UNunkeyed
keys

Remove key roles

Changed on

Remove roles from a key without affecting direct permissions or other roles.

Use this for privilege downgrades, removing temporary access, or subscription changes that revoke specific role-based capabilities. Direct permissions remain unchanged.

Important: Changes take effect immediately with up to 30-second edge propagation.

Required Permissions

Your root key must have one of the following permissions:

  • api.*.update_key (to update keys in any API)
  • api.<api_id>.update_key (to update keys in a specific API)

Side Effects

Invalidates the key cache for immediate effect, and makes role changes available for verification within 30 seconds across all regions.

post/v2/keys.removeRoles

Request

  • Base URL
    https://api.unkey.com
  • URL
    https://api.unkey.com/v2/keys.removeRoles
  • Auth
    HTTP bearer

Request body

keyIdstring required

Specifies which key loses the roles using the database identifier returned from createKey. Do not confuse this with the actual API key string that users include in requests. Removing roles only affects direct assignments, not permissions inherited from other sources. Role changes take effect immediately but may take up to 30 seconds to propagate across all regions.

rolesstring[] required

Removes direct role assignments from the key without affecting other role sources or permissions. Operations are idempotent - removing non-assigned roles has no effect and causes no errors.

After removal, the key loses access to permissions that were only granted through these roles. Invalid role references cause the entire operation to fail atomically, ensuring consistent state.

Example request

{
  "keyId": "key_2cGKbMxRyIzhCxo1Idjz8q"
}

Response

Roles removed successfully. Returns all roles currently assigned to the key.

Example response

{
  "meta": {
    "requestId": "req_123"
  },
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "role_1234567890abcdef",
      "name": "support.readonly",
      "description": "Provides read-only access for customer support representatives to view user accounts and support tickets",
      "permissions": [
        {
          "id": "perm_1234567890abcdef",
          "name": "users.read",
          "slug": "users-read",
          "description": "Allows reading user profile information and account details"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Changes

  • 4bd11a7252bcRevision changes
    • breaking

      the / request property's maxLength was decreased to 128

    • info

      the / request property's minLength was decreased from 3 to 1

    • info

      removed the pattern ^[a-zA-Z0-9_:\-\.\*]+$ from the request property /

  • 43ad1ce9a152Revision changes
    • info

      the endpoint scheme security dashboard was removed from the API

    • info

      the endpoint scheme security rootKey was removed from the API