Authentication

Headers by protocol

Every protocol accepts your API key (sk-...) in its native form:

Protocol	How the key is sent
OpenAI-compatible	Authorization: Bearer sk-...
Anthropic (/v1/messages)	x-api-key: sk-...
Anthropic	Authorization: Bearer sk-... also accepted
Gemini paths	x-goog-api-key: sk-... or ?key=sk-...

Bearer details

• The Bearer scheme is case-insensitive: Bearer, bearer, and BEARER all work.
• A bare key is also accepted when no scheme is present (Authorization: sk-...).
• GET /v1/models and /v1/messages additionally accept x-api-key, which keeps Anthropic-style clients working without changes.
• OpenAI-Organization is accepted and ignored — there is no organization scoping.

Key constraints

Keys are created and managed in the console at https://console.mirapi.ai. When you create a key, the full value is shown only once — store it in MIRAPI_API_KEY (or your secret manager) immediately. Four constraints can apply to a key:

Constraint	Behavior
Model whitelist	Only whitelisted models are callable; others return 403
Validity period	The key stops working after its end date
Quota limit	Requests are rejected once the key’s spend cap is reached
IP allowlist	Only requests from allowed IPs are accepted

401 vs 403

The two statuses mean different things and are not interchangeable:

• 401 — the key is missing, malformed, or unknown. Fix the credential.
• 403 — the key is valid and recognized, but the request was rejected: balance exhausted, model not in the key’s whitelist, quota reached, IP not allowed, or another policy. Check the error message for the specific reason.

Example

curl https://api.mirapi.ai/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MIRAPI_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"model": "deepseek-chat", "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hi"}]}'