Quickstart
Runway offers the most cutting-edge generative video models. You can start using our models in your application with only a few quick steps.
Set up an organization
First, sign up for an account in the developer portal. After signing up, you’ll be presented with an option to create a new organization. An organization corresponds to your integration, and contains resources like API keys and configuration.
Create a key
Once you’ve created an organization, click to the API Keys tab. You’ll create a new key, giving it a name. Call it something descriptive, like “Matt Testing” so you can revoke the key later if needed.
The key will be presented to you only once: immediately copy it someplace safe, like a password manager. We’ll never return the key in plaintext again; if you lose the key, you’ll need to disable it and create a new one.
Add credits
Before you can start using the API, you’ll need to add credits to your organization. Credits are used to pay for the compute resources used by your models. Visit the billing tab in the developer portal to add credits to your organization. A minimum payment of $10 (at $0.01 per credit) is required to get started.
Start your integration
Now that you have an organization and a key, you can start using Runway’s API.
Using your API key
When you make requests to the API, you’ll need to include your API key in the headers. Our
SDKs will automatically add your key if it’s specified in the RUNWAYML_API_SECRET
environment variable. You can export this in your shell for test purposes like so:
In a production environment, do not hard-code your key like this. Instead, securely load your key into environment variables using a secret manager or similar tool.
Talking to the API
First, you’ll want to install the Runway SDK. You can do this with npm:
In your code, you can now import the SDK and start making requests:
First, you’ll want to install the Runway SDK. You can do this with pip:
In your code, you can now import the SDK and start making requests:
If you’re not ready to start writing code, you can test the API with cURL.
This command will start an image-to-video task using the “gen3a_turbo” model. You’ll see a JSON response with the task ID printed in your terminal, which you can use to fetch the task status.