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Every on Unkey Compute sits behind the gateway, and there’s no other way to reach it. So the gateway can check API keys, callers, block requests, validate them against your OpenAPI spec, and log them before they reach your . You set this up with policies. With no policies, the gateway just passes requests through.
Each deployment keeps the policies it was created with. Adding, editing, or turning off a policy only affects the next deployment. To apply a change, redeploy (Redeploy in the dashboard, or deployments.createDeployment).

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What policies can do

A policy has a name, an on/off switch, up to ten match expressions that pick which requests it applies to, and one rule. There are five kinds of rule: See Gateway policies to add them from the dashboard, API, or CLI.

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What happens to a request

  1. The request arrives at one of your domains, and the gateway finds the deployment it belongs to.
  2. The deployment’s policies run in list order. Turned-off policies, and policies whose match expressions don’t fit the request, are skipped.
  3. If a policy rejects the request, the caller gets a 4xx with an err:frontline:... code. The request never reaches your app and doesn’t appear in your request log. See Gateway errors for every code.
  4. If every policy passes, the gateway forwards the request to your app with the headers below.

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What your app receives

The gateway keeps the original Host header and adds these: Callers can’t fake these. We remove any X-Unkey-* header a client sends before policies run. To get the deployment ID, read the UNKEY_DEPLOYMENT_ID environment variable. The response to the caller includes X-Unkey-Request-Id, X-Unkey-Region, and X-Unkey-Frontline-Id. Rate limit headers are added when a rate limit applied.

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Use keys from API Management

The API keys the gateway checks live in API Management. To require a key, create a keyspace and keys in API Management, then add the keyspace to an API key authentication policy. The same keys also work if your own code calls keys.verifyKey.

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Next steps

Gateway policies

Match expressions, evaluation order, limits, and how to set policies.

API key authentication policy

Verify Unkey keys at the edge and forward the identity to your app.

The principal header

The JSON your app reads to know who is calling.

Gateway errors

Every code the gateway returns, with its status and cause.
Last modified on October 15, 2026