Introduction

Overview

GoDaddy's REST APIs give you direct programmatic access to the same platform capabilities that power GoDaddy's own products — through standard HTTP calls from your code, scripts, or AI agents.

What you can do

Domains

GoDaddy Domains APIs give you programmatic access to the same platform capabilities that power GoDaddy's own domain products. You can:

Commerce

GoDaddy Commerce is the engine behind GoDaddy's online stores and point of sale. Its APIs let your software work directly with stores, catalog, customers, orders, and tax. Use Commerce APIs and webhooks to build tools for your business or for GoDaddy merchants (third-party apps, with the merchant's consent).

Which API version?

The Domains API has three version namespaces. Pick the right one before you start.

Base URL

All API calls target https://api.godaddy.com.

All requests and responses use JSON. Every call requires an Authorization header with a Personal Access Token. Read operations also need Accept: application/json, and write operations (POST, PATCH, PUT) additionally need Content-Type: application/json.

curl -s "https://api.godaddy.com/v1/domains" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GODADDY_PAT" \
  -H "Accept: application/json"

The API is stateless — no sessions, no cookies. Each request is independently authenticated and authorized. See the REST Reference for the complete endpoint catalog.

Credentials and access

Authentication uses a Personal Access Token (PAT) (a scoped Bearer token you generate from the developer dashboard). PATs are tied to specific capability scopes, can be set to expire, and can be revoked individually without rotating any account-wide key. For most integrations, a PAT with the minimum required scopes is the right choice.

The legacy sso-key credential (a key/secret pair from classic-developer.godaddy.com/keys) is still supported for some APIs but is scheduled for deprecation. It doesn't work for v3 Domains APIs. New Domains integrations should use a PAT. Some APIs (like the Auctions API) require a legacy API key and don't accept PATs.

Account eligibility matters for write calls. A valid credential isn't enough on its own. Some operations require the account to meet additional eligibility requirements:

• Read operations (availability search, domain listing, DNS reads) work with any valid credential on any account.
• Write operations that cost money (registration, renewal, transfer, and payment operations) require the account to have a valid billing method on file or a funded Good as Gold balance.

If an account doesn't meet these requirements, the API returns 403 Forbidden. To determine whether the failure is a scope problem or an account eligibility problem, check the code field in the response body. The HTTP status alone doesn't distinguish between the two.

API versions

The Domains API spans three version namespaces, each reflecting a different phase of the platform's evolution:

v3 is where new capabilities are being added. For everything not yet in v3 (DNS, renewals, transfers, contacts, lock), use v1 or v2.

In this section

First call

Follow the Quickstart to generate a Personal Access Token and make your first call in under five minutes. If you prefer command-line workflows over raw curl, set up the CLI first.

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