Credly

Credly is a digital credential and open badge platform, owned by Pearson (acquired 2022), used by more than 2,000 organizations to issue, manage, and verify verifiable digital badges and certifications. The Credly Web Service API (base https://api.credly.com/v1, with a sandbox at https://sandbox-api.credly.com/v1) lets issuing organizations create and manage badge templates, issue and revoke badges to recipients, read organization and employee data, pull an events feed, and expose recipient credentials via Open Badges Infrastructure (OBI) endpoints. Authentication is HTTP Basic (the organization's authorization_token as the username with a blank password) or OAuth 2.0 client_credentials. Real-time notifications are delivered via outbound webhooks (HTTPS POST callbacks), not a WebSocket.

Credly publishes 5 API contracts indexed on the APIs.io network, including Badge Templates API, Events API, Issued Badges API, and 2 more. Tagged areas include Digital Credentials, Open Badges, Badging, Certification, and Verifiable Credentials.

The Credly catalog on APIs.io includes 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Credly’s developer surface includes engineering blog, authentication, documentation, and 10 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

28.5/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 25/100 agent aware Front door AI 3/6 light Heartbeat 40/100 slowing saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-13 · rubric v0.28.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemiumSelf serve⚡ Free to try

1 published contract

Digital Credentials Open BadgesBadgingCertification Verifiable CredentialsPearson

What this lets a business do 1

Business capabilities this provider's published APIs can perform, derived from its own contracts. Browse all capabilities →

Human Capital Management

BC-300

Badge TemplatesIssued Badges

POST /organizations/{organization_id}/badges PUT /organizations/{organization_id}/badges/{id}/revoke POST /organizations/{organization_id}/badge_templates

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-13 · rubric v0.28.0

Composite quality — 28.5/100 · thin

Contract Quality 9.5 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 4.8 / 15

Access Clarity 0.6 / 15

Operational Transparency 0.7 / 10

Contract Governance 1.2 / 9

Discoverability 5.0 / 8

Regulatory Posture 2.4 / 15

Create-or-Update Ergonomics 0.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 25/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created. Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet, not penalised by it.

The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 25. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship Ask about this →
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented) Ask about this →
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes Ask about this →
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0 Ask about this →
Request/Response Examples +7 pts — share of operations carrying request/response examples; else an Examples / Code Samples link Ask about this →
Registration Without a Human +6 pts — a `registration_endpoint` in the served RFC 8414 / OIDC discovery document Ask about this →

9 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Access Clarity scores 4.3 — up to +19.1 composite points Ask about this →
Developer Ergonomics scores 32.1 — up to +13.6 composite points Ask about this →
Contract Quality scores 50.8 — up to +12.3 composite points Ask about this →

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Not sure how this applies to your stack? Ask about any one item. Kin Lane reads every question, looks at your profile and your situation, and replies with what a fix would take — scoped to that one area, priced up front, yours whether you ship it or not. Ask a question →

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/credly/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/credly to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Standards implemented 2

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

OpenAPI

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

OAuth 2.0

measured — observed by APIs.io (declared)

APIs 5

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Credly Badge Templates API

Reusable credential designs badges are issued against.

Credly Events API

Organization event feed (mirrors webhook events).

Credly Issued Badges API

Badges issued to recipients from a badge template.

Credly OBI Recipients API

Open Badges Infrastructure endpoints for public verification.

Credly Organizations API

Organization details and employees directory.

Open Collections 6

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Credly Web Service Badge Templates API

OPEN COLLECTION

Credly Web Service Badge Templates Events API

OPEN COLLECTION

Credly Web Service Badge Templates Issued Badges API

OPEN COLLECTION

Credly Web Service Badge Templates OBI Recipients API

OPEN COLLECTION

Credly Web Service Badge Templates Organizations API

OPEN COLLECTION

Credly Web Service API

OPEN COLLECTION

Credly API pricing

Not yet checked against Credly's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-07-05 from credly.com; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.

Plan	Price
Issuer Subscription (Contact Sales) enterprise	—
Recipient (Badge Earner) free	—

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

Web Service API Requests: not published requests
Events Feed Page Size: 50 per page results
Paginated List Endpoints: paginated results

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against Credly's documentation. All 4 limits →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Credly Plans Pricing

2 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Credly Rate Limits

4 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Credly Finops

FINOPS

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs. Counts are the severity each rule declares, not results of running them.

Credly API Rules

64 rules · 61 error-severity 1 warn-severity 2 info-severity

SPECTRAL

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Credly Authentication

http/oauth2 · 2 schemes

SECURITY

Credly Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Scopes 1

OAuth scopes governing access to this provider's APIs.

Credly Scopes

3 scopes · clientCredentials

3 scopes

SCOPES

Agentic Access (API Evangelist recommendations) 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Credly Agentic Access

15 operations · 6 acting · 1 human-in-the-loop

15 operations · 6 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Access & Security 3

