API

Buttondown has a pleasant REST API to let you supercharge your newsletter.

Everything you can do in Buttondown, you can do with the API. Manage subscribers, send emails, create automations — all from your own code.

Show me the damn docs

Here are some common operations to get you started.

• Send broadcast email
• Send transactional email
• Create a subscriber
• Create a newsletter

Python

import requests

url = "https://api.buttondown.com/v1/emails"
headers = {
    "Authorization": "Token $BUTTONDOWN_API_KEY",
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
}
data = {
    "subject": "Weekly Newsletter - Product Updates",
    "body": """# Product Updates This Week

Hey everyone! Here's what's new:

## New Features
- **Advanced Analytics**: Track subscriber engagement like never before
- **Custom Templates**: Create your own email designs
- **API Improvements**: Faster response times and better error handling

## Coming Soon
- Mobile app for iOS and Android
- Advanced automation workflows
- Integration with 50+ popular tools

Thanks for being part of our community!

Best,
The Team""",
    "status": "sent"
}

response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=data)
print(response.json())

Build whatever you need.

The interface and integrations like Zapier handle most use cases. But when you need something custom, the API is there:

• Power your SaaS. Programmatically send emails, manage subscribers, and handle paid subscriptions from your own application.
• Integrate with your stack. Connect Buttondown to your analytics, CRM, or any internal tool.
• Automate everything. Sync subscriber data, trigger emails from external events, or build your own dashboard.

API-first by design.

We didn't bolt on an API after the fact. Every feature in Buttondown is built API-first — we use the same API to power our own app. Open your browser's network tab and see for yourself.

That means no second-class endpoints, no missing functionality, and no surprises. If you can click it, you can script it.

Frequently asked questions

Is the API available on the free plan?

Yes. The API is available on all plans, including free. Learn more about getting started with the API.

Is there a rate limit?

Yes. The API is rate-limited to prevent abuse, but the limits are generous enough for most use cases. Learn more about rate limits.

Where do I find my API key?

On the API keys page in your Buttondown account. You can also create multiple API keys with different permissions.

Do you have an official SDK for my language?

No, and that's deliberate. We'd rather invest in making our OpenAPI spec as good as humanly possible — which benefits every caller regardless of language or framework — than maintain a fleet of SDKs that inevitably lag behind the API itself. If you want a typed client, generators like openapi-typescript or openapi-python-client will give you one in seconds.

Do you have an MCP server?

No, for essentially the same reasons we don't ship official SDKs: an MCP server is a thin, opinionated wrapper around our API, and we'd rather keep refining the OpenAPI spec underneath so every caller benefits. If you want one, point Claude (or your LLM of choice) at our API spec and ask it to build an MCP server tailored to your workflow — you'll end up with something better-fit than anything we could ship generically.