Ghost API
Open-source publishing platform API for managing blog posts, pages, members, newsletters, and subscriptions, available both self-hosted and as Ghost(Pro) managed service.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Admin API key (JWT-based) and Content API key (read-only). Self-hosted Ghost security depends on deployment configuration. Ghost Pro enforces TLS. Staff API token for management. Separate read/write credentials is good practice.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
You run a publication, newsletter, or membership site and want to automate content workflows without a heavy CMS.
Avoid When
You need a general-purpose headless CMS with complex content modeling beyond posts/pages.
Use Cases
- • Automating blog post creation and publishing
- • Syncing newsletter subscriber lists with external systems
- • Fetching published posts for aggregation or re-publishing
- • Managing member tiers and subscription access
- • Generating content reports and analytics
Not For
- • Complex multi-content-type applications (Ghost is publishing-focused)
- • Ecommerce or transactional content beyond membership
- • Real-time collaborative content editing
Interface
Authentication
Content API uses read-only API keys for public content. Admin API uses JWT with key ID + secret for write operations. JWT tokens are short-lived (5 minutes) and must be regenerated per request.
Pricing
Self-hosted is fully free. Ghost(Pro) provides managed hosting. Revenue share model for member subscriptions (no platform cut on most plans).
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Admin API JWT tokens expire after 5 minutes - agents must regenerate tokens per request or implement token refresh
- ⚠ Admin API key format is 'id:secret' split on colon - both parts are required to generate JWT
- ⚠ Post status workflow (draft → published) requires explicit status field in update
- ⚠ Mobiledoc or Lexical format required for post content (not plain HTML) - format changed between Ghost versions
- ⚠ Member import and newsletter sending are separate APIs with different authentication requirements
Alternatives
Full Evaluation Report
Detailed scoring breakdown, competitive positioning, security analysis, and improvement recommendations for Ghost API.
Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.