Authentication

Every request to the developer API must carry an API key in the Authorization header as a Bearer token.

Authorization: Bearer sg_live_3f9aK2pLqWzXyR7vT1mN8cD4

Creating an API key

1. Sign in to your Commercial Units dashboard.
2. Go to Settings → Developer.
3. Click Create API key, give it a label (e.g. "Company website"), and create it.
4. Copy the key now. It is shown once, at creation time, and never again.

Store it securely. We only keep a hash of your key — we cannot show it to you again, and we cannot recover it. Treat it like a password: keep it in a secret manager or server-side environment variable, never commit it to a public repo, and never expose a live key in client-side code you don't control. If a key is lost or leaked, revoke it in Settings → Developer and create a new one.

You can hold multiple keys at once (e.g. one per website, or one to rotate in while retiring another). Revoking a key takes effect immediately.

The key format: country-prefixed

Keys look like this:

sg_live_3f9aK2pLqWzXyR7vT1mN8cD4
└┘ └──┘ └──────────────────────┘
│   │            └─ the secret (random, opaque)
│   └────────────── environment: always "live"
└────────────────── country prefix (lowercase country code)

The country prefix is the lowercase Commercial Units country code for the country your organisation operates in. The prefix is meaningful — it routes the request to that country's API and data. A sg_live_… key only ever sees Singapore listings; a my_live_… key only ever sees Malaysia listings.

If you operate in more than one country, create one key per country from the dashboard for that country's account. There is no single "all-countries" key — per-country isolation is by design.

Sending the key

Pass the key as a Bearer token on every request:

curl https://api.commercialunits.com/v1/listings \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sg_live_3f9aK2pLqWzXyR7vT1mN8cD4"

fetch('https://api.commercialunits.com/v1/listings', {
  headers: { Authorization: 'Bearer sg_live_3f9aK2pLqWzXyR7vT1mN8cD4' },
});

What can go wrong

See Rate Limits & Errors for the full error reference.