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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.
Change a key’s credits and nothing else. The new balance applies to the next verification. Switching between limited and unlimited credits can take up to about 10 seconds. Calls POST /v2/keys.updateCredits. See Credits and refill.

Usage

Flags

string
required
Id of the key.
string
required
One of set, increment, or decrement. increment and decrement fail with 400 on a key with unlimited credits. Use set to give it a balance first.
integer
Credits to set, add, or subtract. Required for increment and decrement. Leave it off with set to make the key unlimited and keep any refill schedule. Sending "value": null through --body makes it unlimited and also clears the refill schedule. --value=0 is treated as leaving the flag off, so use --body to set a key to zero credits.

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

api.*.update_key or api.<apiId>.update_key for the API the key belongs to. See Root key permissions.

Examples

Set to 1000
Top up by 500
Or send the whole request as JSON:
Raw body
Last modified on October 28, 2026