Introduction

Send and receive emails globally using Mailgun API. To get you familiar with Mailgun's API, here are some things you should know:

  • The Mailgun API is built on HTTP
  • Our API is RESTful which:
    • Uses predictable, resource-oriented URLs.
    • Uses built-in HTTP capabilities for passing parameters and authentication.
    • Responds with standard HTTP response codes to indicate errors.
    • Returns JSON .
  • When making HTTP calls to Mailgun, you can use Mailgun's libraries , or use your favorite HTTP/REST library available for your programming language.
  • To give you a sense of how to use the API, we've provided code samples which were written and can be viewed in several popular programming languages.

The samples that are provided for our API Reference are funcionable examples, which you can copy/paste and run the script to see the API in action.

Base URL

All API calls referenced in our documentation start with a base URL. Mailgun allows the ability to send and receive email in both US and EU regions. Be sure to use the appropriate base URL based on which region you have created for your domain.

It is also important to note that Mailgun uses URI versioning for our API endpoints, and some endpoints may have different versions than others. Please reference the version stated in the URL for each endpoint.

For domains created in our US region the base URL is:

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https://api.mailgun.net/

For domains created in our EU region the base URL is:

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https://api.eu.mailgun.net/

Your Mailgun account may contain multiple sending domains. To avoid passing the domain name as a query parameter, most API URLs must include the name of the domain you are interested in:

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https://api.mailgun.net/v3/mydomain.com

Authentication

Authentication to the Mailgun API is done by providing an Authorization header using HTTP Basic Auth:

  • Username: api
  • Password: Your API key

Mailgun provides two types of API keys for authenticating against the API:

Primary account API key

When you sign up for Mailgun, a primary account API key is generated. This key allows you to perform all CRUD operations via our various API endpoints and for any of your sending domains. To view your primary account API key:

  1. Go to the Mailgun Dashboard
  2. Click on Account** Settings** on the right-hand side.
  3. Select API Keys and click on the eye icon next to Private API key.

Domain Sending Keys

Domain Sending Keys are API keys that only allow sending messages via a POST call on /messages and /messages.mime endpoints for the domain in which they are created for. To create a sending API key:

  1. Go to the Mailgun Dashboard
  2. Click the Sending tabon the left-hand side of the Mailgun dashboard
  3. Click the Domains tab and select the domain in which you wish to add a sending key to
  4. Click the Domain Settings and navigate to the Sending API keys tab
  5. Click on Add Sending Key

Give your key a suitable description (such as the name of the application or client you are creating the key for) and click Create Sending Key

Copy your API key and keep it in a safe place. For security purposes, we will not be able to show you the key again. If you lose your key, you will need to create a new key.

Here is how you use basic HTTP auth with curl:

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curl --user 'api:YOUR_API_KEY'
Warning!

Important Reminder** to keep your API safe and secure

Date Format

Mailgun returns JSON for all API calls. JSON does not have a built-in date type; dates are passed as strings encoded according to RFC 2822#page-14. This format is native to JavaScript and is also supported by most programming languages out of the box:

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'Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:02:00 +0000'
Warning!

Abbreviated time zones like (EST, CET, IST, HLC) may not result in the correct offset due to the ambiguous nature of abbreviated time zones. The numerical offset (+0500) or GMT/UTC is preferred.

Mailgun Regions

Using a single account and billing plan, you can choose to provision new sending domains in the EU environment. It is important to note that message data never leaves the region in which it is processed. Only a limited amount of account data is replicated globally, giving you a single account from which to manage domains in both the US and the EU.

Here are the specifics on the type of data that is replicated globally versus what is region-bound:

Global Region-Bound (US / EU)
Account Information, User Accounts, Billing Details (invoices/plan information), API Keys, Domain Names Domain Metadata (e.g., SMTP credentials), Messages, Event Logs, Suppressions, Mailing Lists, Tags, Statistics, Routes, IP Addresses

Below are the endpoints you will use for sending/receiving/tracking messages in the EU:

Service US Endpoint EU Endpoint
REST API api.mailgun.net api.eu.mailgun.net
Outgoing SMTP Server smtp.mailgun.org smtp.eu.mailgun.org
Inbound SMTP Server (Routes) mxa.mailgun.org mxa.eu.mailgun.org
Inbound SMTP Server (Routes) mxb.mailgun.org mxb.eu.mailgun.org
Open/Click Tracking Endpoint
mailgun.org eu.mailgun.org