Using the Kraken API with a third party service

Our API allows third party services (such as trading bots, mobile apps and portfolio management services) to integrate with a Kraken account so that they can view account balances, retrieve trading history, place and cancel orders and so on.

Any account owner who wishes to use a third party service simply needs to create an API key with the appropriate configuration, and provide this key to the third party service (often called importing an API key).

For the most part, these integrations work seamlessly, but sometimes issues can occur which cause unintended results or unexpected error messages.

API Key Permissions and 2FA

Issues with third party services often occur when the service is attempting a task for which the API key does not have permission, or when API key two factor authentication (2FA) is preventing access entirely.If your third party service is not working as expected, you should review your API keys and their settings via the Username -> Settings -> API tab in the Kraken Pro webapp.

You would need to make sure that the API key being used has all of the settings and permissions that your service requires, and that any two factor authentication is not preventing access.Full details regarding the generation and configuration of API keys (including an explanation of the permissions) are available via our API key support page.

New Accounts with No Activity

Some third party services (such as Fidor's Crypto as a Service) also experience issues linking to Kraken accounts when the accounts are new and do not have any funding or trading activity. For new accounts, some API calls will return an unusual response, such as a successful but empty response like: {"error":[]} which might be misinterpreted by the third party service, resulting in an unexpected error (such as Fidor's 500 server error).

If your third party service is returning an unexpected error and your Kraken account is new (without any funding or trading activity), please add some funds to your Kraken account via the Funding tab of account management. Even a small amount would suffice to create some activity, after which your third party service should start working successfully.

Nonce Window & Corrupted Keys

While some third party applications recommend users to change the nonce window setting, API keys that have an unusually high nonce window setting, could potentially cause an error to appear. The nonce window setting is intended to work around networking issues (such as unreliable Internet access), hence in most cases, the nonce window setting should be kept at its default value of 0 (zero).

If you begin to experience errors with your API Keys and third party service, a possible outcome could be that your API Keys became corrupted. This only happens when they experience too many errors. We recommend that the user delete existing keys and generate a brand new API key pair with all required permissions, and import this new API key into the third party service.