Getting started

From signup to first successful request in under a minute.

1. Create an API key

Sign up, then head to Dashboard → Keys and click Create new key. The plaintext key is shown once on creation; save it to your secrets manager immediately. After that, the dashboard only shows the prefix (e.g. sk_live_a1b2c3d4...).

2. Send your first request

Replace $GHOSTFETCH_API_KEY with the key you just created. The endpoint returns rendered HTML in the response body, with bypass metadata in response headers.

curl

terminalbash

curl https://api.ghostfetch.io/unlock \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GHOSTFETCH_API_KEY" \
  --get \
  --data-urlencode "url=https://www.example.gov/search" \
  --data-urlencode "render=stealth"

Python

unlock.pypython

import os
import requests

resp = requests.get(
    "https://api.ghostfetch.io/unlock",
    params={
        "url": "https://www.example.gov/search",
        "render": "stealth",
    },
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['GHOSTFETCH_API_KEY']}"},
    timeout=120,
)

resp.raise_for_status()
print(resp.headers["X-Unlock-Solve-Time-Ms"], "ms")
html = resp.text

Node.js

unlock.tstypescript

const res = await fetch(
  "https://api.ghostfetch.io/unlock?" +
    new URLSearchParams({
      url: "https://www.example.gov/search",
      render: "stealth",
    }),
  {
    headers: {
      Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.GHOSTFETCH_API_KEY}`,
    },
  },
);

if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`unlock failed: ${res.status}`);
const html = await res.text();
console.log(res.headers.get("X-Unlock-Solve-Time-Ms"), "ms");

3. Pick a render mode

The render parameter controls how aggressively we work the target site:

render=none — plain HTTP fetch through our proxy pool. 1x billing. Right for static HTML and JSON.
render=js— Chromium with JS but no stealth. 2x billing. Right for SPAs that don't actively defend.
render=stealth — full stealth context with captcha solving. 3x billing. The reason we exist.

4. Handle the response

Status codes you should expect:

Status	Meaning	Billed?
200	Unlocked. HTML in body.	Yes
422	Captcha could not be solved.	No
429	Your plan's rate limit.	No
5xx	Our infrastructure failed.	No