> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://developer.redflagalert.net/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://developer.redflagalert.net/authentication.md).

# Authentication

API users are provided with an API key and secret. Please contact us for prices.

Authentication is handled using HTTP Basic Authentication:

```
Authorisation: Basic xxxxxx
```

where 'xxxxx' is the result of base64 encoding the api key and secret.

Most programming languages will have a library to handle this. For example, in Python the [requests](http://docs.python-requests.org/en/master/) library can make an authenticated request by doing:

```python
requests.get('https://api2.redflagalert.net/v4/companies/', auth=('key', 'secret'))
```

If you have any problems with authentication in your chosen language, please contact us for assistance.