> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs2.growthbook.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Introduction

> GrowthBook offers a full REST API for interacting with the application.

GrowthBook offers a full REST API for interacting with the application.

Request data can use either JSON or Form data encoding (with proper `Content-Type` headers). All response bodies are JSON-encoded.

The API base URL for GrowthBook Cloud is `https://api.growthbook.io/api`. For self-hosted deployments, it is the same as your API\_HOST environment variable (defaults to `http://localhost:3100/api`). The rest of these docs will assume you are using GrowthBook Cloud.

## Versioning

Endpoints are versioned by path prefix:

* `/v1/...` — stable, widely-supported endpoints
* `/v2/...` — updated endpoints with improved shapes (e.g. unified per-rule environment scope for feature flags)

New integrations should prefer v2 where available. Feature-flag and metric v1 routes are deprecated: they are tagged **LEGACY** in the sidebar and collapsed by default. Use the matching v2 group when both exist.

## Authentication

We support both the HTTP Basic and Bearer authentication schemes for convenience.

You first need to generate a new API Key in GrowthBook. Different keys have different permissions:

* **Personal Access Tokens**: These are sensitive and provide the same level of access as the user has to an organization. These can be created by going to `Personal Access Tokens` under the your user menu.
* **Secret Keys**: These are sensitive and provide the level of access for the role, which currently is either `admin` or `readonly`. Only Admins with the `manageApiKeys` permission can manage Secret Keys on behalf of an organization. These can be created by going to `Settings -> API Keys`

If using HTTP Basic auth, pass the Secret Key as the username and leave the password blank (when using curl, add `:` at the end of the secret to indicate an empty password)

```bash theme={null}
curl https://api.growthbook.io/api/v1/features \
  -u secret_abc123DEF456:
```

If using Bearer auth, pass the Secret Key as the token:

```bash theme={null}
curl https://api.growthbook.io/api/v1/features \
-H "Authorization: Bearer secret_abc123DEF456"
```

## Errors

The API may return the following error status codes:

* **400** - Bad Request - Often due to a missing required parameter
* **401** - Unauthorized - No valid API key provided
* **402** - Request Failed - The parameters are valid, but the request failed
* **403** - Forbidden - Provided API key does not have the required access
* **404** - Not Found - Unknown API route or requested resource
* **422** - Soft Warning - The request failed, but can be re-submitted with `?ignoreWarnings=true` to proceed anyway.
* **429** - Too Many Requests - You exceeded the rate limit of 60 requests per minute. Try again later.
* **5XX** - Server Error - Something went wrong on GrowthBook's end (these are rare)

The response body will be a JSON object with the following properties:

* **message** - Information about the error