Get an API key without going through your success manager

If your team is not on McLeod, Tai or Turvo, you do not have to wait on us to connect. Any admin on your Cargado account can create an API key themselves, today, with no ticket and no call.

Create a key

1. Open Settings, then your Organization profile, then Integrations.
2. Create a custom integration. Give it a name and a short description, so a year from now somebody knows what it was for.
3. Tick the permissions it needs. The options are syncing loads, managing carrier relationships, managing teams, managing users, and looking up market rates. Grant only what that integration will actually use.
4. Create it. The key appears once and once only. Copy it straight into wherever it is going to live.

Keys look like cgk_live_... for production and cgk_test_... for testing. Send it as an api-key header, or as a bearer token.

Keep it safe

Put the key in your platform's own secret store, not in a spreadsheet, a chat message or an email. If you think one has leaked, rotate it: rotation issues a new key and leaves the old one working for seven days so you can cut over without downtime. You can also revoke a key outright.

The endpoints themselves are documented at docs.cargado.com.

Connecting an AI assistant is different

Cargado has an MCP server, which is how an AI assistant such as Claude talks to the marketplace. It does not use these API keys. It authenticates as you, through a normal Cargado sign-in, which means it can only ever see what your own account can see.

If you want to set that up, email success@cargado.com and we will walk you through it.

There is no command-line tool

If you have seen a Cargado CLI mentioned somewhere, it does not exist. The two ways in are the REST API with a key, and MCP with a sign-in.