ReqKey adds API key authentication, usage credits, rate limiting and request analytics to an API you own. Your middleware makes one verify call per request: ReqKey validates the caller’s key, deducts a credit from that consumer’s pool, enforces their rate limit, and logs the request with status, latency and location. It never sits in front of your API, no proxy, no gateway, no DNS change. Validation averages under 5ms. Credits pool per consumer rather than per key, so issuing a customer a second key doesn’t hand them a second quota. SDKs for Python, Node.js, Go, Rust, PHP, .NET and Java. Free tier: 100,000 requests a month, no credit card.
I kept rebuilding the same four things on every API I shipped: a key store, a credit ledger, a rate limiter, and a log pipeline. ReqKey is those four behind one endpoint, deliberately not a gateway, I wanted to keep my own request path and just ask a question on each call.