API Keys

No key today

Every request to /v2 is served at the single anonymous tier, whoever sends it. There is no account, no signup, no header to set, and no key to lose or rotate. The discovery document confirms this as data, not prose. GET /v2 reports:

"capabilities": {
  "timezone_resolution": true,
  "place_lookup": true,
  "api_keys": false
}

Every rate limit and every cap named on API Status and Limits already applies to every caller, key or no key.

What sending a key does

If you send key= anything today, the request is not rejected. key is a recognized parameter, reserved for when the paid tiers go on sale. Sending it earns a parameter_ignored warning in the response, naming the reason, and the request is served at the anonymous tier exactly as if key had been omitted. capabilities.api_keys still reports false. You are never silently downgraded without disclosure.

What a key would buy

When the paid tiers (Pro, Ultra and Mega) go on sale, a key buys exactly two things:

• A higher published rate limit: a bigger number in the same three windows on API Status and Limits.
• A higher per-request range ceiling: larger row and day caps than the anonymous table on that same page.

A key would not buy different data, an extra endpoint, or a different answer from the one an anonymous caller gets for the same request. Every field, every endpoint and every number is already available to every caller today.

The published plan

The tier ladder is public: the free tier is the Basic tier and, inside /v2, its published limits can only ever go up, and three paid tiers, Pro at 5 US dollars a month, Ultra at 9 and Mega at 15, are planned to sell through the RapidAPI marketplace. Their numbers are on the developers page and in range_caps_by_shape on /v2/conventions. Until the listing is live and this page says otherwise, nothing is on sale, no key is accepted, and every request is served at the free Basic tier. A price on a page is a plan; only this page and capabilities.api_keys state what is true right now.

Why there is no key yet

The absence of a key is a deliberate choice, not an unfinished feature. Three error codes, INVALID_KEY, REVOKED_KEY and EXPIRED_KEY, are already reserved in the error registry for when the paid tiers go on sale, precisely so that shipping one changes nothing else about how errors are structured. Until then there is nothing to sign up for and nothing to configure: point a request at /v2 and go.