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A request sends Authorization: Bearer <token>. An API key ties the call to your account and raises the quota. With no key, the call is anonymous.

Get an API key

  1. Sign up at app.vlm.run.
  2. Open Settings → API keys and copy a key.
  3. Export it so the examples below can read it:
Pass the key as api_key in the OpenAI SDK, or as the bearer token in cURL. To call without an account, omit the Authorization header or send Bearer vlmrun.

Examples

If the Gateway cannot look your key up, it returns 503. Retry the request. The key is not rejected. Response bodies are in Error Codes.

Tiers

Callers behind the same NAT or proxy share the anonymous IP bucket. Per-tier limits are in Rate Limits.

Tier resolution

The Gateway resolves the tier from Authorization in this order:
  1. No header, an empty token, or Bearer vlmrun: Anonymous, keyed by client IP. A self-hosted deployment can reject a missing header with 401 and {"detail": "Missing API Key"}. The hosted Gateway does not.
  2. Valid VLM Run API key: Authenticated as the owning user and organization.
  3. Any other bearer token: 401 invalid API key. Unrecognized tokens do not fall back to anonymous access.

Credits

An authenticated call is charged to the caller’s organization. No credit left returns 402:
Models marked (paid) on Models use the paid access tier. They need an organization with billing enabled: a payment method on file and a plan other than free. Other callers, anonymous included, get 403 with model_not_entitled. Every other model is public and reachable anonymously.
Every endpoint in the API Reference accepts anonymous traffic today: chat completions, models, embeddings, audio transcriptions, and health. Use an API key for production.

Rate Limits

Per-tier quotas and how to request a higher limit.

Error Codes

401, 402, 403, and 429 response bodies.