Moderation API Essentials

What exactly is the moderation API?
How requests are counted and billed
Setting up your first integration
Pricing structure and free options

What exactly is the moderation API?

The Discuse moderation API gives you programmatic access to our content screening toolkit via standard REST endpoints. Instead of building your own text, image, and video scanning systems from scratch, you can tap into our existing infrastructure with minimal coding effort.

Behind the scenes, your API requests trigger specialized screening algorithms, trained on millions of samples across dozens of content categories. You’ll receive structured, actionable results in real-time that your application can use to make content decisions automatically.

Every account gets dedicated API credentials and access to our usage analytics dashboard—perfect for tracking moderation activity patterns across your platform.

How requests are counted and billed

We track “successful requests” as those receiving HTTP 200 status codes and containing an “ok” response indicator. We specifically don’t count as billable:

Failed connections
Authentication issues
API timeouts
Internal service errors
Malformed request attempts

Our usage counters update almost instantly, with occasional 5-minute synchronization delays during peak periods. We’ve built substantial redundancy into our tracking systems to ensure you’re never charged for problematic requests.

For transparency, you can monitor your usage metrics through the dashboard in near real-time and export detailed logs if needed.

Setting up your first integration

To start using the moderation API:

Create your organizational account at discuse.com
Generate your unique project API key in your dashboard settings
Implement the authentication headers in your code (details in the next section)
Start sending content for analysis

Your API credentials are extremely sensitive—treat them like database passwords. If you suspect credential exposure, immediately rotate your API key through your dashboard. The rotation process invalidates the old key while creating a new one, with zero downtime for your integration.

We limit projects to one active API key deliberately, making security management and usage accounting vastly simpler. For multi-environment setups (development, staging, production), we recommend creating separate projects with distinct keys.

Pricing structure and free options

Our pricing reflects the substantial computing infrastructure needed for high-quality AI moderation—particularly the specialized hardware accelerators powering our visual content analysis systems.

While we don’t offer a permanent free tier, every new account receives a generous evaluation period with full API access. This gives you ample time to test integration, benchmark performance, and assess how our service fits your needs.