries a numbered reference to a source in the report's source list.
- 3Confirm the source says itRead the cited page and check that the number in the report is the number on the page, and that the source is current enough to rely on.
An answer you checked is worth more than an answer you liked. Everything else in Kendr — the desktop app, projects, connectors, the API, Notetaker — exists to get more work to this point more often.
Report it. A citation that does not say what the sentence says is a defect, not a quirk of how these systems work. Email support@kendr.org with the run and the claim.
Where to go next
You now have an account, a balance, and one report you have personally verified. Each of these builds on that rather than starting over.