This feature is useful for creating an API key that automatically refills daily or monthly. Daily refills trigger each night at midnight, while monthly refills are triggered on the first day of each month.

Example: Suppose you are selling API access, and a customer has purchased 1000 API uses per month. On the first day of the month, the 1000 uses will be refilled for that key.

Unkey allows you to set a refill interval and increment on individual keys, and we take care of refilling a key on its set interval.

Example

Let’s create a new key that can be used 100 times a day.

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.unkey.dev/v1/keys.createKey \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <UNKEY>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "apiId":"<API_ID>",
    "remaining": 100,
    "refill": {
      "interval": "daily",
      "amount": 100
    }
  }'

Now, when you verify the new key, you will receive the remaining verifications. After all of them are used up, the key becomes invalid.

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.unkey.dev/v1/keys.verifyKey \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
		"key": "<NEW_KEY>"
	}'
{
  "keyId": "<KEY_ID>",
  "valid": true,
  "meta": {},
  "remaining": 99
}

The returned remaining value represents how many verifications are remaining after the current one. A value of 3, means you can verify the key successfully 3 more times.