Backendless
DEVELOPER · DEVELOPER
Data objects, their relations, and table permissions in the app they connected.
Connecting Backendless in practice
Backendless puts the application ID and the API key in the URL path rather than a header, so both end up in access logs, referrers and proxy traces by construction. The ceiling is a hard per-minute cap tied to the billing tier — 300 API calls a minute on the free plan, 600 on Cloud 9, 1,200 on Cloud 99 — and Backendless states it "will process the first 300 API calls for any given minute and all other calls above the limit during that minute will be rejected".
Scopes that draw scrutiny
REST API KeyThe key Backendless tells you to use for the REST path: "Make sure to use the REST API Key for the api-key argument." It identifies the application rather than a person and there is a separate key per client environment.Custom API keyThe only documented way to narrow access. "When you create a custom API key in Backendless, a new security role is automatically generated", and "You can then modify that security role to limit access to certain data, files, and functions in the backend."
Rate limits
- Free plan: 300 API calls per minute. Cloud 9: 600. Cloud 99: 1,200.
- On Cloud 9 and Cloud 99 "the limit can be increased by purchasing function packs which add 600 API calls/minute for each purchased pack".
- It is a hard cap rather than a burst window: calls above the limit during that minute are rejected outright.
- Backendless emails the account when volume "reaches 80%, 90% and 100% of the limit", but does not publish the HTTP status returned on rejection.
Worth knowing
- Two credentials do two different jobs and dropping one degrades silently instead of failing: the API key identifies the application, the user-token header identifies the person, and "The NotAuthenticatedUser role applies to any API request which does not have a user identity identified by the user-token HTTP header."
- The base URL is cluster-specific — North America, South America or European Union — and Backendless says "It is important to make sure to use the endpoint that correspond to the cluster" the app is hosted in.
- Backendless’ OAuth2 documentation is end-user social login (Facebook, Google, GitHub, LinkedIn, Twitter), not an integrator flow, so there is no way for a third party to be authorized as an app rather than as a key holder.
- Session tokens have no documented lifetime; the documented pattern is to re-check one with isvalidusertoken after a client restart rather than to rely on an expiry.
Checked against Backendless REST setup (2026-09-29), API call/minute limit (2026-09-29), Custom API keys (2026-09-29), User login (2026-09-29)
What an agent can do
Each action is granted on its own. An agent allowed to read is not thereby allowed to write, and the scope beside each row is what the acting user must have connected for it to run at all.
Often connected alongside
Put Backendless behind one governed endpoint.
Same permissions, same audit trail, whatever else you connect next.