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Can external users see published APIs?

Last modified by Tiina Silvonen on 2026/08/17 07:18

Question: 

Can external users see published APIs?

Answer:

Access to the API Portal requires a University of Helsinki user account. As a result, external users cannot browse or discover APIs through the portal.

The portal was previously publicly accessible. However, this often led API owners to create private APIs because they did not want the APIs to be visible to everyone. Since the vast majority of our APIs are intended for internal use within the University, we decided to restrict portal access to University users only.

This approach allows API owners to publish API documentation openly within the University community while keeping the portal inaccessible to external users. If an API needs to be consumed by external users or applications, access can still be granted through appropriate authentication mechanisms, such as API keys, without providing access to the API Portal itself.