API Keys
Rankup integrates with several external services for data collection and analysis. Configure your API keys in Settings → API Keys.
Required vs optional keys
You only need keys for the products and features you're using. Here's what each key unlocks:
Core (recommended for all users)
| Provider | What it enables | Products |
|---|
| Anthropic (Claude) | Theme extraction, content analysis, brief generation | All |
| Brave Search | SERP position checks, branded query monitoring | All |
Location Pulse
| Provider | What it enables |
|---|
| Cloro | ChatGPT and Google AI Overview perception monitoring |
| Perplexity | Perplexity AI perception monitoring (direct API, saves Cloro credits) |
Content Calendar Engine
| Provider | What it enables |
|---|
| DataForSEO | Search volume, keyword difficulty, keyword suggestions, clustering |
Brand Radar
| Provider | What it enables |
|---|
| NewsData.io | Real-time news monitoring for narrative threats |
Free APIs (no key needed or free tier)
| API | Usage |
|---|
| HackerNews (Firebase) | Community demand signals - no auth required |
| Crossref | Citation evidence - email in User-Agent header |
| The Guardian | News archive - free API key, 5k requests/day |
| Nager.Date | Holiday data - no auth required |
| US Census Bureau | Location demographic data - free API key |
API cost strategy
Rankup is designed to minimize API costs:
- Brave Search is used for all SERP-related queries (cheaper than DataForSEO's SERP API)
- DataForSEO is reserved for data Brave can't provide: volume, difficulty, suggestions, and clustering
- Perplexity direct API is used instead of Cloro for Perplexity queries, saving Cloro credits
- Claude Haiku is used for extraction tasks; Sonnet only for complex analysis
Security
API keys are encrypted at rest in the database. They are never exposed in client-side code or API responses - only used server-side for data collection jobs.