Keys

What a key is for

Everything listed at /api.json — the story feeds, the country editions, RSS and the MCP server — is open, unmetered and needs no key. That does not change.

A key unlocks the layer above it: who else carried a story, from which countries, in what order, and how fast it spread. See plans.

Get a key

Email Label (optional — what will use this key) Existing key (only if this address already has an account — paste a key you still hold to add another) Create key

The key is shown once and stored only as a hash, so it cannot be shown again. Your address is a contact and billing reference — nothing is mailed to it. See Privacy.

Check usage, or manage billing

Your key Show account

Using it

Send it as Authorization: Bearer un_…. Never in a query string — those end up in logs and browser history.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer un_…" \
  https://urgent.news/api/propagation.json?hours=24

An unrecognised key never fails a request on the open endpoints — it falls through to the anonymous tier and is served, with no header saying so. That is not an oversight: an open response is public, max-age=300 and shared, so a header describing your key would be handed to the next caller out of the same cache. Point a suspect key at a metered endpoint to test it — a bad one returns 401 with x-key-status naming the problem (unknown-key, malformed-key), and a good one answers 200 with your plan and remaining quota.

Every parameter, response field and error code is in the API reference.