Unkey API Key Management

Unkey is an open-source API key and access management platform created by Andreas Thomas in 2023, providing instant API key generation, verification, rate limiting, and usage tracking for APIs and SaaS products, designed to be deployed in under five minutes with an edge-optimized architecture that delivers sub-ten-millisecond key verification latency globally, backed by investors including Y Combinator and used by companies for managing API access without building custom authentication and rate limiting infrastructure. The API key generation creates cryptographically secure keys with configurable prefixes for brand identification, configurable entropy for security level, and optional embedded metadata, with keys stored as salted hashes for security, meaning even a database compromise does not expose usable keys. The verification endpoint checks key validity in under ten milliseconds through the globally distributed edge network, with the verification returning the key metadata, remaining quota, and rate limit status in a single response, enabling APIs to authorize requests without a separate database lookup. The rate limiting provides per-key, per-identifier, or global rate limits using a sliding window algorithm, with configurable limits including requests per second, per minute, per hour, and per day, enforced at the edge for zero-latency enforcement. The usage tracking records API calls for billing, analytics, and quota enforcement. The workspace isolation for multi-tenant APIs. The webhook notifications for key events. The Redis-based storage for high throughput. Designed for API developers.