Roboflow API Key¶

Throughout these docs you will see references to your Roboflow API key. Using your Roboflow API key grants you access to the models you have trained on Roboflow, public models available on Roboflow Universe, and access to hosted inference API's.

Access Your Roboflow API Key¶

For some examples in the documentation you will need to provide your Roboflow API key. To access your Roboflow API key, you will need to create a free Roboflow account, then follow the docs to retrieve your key.

Use Your Roboflow API Key¶

There are several ways to configure your Roboflow API key when using Inference.

Environment Variable¶

The recommended way is to set your Roboflow API key within your environment via the variable ROBOFLOW_API_KEY. In most terminals you can run:

export ROBOFLOW_API_KEY=MY_ROBOFLOW_API_KEY

Then, any command you run within that same terminal session will have access to the environment variable ROBOFLOW_API_KEY.

Python¶

When using Inference within python, your Roboflow API key can be set via keyword arguments

from inference.models.utils import get_model

model = get_model(model_id="...", api_key="YOUR ROBOFLOW API KEY")

HTTP Request Payload¶

When using HTTP requests, your Roboflow API key should be passed as a url parameter, or as part of the request payload, depending on the route you are using.

import requests

my_api_key = "YOUR ROBOFLOW API KEY"

url = f"http://localhost:9001/soccer-players-5fuqs/1?api_key={my_api_key}"
response = requests.post(url,...)

url = "http://localhost:9001/infer/object_detection"
payload = {
  "api_key": my_api_key,
  "model_id": "soccer-players-5fuqs/1",
  ...
}
response = requests.post(url,json=payload)

Docker Configuration¶

If you are running the Roboflow Inference Server locally in a docker container, you can provide your Roboflow API key within the docker run command.

docker run -it --rm --network=host -e ROBOFLOW_API_KEY=YOUR_ROBOFLOW_API_KEY roboflow/roboflow-inference-server-cpu:latest

Requests sent to this server can now omit api_key from the request payload.