Providers / Unkey
Unkey
Deploy APIs with keys, gateways, and observability built in.
www.unkey.com · Prices checked 2026-08-06
- Type
- App platform
- Starting cost
- ≈$5/mo
- Free tier
- No
- Ease of use
- 4/5
Unkey is an API-focused app platform that builds from Git or runs a Docker image, then puts a programmable gateway in front of the service. API keys, rate limits, request analytics, preview environments, autoscaling, and multi-region routing live in the same product and bill through one usage meter.
Good to know
- Unkey only launched public app hosting in 2026, so its production track record is much shorter than established platforms such as Heroku, Render, or Railway.
- The monthly plan price is a minimum with matching usage credit, not a compute bundle: CPU, memory, ephemeral disk, egress, and active keys are metered separately.
- Storage is ephemeral and there is no managed database, so persistent data must live with another provider.
App platform
Unkey
- Best for
- Production APIs that want hosting, gateway policies, API keys, rate limits, and request analytics in one place.
- How deploys work
- Connect GitHub for automatic builds and branch previews, or deploy a Docker image from the Unkey CLI.
- The tradeoff
- It is a young, API-specific platform with metered billing, ephemeral storage, and no managed database.
Why pick it
- Git builds, Docker deploys, branch previews, promotions, and instant rollbacks are built in.
- API keys, rate limits, firewall rules, request validation, and analytics share the same gateway.
- CPU-based autoscaling and multi-region routing are available without assembling separate infrastructure.
- Published per-second resource rates and included usage credits make the billing model inspectable.
Why look elsewhere
- The hosting product is new in 2026 and has a much shorter public track record than established PaaS providers.
- No free tier: Starter has a $5 monthly minimum even when the app uses less.
- No managed database or persistent volume; the built-in disk is temporary and disappears with the instance.
- CPU, memory, egress, disk, and active keys all move the bill as usage grows.
Our ratings
What developers say
First-person reports from the past three years, drawn from public discussions and independent write-ups. These are individual experiences, not our ratings; open the original source for its workload and full context. Critical reports include a follow-up check so you can see whether the problem was fixed, partly addressed, remains current, or has no public resolution.
What people like 10 sources
Simple Kanban replaced its API-key path with a substantive Unkey integration spanning middleware, service, environment, dependency, and route code.
Change to Unkey API key methodThe author says they integrated Unkey into two SaaS products and praises its developer experience, verification latency, and per-key limits.
Unkey Review 2026: API Key Management Done RightOpenStatus explains its production use of Unkey to create, revoke, and verify workspace-scoped keys and says the service increased development velocity while providing verification insights.
How to secure your API with Unkey and Hono.js MiddlewareFlowglad's production key-rotation mutation explicitly manages the corresponding Unkey key, showing an established operational integration rather than a sample mention.
fix: delete Unkey API key during key rotationA project changed its continuous-deployment configuration and explicitly recorded Unkey as its primary host. This is the only retained positive record about Unkey's hosting product.
Update CD with Unkey now our primary hostContributor.info added end-to-end create, list, and revoke flows with metadata, documenting a substantive application integration rather than a name-drop.
feat: add Unkey API key managementThe Orderbook API project migrated its authentication implementation to the Unkey SDK, showing concrete adoption in application code.
migrate to unkey sdkPlura merged a user-facing API-key management system backed by Unkey, including the application's key-management workflow.
Merge user API management systemOpenStatus migrated its established Unkey integration to v2, evidence of continued operator use more than two years after initial adoption.
migrate unkey v2The DSAR framework's initial application architecture included Unkey authentication as an implemented core integration.
Initial DSAR framework with core integrationsCritical reports and follow-ups 10 sources
A customer reports the dashboard's own unauthorized calls filling workspace logs with 403 entries and inflating invalid-request metrics.
Dashboard makes under-permissioned apis.getApi calls that 403 and pollute customer workspace request logsA user shows that the documented keyCredits request body was rejected by the live API with a 400 schema-validation response.
Creating a key with keyCredits object fails with 400An operator initially believed a 100-per-minute rate limit had blocked a client after only 100 requests across two days.
Rate limit counts in total instead of every 60 secondsA tester found that a key still verified immediately after disabling it in the dashboard and appeared enabled in the response.
Disabling key does not workA user believed millisecond durations were being interpreted incorrectly while testing a Next.js rate limiter.
