API Tokens
A token is how a program proves it may act on your account. The same token authenticates both the REST API and Claude Code — there is one kind, not two.
Tokens live under Account → API tokens.
Creating a token
- Go to Account → API tokens and choose Create token.
- Give it a name you will recognise later — Claude Code on my laptop beats token 1.
- Choose what it may do.
- Optionally set an expiry date.
- Choose Create token.
The token is shown once, on the screen that follows. Copy it then. Pingniner stores only a hash of it, so nobody — including us — can show it to you again. If you lose it, revoke it and create another.
Underneath the token you will find the command that connects Claude Code, already filled in with the token and your account's address. See Claude Code.
What a token may do
Two abilities, chosen with checkboxes. Most tokens want only the first.
| Ability | Allows |
|---|---|
| Read | List monitors, read their history, uptime and alerts, see the account's plan and limits |
| Write | Create monitors, change their settings, pause and resume them |
Give a token Read alone unless something genuinely needs to make changes. A read-only token that leaks is an information problem; a write token that leaks is someone else's monitors on your bill.
TIP
No token can delete anything. Deleting a monitor also destroys its history, so it is deliberately left to a person in the interface. There is no API route for it and no tool for it, whatever abilities a token holds.
Expiry
Leave the expiry empty for a token that never expires, or set a date after which it stops working. A year is the default and a reasonable choice: long enough not to be a nuisance, short enough that a forgotten token on an old laptop does not stay valid forever.
Expired tokens keep appearing in the list, marked in red, until you revoke them.
One token, one account
A token is bound to the account that was open when you created it, and it can never reach another one. If you belong to two accounts and want to work with both, create a token in each and add them as two separate connections.
This is deliberate: the account is fixed on the token rather than chosen by whatever is calling, so a program cannot widen its own reach.
Revoking
Choose Revoke beside any token. Whatever was using it stops working immediately.
Revoke a token when:
- someone who had it has left the team;
- it was pasted somewhere it should not have been — a ticket, a shared document, a chat;
- you no longer recognise what is using it;
- you lost the plain text and need a replacement.
There is no undo, but there is no cost to it either — create another and reconnect.
Who can see which tokens
The list shows every token on the account, whoever created it, along with the name of the person who did and when it was last used.
That is on purpose. A token acts on the account, so the account should be able to see what exists and clean it up — including a token belonging to somebody who has since left.
Removing a person from the account already stops their tokens working: Pingniner re-checks membership on every single request, not just when the token was issued. But it does not delete the tokens, and a credential nobody can see is worse than one everybody in the account can.
Rate limits
Per token, per minute:
| Requests | Limit |
|---|---|
| Reading | 120 per minute |
| Writing | 30 per minute |
Because the limit is per token rather than per person, one busy integration cannot throttle you while you are working elsewhere. Going over returns 429 Too Many Requests.
Keeping tokens safe
- Treat a token like a password. It grants everything its abilities allow, on your account, without a second factor.
- Do not commit tokens to a repository. Use an environment variable or your operating system's keychain.
- Do not paste one into a support ticket. We will never ask for it.
- Prefer several narrow tokens over one shared token — revoking one then costs you one integration rather than all of them.
WARNING
Monitor keys are a different thing entirely. The keys in heartbeat ping URLs and agent install commands are unauthenticated credentials belonging to a single monitor, and revoking an API token does nothing to them. They are covered in the API reference.