Unkey Has a Free API Key Management Service — Rate Limiting and Auth in Minutes

Unkey is an open-source API key management and rate limiting service for developers building APIs.

What You Get for Free (Free Tier)

• 1,000 monthly active keys — enough for most startups
• Unlimited verifications — no per-request charges
• Rate limiting — per-key, sliding window, fixed window
• Key expiration — auto-expire keys after N days
• Metadata — attach custom data (user ID, plan, permissions) to keys
• Analytics — see usage per key, per API
• Multi-tenant — one dashboard, multiple APIs
• SDKs — TypeScript, Go, Python

Quick Start

import { verifyKey } from '@unkey/api'

const { result, error } = await verifyKey({
  key: req.headers['x-api-key'],
  apiId: 'api_123'
})

if (!result.valid) {
  return res.status(401).json({ error: 'Invalid API key' })
}

// result.meta has your custom data
const userId = result.meta.userId

Why Developers Switch from DIY API Keys

Rolling your own API key system is risky and time-consuming:

• No database needed — Unkey manages keys for you
• Built-in rate limiting — no Redis, no middleware code
• Analytics — see which keys are active, which are abused
• Instant revocation — disable a key in one API call

A developer built a SaaS API with homegrown key validation. After 3 security incidents (leaked keys, no rate limiting), they switched to Unkey. Setup: 15 minutes. Zero incidents since.

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Comments

[James Perkins]

the free tier is 150k requests per month before needing to upgrade to the next tier.

Thanks for the coverage