Launch your API business in minutes
Portal, keys, rate limits, billing. Two lines of code. Your traffic never touches our servers.
Free plan. No credit card.
from fastapi import FastAPI, Security
from microauth_fastapi import MicroAuth, Customer
app = FastAPI()
auth = MicroAuth(app) # that's the integration
@app.get("/forecast")
async def forecast(customer: Customer = Security(auth)):
return {"hello": customer.id}Not a gateway
Your requests go straight from your customers to your servers. There is no proxy to configure, no extra hop to slow you down, and no third party reading your payloads.
Your customers stay yours
Unlike API marketplaces, the portal carries your brand on your domain. You set the prices, you own the Stripe account, you keep the customer relationship and every cent of revenue.
Built for the hot path
Authentication is a hash lookup against a local cache. The SDK syncs with MicroAuth in the background and keeps serving from known data even if we are briefly unreachable.
Why MicroAuth exists
3.9 billion
production requests served before we wrote a line of MicroAuth
MicroAuth was not designed on a whiteboard. Before building it, we ran our own API businesses for years and served just short of four billion requests. We wrote the key authentication, the metering, the rate limiters, the Stripe glue and the abuse handling ourselves, and then rewrote them when traffic proved us wrong. MicroAuth is that plumbing turned into a product, so your API can skip straight to the part where customers pay you.
How it works
From zero to paying customers
Create a tenant
Sign up, name your API and pick a subdomain. You get a developer portal at yourapi.microauth.dev and a tenant secret key for your backend.
Drop in the SDK
Two lines in FastAPI, or wire up the SDK API from any language. Set your prices: pay as you go, subscription plans, or custom deals per customer.
Customers serve themselves
They sign up on your portal, create keys, top up or subscribe, and call your API. Limits and billing are enforced on every request without you in the loop.
Features
Everything between your API and your revenue
The parts of an API business nobody wants to build twice: portals, keys, limits, metering, invoices, teams and audit trails.
Branded developer portal
Your customers sign up, create API keys, watch their usage and pay you, all on your subdomain or your own domain. Your logo, your colors, your product.
API keys without the plumbing
Keys are created and revoked in the portal, stored as hashes, and verified inside your API from a local cache. No auth tables, no key rotation scripts to write.
Per-customer rate limiting
Set default RPS, plan-level RPS or a custom limit for one customer. The SDK enforces it in your process, with Redis support when you run multiple workers.
Prepaid, metered billing
Customers top up credits or subscribe to your plans. Billable responses are counted per key and charged automatically. You pick which status codes cost money.
Stripe or your own billing
Connect your Stripe account for checkout, subscriptions and webhooks with zero glue code. Or keep your existing invoicing and grant credits over the API.
Teams on both sides
Your side gets workspaces with roles and audit logs. Your customers get teams in the portal, with invites, roles and their own activity trail.
Custom domains with SSL
Point a CNAME at us and your portal lives on developers.yourapi.com with a certificate issued and renewed automatically.
Security that holds up
HTTP-only cookies, TOTP two-factor auth with backup codes, login lockouts, CSRF protection and a full audit trail. For you and for your customers.
Any language, not just Python
The FastAPI SDK is one dependency. Everything it does sits on three documented HTTP endpoints, so a Go, Node or Rails integration is an afternoon of work.
Flat pricing, no revenue share
Start free and upgrade a tenant when its numbers say so. You keep every cent your customers pay you, on every plan. And if no plan fits, we will tailor one to your traffic.
FAQ
Questions developers ask us
Does my API traffic go through MicroAuth?
No. MicroAuth is not a gateway or a proxy. The SDK inside your API caches a snapshot of your customers and their limits, enforces everything locally, and reports usage counts back in batches. We see how many billable requests each key made, never the requests themselves.
What happens to my API if MicroAuth goes down?
Your API keeps serving. The SDK works from its cached snapshot and buffers usage reports until we are reachable again. You choose the failure mode: keep serving with the last known data, or reject requests once the data is older than a threshold you set.
How do my customers pay me?
Connect your own Stripe account and customers top up credits or subscribe to your plans through Stripe Checkout, with webhooks handled for you. If you bill outside Stripe, grant credits from your own system with one API call.
Do you take a cut of my revenue?
No. Payments go through your own Stripe account, straight to you. You pay a flat monthly price per tenant and nothing per transaction.
I do not use Python. Can I still use MicroAuth?
Yes. The SDK API is three plain HTTP endpoints: fetch a snapshot, verify a key, report usage. The custom integration guide walks through the whole pattern with examples, and the FastAPI SDK source is a working reference implementation.
What counts as a tracked request?
A response from your API with a status code you marked as billable. By default that is only 200, so errors and rate-limited requests cost your customers nothing unless you decide otherwise.
Can I run several APIs on one account?
Yes. Each API is a tenant with its own portal, pricing, customers and plan. Workspaces keep them organized, and your team can manage all of them with role-based access.
Who is behind MicroAuth?
Zyref, LLC, run by people who spent years operating their own high-volume API businesses and served just short of four billion production requests. The rate limiting, metering and billing inside MicroAuth are the systems we built and hardened for our own APIs, packaged so you do not have to repeat the exercise.
Ship your API business this week
Free plan, no credit card. Your first tenant and portal take about ten minutes.