Unkey API
Open-source API key management platform providing key creation, verification, rate limiting, revocation, and analytics with globally distributed sub-50ms verification latency.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Open source codebase allows full audit. SOC2 certified hosted service. Keys are hashed at rest. Self-hosting available for maximum control.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
Best when building developer-facing APIs or agent platforms that need production-grade key management, rate limiting, and revocation without building the infrastructure from scratch.
Avoid When
Avoid when you need full OAuth 2.0, SAML, or user session management — use an identity provider instead.
Use Cases
- • Issue and verify API keys for developer-facing products built by agents or humans
- • Enforce per-key rate limits and quotas without building custom rate limiting infrastructure
- • Revoke compromised keys instantly with global propagation
- • Audit API key usage analytics to detect abuse or anomalous access patterns
- • Manage scoped temporary keys for delegated agent access with automatic expiration
Not For
- • Full identity and access management (IAM) — Unkey manages API keys, not user identities or OAuth flows
- • Replacing session-based auth or OAuth for user-facing login flows
Interface
Authentication
Root key used to manage other keys via API. Issued keys can be scoped with custom permissions and metadata. Root key should be stored as a secret and rotated regularly.
Pricing
Generous free tier covers small-scale agent platforms. Self-hosting is also available for teams that want full control.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Root key must be kept secret — exposure compromises all managed keys
- ⚠ Key verification result includes remaining rate limit — agents should read and respect this in their logic
- ⚠ MCP server is maintained separately from the main SDK and may lag slightly behind API changes
- ⚠ Soft-delete (revocation) is near-instant but not guaranteed to be synchronous across all edge nodes
Alternatives
Full Evaluation Report
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.