---
updatedAt: 2025-09-09T15:36:20.000Z
agentTools:
  projectIndex: https://developers.nutshell.com/llms.txt
---

# 🔒 API authentication

> 📘 All of our APIs use HTTP Basic authentication
>
> Whether you're using REST, GraphQL or JSON-RPC, you'll start by creating an key in [Setup > API keys](https://app.nutshell.com/setup/api-key). That API key will be used for all your requests.

> 👍 All of our APIs require TLS encryption (HTTPS) 🔑
>
> Nutshell’s APIs are only available using HTTPS encryption under the **app.nutshell.com** endpoint.

To authenticate with any of our APIs, you will use HTTP Basic encryption.

1. Use a Nutshell user's email address as the username
2. Use your API key as the password

### Sample HTTP request to our REST API to demonstrate authentication

```
curl -u <your nutshell email address>:<api token> \
     --request POST \
     --url https://app.nutshell.com/rest/accounts \
     --header 'accept: */*' \
     --header 'content-type: application/json' \
     --data '
{
  "accounts": [
    {
      "name": "My first company"
    }
  ]
}
'
```

### API Sandbox Credentials

If you want to start testing Nutshell's API right away, use these credentials to access our API sandbox:

**Username:** <jim@demo.nutshell.com>

**API Token:** 43c789d483fd76547b1f157e3cf5e580b95b9d8c