You can now call POST /api/v1/md without an API key. Send Markdown, get a styled PDF back — no signup, no Bearer token, nothing to configure. It's the same deterministic pipeline as the authed call (PDF/A-2A + PDF/UA-1, embedded fonts, tagged structure tree), routed through stricter per-IP limits.
The numbers, per IP address:
- 60 requests per hour
- 200 requests per day
- 20 pages per render (input is also capped at 200 KB of Markdown, same as the authed path)
Hit any of those and the response carries a tip field nudging sign-up. Successful anonymous responses include an X-MakesPDF-Tip header pointing at the higher-limit story; the VS Code plugin surfaces it as a one-time toast.
Every other /api/v1/* endpoint stays authed — /render, /preview, /templates, /enhance, the lot. This carve-out is scoped to /md because the cost ceiling is bounded (no AI call, sub-second pure computation) and the abuse surface is small. Sign up when you want higher limits, saved renders, custom fonts, stored templates, or any of the billed endpoints.
The headline use case is the VS Code plugin — install, open a .md file, run "Convert Markdown to PDF", get a PDF. No settings page detour. Same shape works from curl, a shell script, or any HTTP client:
curl -X POST https://makespdf.com/api/v1/md \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"markdown": "# Hello\n\nSome **bold** text."}' \
-o output.pdf
A stale or invalid Bearer token still returns 401 — we never silently downgrade an auth attempt to anonymous, so paying callers see a clear "your key is broken" signal instead of a quiet rate-limit cliff.