---

name: sandbox-keys description: Use when the user wants to try Kreuzberg Cloud without signing up, or needs an ephemeral key for evaluation, demos, or CI integration tests. Covers POST /v1/sandbox/key — the no-auth endpoint, quota, TTL, and cleanup expectations.

Sandbox keys

POST /v1/sandbox/key issues ephemeral, anonymous API keys. Use these for evaluation, demos, and integration smoke tests — never for production workloads.

What you get

Property	Value
Format	sk_sandbox_*
TTL	24 hours from issue
Quota	50 pages, hard cap
Auth required to mint	None
IP throttle	10 keys per IP per 24 hours

The 50-page quota is per key, not per IP. The IP throttle prevents abuse of the no-auth mint endpoint.

Endpoint

POST https://api.kreuzberg.dev/v1/sandbox/key

No Authorization header — this is the only authenticated-by-omission endpoint in the API.

Response (200)

{
  "api_key": "sk_sandbox_ABC123DEF456GHI789JKL012MNO345PQR678STU901VWX234",
  "expires_at": "2025-12-21T10:00:00Z",
  "pages_remaining": 50
}

After 24 hours or 50 pages — whichever comes first — the key returns 401 on every endpoint. The key is not renewable; mint a fresh one.

Examples

Mint and use

KREUZBERG_API_KEY=$(curl -sX POST https://api.kreuzberg.dev/v1/sandbox/key \
  | jq -r .api_key)

curl -sX POST https://api.kreuzberg.dev/v1/extract \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KREUZBERG_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "documents":[{"filename":"hi.txt","mime_type":"text/plain","data":"aGVsbG8="}],
    "options":{"extraction_config":{"output_format":"markdown"}}
  }'

TypeScript SDK

import { KreuzbergCloud } from "@kreuzberg/cloud";

const client = await KreuzbergCloud.fromSandbox();
const result = await client.extractAndWait({
  file: new Blob(["Hello world"], { type: "text/plain" }),
});
console.log(result.result?.content);

fromSandbox() mints a key under the hood and configures the client.

Python SDK

import asyncio
from kreuzberg_cloud import AsyncKreuzbergCloud

async def main() -> None:
    async with await AsyncKreuzbergCloud.from_sandbox() as client:
        job = await client.extract_and_wait(file=b"hello world")
        print(job.status, job.result and job.result.content)

asyncio.run(main())

When to recommend sandbox vs production keys

Use sandbox	Use production
First-time evaluation, no signup yet	Anything user-facing or business-critical
Local smoke tests, demos	CI on the main branch
One-off doc to test the API surface	Recurring batch pipelines
Onboarding flow that bootstraps an SDK	Any workload >50 pages

If the user already has a production key, do not silently switch to a sandbox key — production keys carry the right quota, billing, and project-scoped resources.

Cleanup

Sandbox keys self-expire after 24 hours. No revocation endpoint exists — nothing to clean up. Do not commit sandbox keys to version control even though they're short-lived; treat them like any other credential.

Errors

Status	Cause
429	IP has minted 10 keys in the last 24 hours. Wait or use a production key.
500	Server-side mint failure; retry with backoff.