How to Get a Static IP for Your SpotCrime API Key
SpotCrime API keys are bound to a static IP address. This is how we keep keys from leaking — a stolen key is useless from any other address. The tradeoff is that you need a fixed IP to call the API from, and a lot of modern infrastructure (home internet, serverless functions, OpenAI GPT Actions) doesn't give you one by default.
Here are your options, from cheapest to most professional. All of them work. Pick the one that matches where your code runs.
Ask your ISP
Free – $15/month
If you're calling the API from an office or home server, check whether your IP already stays put. Many business internet plans include a static IP, and residential ISPs will usually sell you one for $5–15/month as an add-on. Comcast Business, Verizon Fios Business, and most regional carriers offer this.
Best for: Internal tools running on a machine you own.
Won't work for: Anything running in the cloud or serverless.
A small VPS
$4 – $6/month
Every cloud VPS comes with a static IP. Spin up the cheapest instance at DigitalOcean ($4/mo), Hetzner (€4/mo), or AWS Lightsail ($3.50/mo), run your integration code there, and register that IP with us. This is what most of our smaller API customers do.
Best for: Developers comfortable with a Linux box, scheduled jobs, small backends.
A static-IP proxy service
$10 – $50/month
If your code runs somewhere you can't control the outbound IP — Heroku, Vercel, AWS Lambda, or an OpenAI Custom GPT Action — route your requests through a proxy that has one. Services like Fixie and QuotaGuard Static exist for exactly this: your requests go out through their fixed IP, and that's the IP you register with SpotCrime.
Best for: Serverless platforms and hosted AI tools where the outbound IP changes on every request.
A relay API on your own infrastructureRecommended for AI agents
~$5/month
This is the setup we recommend if you're integrating SpotCrime into a Custom GPT, Claude tool, or any AI agent. OpenAI doesn't publish static egress IPs for GPT Actions, and even if it did, your SpotCrime key would live inside the GPT configuration where you can't fully control it.
- Deploy a small API (50 lines of code) on a VPS or Lightsail instance with a static IP.
- The relay holds your SpotCrime key and calls api.spotcrime.com from its fixed address.
- Your GPT Action calls the relay, authenticated with its own token that you issue and can revoke.
You get the static-IP requirement solved, your SpotCrime key never leaves your server, and you can add caching, logging, and rate limiting on your side.
Cloud NAT with a reserved IP
$32 – $45/month + data processing
If you're already running production workloads in AWS, GCP, or Azure, route your outbound traffic through a NAT gateway with a reserved address — an Elastic IP behind an AWS NAT Gateway, Cloud NAT on GCP, or a NAT Gateway with a static public IP on Azure. All traffic from your VPC exits through one fixed IP regardless of how many instances or functions sit behind it.
Best for: Teams with existing cloud infrastructure and multiple services calling the API.
Registering or Changing Your IP
Your IP is set when your key is provisioned. To change it, email Feedback@spotcrime.com with your key ID and the new address — changes usually go through same business day. Need more than one IP (staging + production)? Ask; we support multiple IPs per account on paid plans.
Ready to get started?
Request API access and we'll provision your key once your static IP is on file.