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Authentication

Authentication

OAuthScopes

OAuthScopes

Operate 1

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

Commercial 2

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

Company 4

The organization behind the API

Blog

Blog

BlogRSS

BlogRSS

LinkedIn

Website

Website

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

CapabilityMap

CapabilityMap

Source (apis.yml)

aid: credly
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/credly/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
name: Credly
kind: company
description: Credly is a digital credential and open badge platform, owned by Pearson (acquired 2022), used by more than 2,000
  organizations to issue, manage, and verify verifiable digital badges and certifications. The Credly Web Service API (base
  https://api.credly.com/v1, with a sandbox at https://sandbox-api.credly.com/v1) lets issuing organizations create and manage
  badge templates, issue and revoke badges to recipients, read organization and employee data, pull an events feed, and expose
  recipient credentials via Open Badges Infrastructure (OBI) endpoints. Authentication is HTTP Basic (the organization's authorization_token
  as the username with a blank password) or OAuth 2.0 client_credentials. Real-time notifications are delivered via outbound
  webhooks (HTTPS POST callbacks), not a WebSocket.
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: true
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: high
  source:
  - openapi
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: false
  gated: none
  gated_source:
  - onboarding
  label: Freemium · Self-serve signup
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-13'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/credly.png
x-docs-platform: readme
x-docs-platform-confidence: high
x-docs-platform-checked: 2026-09-24
tags:
- Digital Credentials
- Open Badges
- Badging
- Certification
- Verifiable Credentials
- Pearson
tags_raw:
- Digital Credentials
- Open Badges
- Badging
- Certifications
- Verifiable Credentials
- Pearson
created: '2026-07-05'
modified: '2026-10-06'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: credly:credly-badge-templates-api
  name: Credly Badge Templates API
  description: Reusable credential designs badges are issued against.
  humanURL: https://www.credly.com/docs/badge_templates
  baseURL: https://api.credly.com/v1
  tags:
  - Badge Templates
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/credly-badge-templates-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.credly.com/browse/docs/getting-started
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/badge_templates
  - type: PostmanCollection
    url: collections/credly.postman_collection.json
  - type: OpenCollection
    url: collections/credly.opencollection.json
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/issued_badges
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/webhooks
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://docs.credly.com/browse/reference/get_v1-organizations-organization-id-events
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/obi_specified_endpoints
- aid: credly:credly-events-api
  name: Credly Events API
  description: Organization event feed (mirrors webhook events).
  humanURL: https://www.credly.com/docs/badge_templates
  baseURL: https://api.credly.com/v1
  tags:
  - Event
  tags_raw:
  - Events
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/credly-events-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.credly.com/browse/docs/getting-started
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/badge_templates
  - type: PostmanCollection
    url: collections/credly.postman_collection.json
  - type: OpenCollection
    url: collections/credly.opencollection.json
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/issued_badges
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/webhooks
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://docs.credly.com/browse/reference/get_v1-organizations-organization-id-events
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/obi_specified_endpoints
- aid: credly:credly-issued-badges-api
  name: Credly Issued Badges API
  description: Badges issued to recipients from a badge template.
  humanURL: https://www.credly.com/docs/badge_templates
  baseURL: https://api.credly.com/v1
  tags:
  - Issued Badges
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/credly-issued-badges-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.credly.com/browse/docs/getting-started
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/badge_templates
  - type: PostmanCollection
    url: collections/credly.postman_collection.json
  - type: OpenCollection
    url: collections/credly.opencollection.json
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/issued_badges
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/webhooks
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://docs.credly.com/browse/reference/get_v1-organizations-organization-id-events
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/obi_specified_endpoints
- aid: credly:credly-obi-recipients-api
  name: Credly OBI Recipients API
  description: Open Badges Infrastructure endpoints for public verification.
  humanURL: https://www.credly.com/docs/badge_templates
  baseURL: https://api.credly.com/v1
  tags:
  - OBI Recipients
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/credly-obi-recipients-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.credly.com/browse/docs/getting-started
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/badge_templates
  - type: PostmanCollection
    url: collections/credly.postman_collection.json
  - type: OpenCollection
    url: collections/credly.opencollection.json
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/issued_badges
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/webhooks
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://docs.credly.com/browse/reference/get_v1-organizations-organization-id-events
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/obi_specified_endpoints
- aid: credly:credly-organizations-api
  name: Credly Organizations API
  description: Organization details and employees directory.
  humanURL: https://www.credly.com/docs/badge_templates
  baseURL: https://api.credly.com/v1
  tags:
  - Organization
  tags_raw:
  - Organizations
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/credly-organizations-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.credly.com/browse/docs/getting-started
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/badge_templates
  - type: PostmanCollection
    url: collections/credly.postman_collection.json
  - type: OpenCollection
    url: collections/credly.opencollection.json
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/issued_badges
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/webhooks
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://docs.credly.com/browse/reference/get_v1-organizations-organization-id-events
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.credly.com/docs/obi_specified_endpoints
common:
- url: https://learn.credly.com/blog
  type: Blog
- url: https://learn.credly.com/blog/rss.xml
  type: BlogRSS
- type: CapabilityMap
  url: capabilities/credly-capability-edges.yml
  name: Credly Business Capability Map
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/credly-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/credly-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/credly-authentication.yml
- type: OAuthScopes
  url: scopes/credly-scopes.yml
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/credly
- type: Website
  url: https://credly.com
- type: Documentation
  url: https://docs.credly.com/browse/docs/getting-started
- type: Plans
  url: plans/credly-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/credly-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/credly-finops.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

Credly API — frequently asked questions

Does Credly have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 5 APIs from Credly, including Credly Badge Templates API, Credly Events API and Credly Issued Badges API, and 2 more.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the Credly API?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 5 OpenAPI specifications for Credly, each linked for download from this page.

How do I authenticate with the Credly API?

Credly documents its authentication (http/oauth2 · 2 schemes). The details are profiled on APIs.io as Credly Authentication.

How much does the Credly API cost?

APIs.io lists 2 pricing plans for Credly, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the Credly API ready for AI agents?

Credly has a Kin Score of 28.5 out of 100 (thin) and an Agent Readiness score of 25.1 (agent-aware), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-13.

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