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Whether your considering a Royal Mail API or need help with an existing integration, we're on hand to offer you help and support.

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Frequently Asked Questions

I just want to use an API? What are plans?

A plan is collection of API resources or subsets of resources from one or more APIs. A plan can contain a mixture of operation types from different APIs. A plan can have a common rate limit for all the resources or each resource can have a different rate limit. Rate limits specify how many requests an application is allowed to make during a specified time interval.

Use this Developer Portal to browse the different plans that are available to you and select a plan that is most suitable for your requirements. Some plans have restricted access that you must request access to use. When you submit your request, the organization is notified, the API administrator assesses your request and they might contact you for more details. Other plans are available to use straight away.

How do I see my API usage?

The numbers of requests, for different APIs, that your application has made are shown on your application page.

Click 'Apps' in the main menu and then click on your application. In the 'Product Subscriptions' table you will see all plans your application is subscribed to.

For each API contained in that plan you can see the usage compared to the rate limit of the plan.

How can I test an API?

It is possible to test an API from this Developer Portal.

When looking at the details of an API you will see a list of the operations contained in the API. This will show the verb and path to use for the operation.

If you click on the operation you will see more information about it, what parameters it might take, what it returns, what possible return codes it might use and what they mean.

There is also a 'Try' button on REST APIs which enables you to try the operation out direct from the Developer Portal.

If the API requires a client ID or a client secret for identification then you can specify these using your application credentials at the top of the 'Try' section.

How do I register an application?

When you add an application you are provided with an API Key and Secret for the application. You must supply these credentials when you call an API that requires you to authenticate your application.

To register an application click on Apps in the main menu and then click on the 'Create new app' link. Once you have provided an application name, description, etc you will be shown your application API Key and Secret.

Make a note of your API Secret because it is only displayed once.

How do I reset my application API Secret?

Your API Secret is stored encrypted so we cannot retrieve the unencrypted version to tell you the value if you forget it.

You can reset it, which will update the stored value and return the new value to you.

To do that click 'Apps' in the main menu, click on the application in question and then you can click the 'Reset' link in the 'API Secret' section.

Your new Secret will be displayed at the top of the page.

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