Ratelimit: setting duration to 10000ms sets it to 1 secondA tester reproduced the dashboard accepting an eight-byte default while the API rejected the same length and required at least sixteen bytes.
Inconsistent minimum byte length validation between web app and createKey API endpointA developer migrating to Next.js 15 reports that withUnkey broke the application build because the route context signature had changed, and provides a manual workaround.
Update withUnkey for Next.js 15A user following the migration guide received insufficient-permissions errors for hashed keys even though plaintext migration worked with the same root key.
Migrating keys to Unkey by providing the hash doesn't workA dashboard user could add root-key permissions but could not remove selected permissions using the checkboxes.
Unable to uncheck permissions when creating root keyA user was left on a 404 page after deleting an API instead of being redirected to a valid dashboard view.
Error 404 when I delete my APIApp platform
Unkey
What you'd realistically pay
| Project stage | Estimate | Based on |
|---|---|---|
| Just starting | ≈$5/mo | Starter — The $5 minimum includes $5 of usage, enough for a small, lightly used API. |
| Steady traffic | ≈$18/mo | Starter + usage — About 0.5 active vCPU and 1 GB of memory running continuously before egress or active-key charges. |
| Growing | ≈$50/mo | Business — The $50 minimum becomes usage credit and raises per-instance limits to 16 vCPU and 32 GB of RAM. |
Published prices
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $5/mo | Includes $5 usage credit, 1 vCPU / 2 GB per instance, three regions, one seat, and one custom domain. |
| Pro | $25/mo | Includes $25 usage credit, 4 vCPU / 8 GB per instance, all regions, unlimited seats, and unlimited custom domains. |
| Business | $50/mo | Includes $50 usage credit, 16 vCPU / 32 GB per instance, all regions, and unlimited custom domains. |
- Usage rates are $0.000006944 per vCPU-second, $0.000003472 per GB-second of memory, $0.00000006 per GB-second of ephemeral disk, and $0.05 per GB of egress.
- API-key authentication through the gateway adds $0.002 per active key each month. The plan minimum is included usage credit rather than an extra charge on top.
- Log retention is 3 days on Starter, 7 days on Pro, and 14 days on Business.
Deploy workflow
| Deploy from Git push Connect a repository and every push deploys automatically. | Yes Connect GitHub; pushes to the default branch deploy production automatically. |
|---|---|
| Preview deploys Each branch or pull request gets its own temporary URL. | Yes Non-default branches and pull requests receive isolated preview deployments. |
| Official CLI A maintained command-line tool for deploys and management. | Yes The Unkey CLI deploys local build contexts or pre-built container images. |
| Instant rollbacks Revert to a previous deploy without rebuilding. | Yes Rollbacks atomically switch traffic to a previous immutable deployment. |
Platform
| Custom domains + HTTPS Bring your own domain with TLS certificates handled. | Yes Custom apex domains and subdomains include automatic TLS; plan limits apply. |
|---|---|
| Built-in CDN / edge network Static assets served from locations near your visitors. | No The global gateway routes API traffic but is not a static-asset caching CDN. |
| Serverless functions Run backend code without managing a server process. | No Applications run as container instances rather than per-request functions. |
| Docker containers Deploy your own container image. | Yes Build from a Dockerfile or deploy a pre-built image from a registry. |
| SSH / shell access Open a shell on the machine running your app. | No The documented workflow exposes logs and metrics, not an interactive SSH shell. |
| EU hosting region Run the app itself in a European data center. | Yes European deployment regions are available; Starter includes three regions and paid upgrades unlock all. |
Runtime & operations
| Automatic scaling Capacity grows with traffic without manual resizing. | Yes Horizontal autoscaling adjusts instance count from configured minimums and maximums based on CPU load. |
|---|---|
| Scale to zero Costs stop (or pause) when nobody is using the app. | Partial Preview environments sleep automatically when idle; apps can also be stopped and started manually. |
| Scheduled jobs Run code on a schedule without an external trigger. | No There is no documented first-class scheduler for cron jobs. |
| Managed database A database the provider runs, backs up, and updates. | No No managed database is included; connect an external database service. |
| Logs & metrics built in See what the app is doing without wiring up third parties. | Yes Runtime logs, CPU and memory metrics, request analytics, and gateway decisions appear in the dashboard. |
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