API authentication

How to authenticate with the Rime TTS API using a bearer token.

All requests to the Rime API are authenticated with a bearer token in the Authorization header.

Get an API key

1. Sign in at app.rime.ai.
2. Open the API Tokens page.
3. Create a new token and copy the value. Treat it like a password — anyone with the token can synthesize speech against your account.

Use the token

Set the Authorization header on every request:

curl --request POST \
  --url https://users.rime.ai/v1/rime-tts \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --header 'Accept: audio/mpeg' \
  --data '{"speaker":"astra","text":"hello","modelId":"coda","language":"en"}'

The same header is used for the HTTP endpoint, the WebSocket endpoints, and the metadata/utility endpoints.

CLI authentication

The rime CLI manages your key for you. Run rime login once and the CLI stores it at ~/.rime/rime.toml. You can also set it explicitly via the RIME_CLI_API_KEY environment variable.

On-prem authentication

On-prem deployments accept the same Authorization: Bearer … header. You can also pre-configure a key at the deployment level using the RIME_API_KEY environment variable, so callers don’t need to send the header at all. See the on-prem quickstart for details.

Common auth errors

If your request fails authentication, the API returns 401 Unauthorized with a short plain-text body explaining why:

Status	Body	Cause
401	missing headers	No Authorization header was sent.
401	invalid api key	The token is not recognized, or it was sent without the Bearer scheme.

Always send the header as Authorization: Bearer <token> (capital B). The token alone, without Bearer, is rejected.

Related

• Quickstart: TTS in five minutes
• API reference index
• CLI authentication commands