RunPod API Key Usage

RunPod API Key Usage | Generated by AI

Home 2026.07

Question: How do I use a RunPod API key (REST + GraphQL + Python SDK)?

Answer: There are two API surfaces — new REST API (rest.runpod.io) and legacy GraphQL (api.runpod.io/graphql). Both use the same key from Settings → API Keys.

REST (preferred, use Bearer header):

export RUNPOD_API_KEY=<RUNPOD_API_KEY>

# list pods
curl https://rest.runpod.io/v1/pods \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $RUNPOD_API_KEY"

# stop a pod
curl -X POST https://rest.runpod.io/v1/pods/<POD_ID>/stop \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $RUNPOD_API_KEY"

# create a serverless endpoint
curl -X POST https://rest.runpod.io/v1/endpoints \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $RUNPOD_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "name": "my-endpoint",
    "templateId": "<TEMPLATE_ID>",
    "gpuTypeIds": ["NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090"],
    "scalerType": "QUEUE_DELAY",
    "scalerValue": 4,
    "workersMin": 0,
    "workersMax": 5
  }'

GraphQL (legacy, key as query param):

curl -X POST "https://api.runpod.io/graphql?api_key=$RUNPOD_API_KEY" \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"query":"mutation { podResume(input:{podId:\"<POD_ID>\", gpuCount:1}) { id desiredStatus } }"}'

Python SDK (pip install runpod), useful if you’re calling serverless endpoints from a script:

import runpod
runpod.api_key = "<RUNPOD_API_KEY>"

endpoint = runpod.Endpoint("<ENDPOINT_ID>")
result = endpoint.run_sync({"input": {"prompt": "hello"}})
print(result)

You can also scope a key per-endpoint (runpod.Endpoint(id, api_key="specific_key")) if you want to isolate serverless workers from pod-management access — worth doing if you’re running this from CI or a shared agent, since the key otherwise has full account access (start/stop/delete pods, billing-affecting actions).

For your MI300X training runs, the REST /v1/pods endpoints are what you want for spin-up/spin-down automation in a bash loop or your ww/zz CLI — no need to touch GraphQL unless you need template management, which REST doesn’t fully cover yet.

References:

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