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Move keys from a homegrown system into a keyspace with unkey keys migrate. You send hashes, not plaintext keys. Users keep the keys they already have, and your backend then calls keys.verifyKey instead of your own lookup. The steps, the SHA-256 base64 format, and what you stop maintaining are on Migrating keys.
Create a root key with the permissions listed on this page under Root Keys in the dashboard sidebar. CLI commands can instead use a session from unkey login with the required permissions. See Permission reference for every permission.
The command imports the hashes under a migration ID from support, so the keys work with Unkey without being reissued. It returns 200 even when some keys fail. data.migrated lists each imported hash with its new keyId. data.failed lists the hashes that didn’t import, usually because the hash already exists in Unkey. Hashes must be unique across all of Unkey, not just your workspace. Calls POST /v2/keys.migrateKeys.

Usage

Flags

string
required
Id of the API to import the keys into.
string
required
JSON array of key objects. Only hash is required. Each object also takes name, externalId, meta, roles, permissions, expires, enabled, credits, and ratelimits, with the same meaning as on unkey keys create.
string
required
Id of the migration provider configured for your workspace. Unkey support issues it.

Shared flags

Every resource command takes these. See CLI output and shared flags.
string
Root key used for the request. Falls back to UNKEY_ROOT_KEY, then stored credentials, including a CLI session. See CLI authentication for the full precedence order.
string
default:"https://api.unkey.com"
Base URL of the API. Falls back to UNKEY_API_BASE_URL. You don’t normally need to set it.
string
default:"~/.unkey/config.toml"
Path of the TOML config file. Falls back to UNKEY_CONFIG. An explicit --config takes precedence over a stored CLI session. Browser login stores a session, not a root key in this file. See CLI authentication.
enum
default:"human"
Use human (default) for name-first summary tables and single-response trees, or json for the unchanged full response envelope, including all fields and pagination. Trees wrap long values without truncation. Terminal tables use relative timestamps and may shorten display names and descriptions, but never identifiers, slugs, or credentials. Redirected human output keeps complete values and uses RFC3339 UTC timestamps. Falls back to UNKEY_OUTPUT; other values are rejected. --json also selects JSON output. Add --debug to print the request ID to stderr. See Output formats.
boolean
Print the successful response’s request ID to stderr, separate from stdout.
boolean
Print the full response as JSON. Takes precedence over a valid --output or UNKEY_OUTPUT value.
string
Send this JSON as the whole request body instead of using the command’s flags. You can’t combine it with them.

Required permissions

Your root key needs unkey:v1:<workspace_id>:projects/<project_id>/keyspaces/<keyspace_id>/keys/*#write for the target keyspace in its project and workspace. See Root key permissions.

Examples

Import two hashes
Or send the whole request as JSON:
Raw body
Last modified on November 11, 2026