APIs Overview  

The Kentik APIs, which enable programmatic control of Kentik, are covered in the following topics:

• About Kentik APIs
• About the V6 APIs
• About the V5 APIs
• API Rate Limiting
• API Access Via cURL

Note: For assistance using a Kentik API, see Customer Care.

Kentik APIs enable programmatic control over Kentik setup (administrative functions), querying of network data stored in Kentik, and alerting/mitigations based on user-defined conditions. Current API versions are shown below.

Kentik currently supports two API versions:

• V5 APIs: A comprehensive set of REST APIs for administrative functions, querying, and alerting. See About the V5 APIs.
• V6 APIs: An alternative set of APIs that enhance and extend V5 capabilities. See About the V6 APIs.

Note: The V5 API tester was discontinued in January 2025.

The following API versions are discontinued and no longer available:

• V1 APIs: Original APIs for admin and querying, discontinued on May 8, 2017.
• V4 APIs: APIs for Data Explorer functionality, discontinued on May 8, 2017.

The V6 APIs, available via REST endpoints and gRPC RPCs, aim to:

• Offer functionality not covered by V5 APIs.
• Serve as a foundation for expanding capabilities, including areas already covered by the V5 APIs (e.g., Users and Sites).

For a list of available v6 APIs, refer to "V6 APIS" in the Kentik APIs section of the Contents tab of the KB.

Note: The KB includes articles on each API listed in the v6 API Tester’s landing page. The APIs marked in the KB as being Alpha or Beta versions are not supported or recommended for production use.

The V6 API tester allows you to test V6 API methods using your Kentik account data, and is accessible at https://portal.kentik.com/v4/core/api-tester.

The Kentik V5 APIs enable programmatic management of Kentik and are categorized as follows:

• V5 Admin APIs: Manage your company's Kentik settings, including users, devices, sites, and tags. These APIs support methods to read/write backend information, returning data in JSON key/value pairs. For more details, refer to the V5 Admin APIs documentation and the list of V5 Admin Methods.
• V5 Query API: Enables querying of your network data stored in Kentik, returning data or visualizations (see the V5 Query API documentation and the list of V5 Query Methods).
• V5 Alerting APIs: Provides notifications of anomalous conditions (DDoS attacks, blocked routes, etc.) on Kentik-monitored network infrastructure, and supports mitigation management. Returns data on current or historical deviations. See the V5 Alerting API documentation and the list of V5 Alerting Methods.

Note: The V5 API tester was discontinued in January 2025.

API calls are rate-limited to ensure fair resource distribution among Kentik customers. The limits allow for reasonable activity bursts and prevent abrupt failures. Key points to consider when developing with Kentik APIs:

• Separate Counting: Requests from the V5 Query API and V5 Admin APIs are counted separately, each with distinct limits.
• Rolling Time Windows: Rate limits are calculated over a rolling minute and hour, with each request counted for 60 seconds and 3600 seconds, respectively, from receipt.
• Server Response Delay: Applied to requests exceeding the per-minute soft limit (see table below).
• HTTP 429 Error: Triggered when requests exceed the per-minute hard limit or the hourly limit.
• Concurrent Request Limit: Adhering to this ensures the per-minute count does not exceed the hard limit, and the hourly limit is not exceeded for non-query APIs.

The following table shows the limits for query and non-query API calls.

To access Kentik V5 APIs using cURL, you can generate HTTP requests to the Kentik API server. This is covered in the following topics:

• API V5 cURL Structure
• API V5 cURL Command

Here’s the structure of an HTTP request to Kentik via cURL for the V5 User API:

Note: For organizations registered on Kentik's EU cluster, use api.kentik.eu in place of api.kentik.com in the API v5 URL.

The structure elements can be used to form a cURL command, for example to create a new user (the backslashes are for line breaks for readability):

curl -X POST \
-H 'X-CH-Auth-Email: user@domain.suffix' \
-H 'X-CH-Auth-API-Token: user_api_token' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{
  "user": {
    "user_name": "New_Username",
    "user_full_name": "New Username",
    "user_email": "new_user@domain.suffix",
    "user_password": "newUser_password",
    "role": "Member",
    "email_service": true,
    "email_product": true
  }
}' \
https://api.kentik.com/api/v5/user | python -m json.tool

Notes:
- Find a user's API token on the User Information pane of the User Profile page in Kentik (accessible via the username link in the main navbar).
- For organizations registered on Kentik's EU cluster, use api.kentik.eu in place of api.kentik.com in the API v5 URL.

Using a single data (-d) parameter in cURL to pass a JSON object simplifies passing field values to Kentik:

• Create Call: The -d parameter includes the entire JSON object for the API (e.g., the user object for the User API).
• Update Call: The -d parameter includes only the fields to be updated in the JSON structure for the API.

Notes:
- In some contexts, a -d parameter with single quotes may cause a call to fail. Use the Unicode equivalent \u0027 to escape them in cURL.
- Examples of JSON objects returned by V5 APIs are shown in V5 Admin APIs and V5 Query API.
- For details on dimensions and corresponding JSON name/value pairs in V5 APIs, see Dimensions Reference.