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Getting started

This is the quick tour. Prefer doing over reading? Set up in 5 minutes walks the same path hands-on. For the full technical detail (request/response shapes, validators, transformers), see the API reference.

The idea in one line

You point your senders at an EchoRelay address. EchoRelay authenticates the call, validates it, applies the right billing and rate rules, and fans it out to one or more target URLs you configure — retrying any target that's temporarily down. You build nothing.

1. Create your account and project

  1. Sign up at echorelay.dev and confirm your email.
  2. Create a project. A project is your isolated workspace — its own address, its own key, its own credits.

2. Get your API key

Each project has one key that authenticates every call into it. You'll find it in the panel under your project. There are two kinds:

  • a live key (er_live_…) — your everyday key. On the free tier it relays at the free rate without spending anything; on paid traffic it draws from your credits.
  • a test key (er_test_…) — uses a separate test-credit pool at a lower rate limit, so you can experiment in isolation. Test credits are a paid perk, included with credit packs and the Pro/Scale plans (see the pricing page) — the free tier has no test pool, so start on your live key.

Keep keys secret. You can rotate them at any time (see Account & security).

3. Define where calls go

In the panel, add an endpoint and give it one or more targets (the URLs you want the data delivered to). Add more than one target and EchoRelay delivers to all of them — that's the fan-out.

You can also attach validation rules so malformed calls are rejected up front. The API reference covers the full set of options.

If a target needs its own auth (a bearer token, API key, etc.), you can save it once as a reusable credential instead of re-entering it per target — see Credential vault.

4. Send your first request

Point your sender at your project's address (shown in the panel) with your key, and send a request. EchoRelay returns quickly (it accepts the call, then delivers in the background) and forwards it to your target(s).

Which key to start with

On the free tier, set things up with your live key — it relays at the free rate without spending credits. If you're on a credit pack or a Pro/Scale plan, the test key gives you an isolated pool for experiments; switch keys whenever you like.

5. Watch it work

Open your project's request history in the panel to see each call, whether it was delivered, and any retries. If a delivery is failing, When calls fail walks through the fixes.

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